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Free Commonwealth; which was, however, enough confidered to be both fe rioufly and ludicroufly answered.

The obftinate enthufiafm of the commonwealthmen was very remarkable. When the king was apparently returning, Harrington, with a few affociates as fanatical as himfelf, ufed to meet, with all the gravity of political importance, to fettle an equal government by rotation; and Milton, kicking when he could ftrike no longer, was foolish enough to publifh, a few weeks before the Restoration, Notes upon a fermon preached by one Griffiths, intituled, The Fear of God and the King. To these notes an anfwer was written by L'Eftrange,

in a pamphlet petulantly called No blind

Guides.

But whatever Milton could write, or men of greater activity could do, the king was now evidently approaching with the irrefiftible approbation of the people. He was therefore no longer fecretary, and was confequently obliged to quit the house which he held by his office; and, proportioning his fenfe of danger to his opinion of the importance of his writings, thought it convenient to feek fome fhelter, and hid himself for a time in Bartholomew Close by Weft Smithfield.

I cannot but remark a kind of respect, perhaps unconsciously, paid to this great man by his biographers: every house

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in which he refided is hiftorically men tioned, as if it were an injury to neglect naming any place that he honoured by his prefence.

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The king, with lenity of which the world has had perhaps no other example, declined to be the judge or avengor of his own or his father's wrongs; and promised to admit into the Act of Oblivion all, except thofe whom the parliament fhould except; and the parliament doomed none to capital punishment but the wretches who had immediately co-operated in the murder of the king. Milton was certainly not one of them; he had only juftified what they had done.

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This juftification was indeed fuffi ciently offenfive; and (June 16) an order was iffued to feize Milton's Defence, and Godwin's Obftructors of Justice, ther book of the fame tendency, and burn them by the common hangman. The attorney-general was ordered to profecute the authors; but Milton was not feized, nor perhaps very diligently purfued.

Not long after (Auguft 19) the flutter of innumerable bofoms was ftilled by an act, which the king, that his mercy might want no recommendation of elegance, rather called an act of oblivion than of grace. Godwin was named, with nineteen more, as incapacitated for

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any publick truft; but of Milton there

was no exception.

Of this tendernefs fhewn to Milton, the curiofity of mankind has not forborn to enquire the reafon. Burnet thinks he was forgotten; but this is another inftance which may confirm Dalrymple's obfervation, who fays, "that "whenever Burnet's narrations are exa"mined, he appears to be miflaken." Forgotten he was not; for his profc'cution was ordered; it must be there. fore by defign that he was included in the general oblivion. He is faid to have had friends in the Houfe, fuch as Marvel, Morrice, and Sir Thomas Clarges; and undoubtedly a man like him muft have had influence. A very particular story

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