The former exerted himself to save his illustrious friend from persecution, and omitted no opportunity to defend him as a politician and to eulogize him as a poet.

In 1654 he presented to Cromwell Milton's noble tract in _Defence of the People of England_, and, in writing to the author, says of the work, "When I consider how equally it teems and rises with so many figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, in whose winding ascent we see embossed the several monuments of your learned victories." He was one of the first to appreciate _Paradise Lost_, and to commend it in some admirable lines.

One couplet is exceedingly beautiful, in its reference to the author's blindness:-- "Just Heaven, thee like Tiresias to requite, Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight." His poems, written in the "snatched leisure" of an active political life, bear marks of haste, and are very unequal.

In the midst of passages of pastoral description worthy of Milton himself, feeble lines and hackneyed phrases occur.

His _Nymph lamenting the Death of her Fawn_ is a finished and elaborate piece, full of grace and tenderness.