The recurrence at this point, however, is not uninstructive.

At the beginning of Richard's Protectorate, we can see Milton's defences of the English Republic were still regarded as the unparalleled literary achievements of the age, and Milton's European celebrity on account of them had not waned in the least.

It was something for the blind man, seated by himself in his small home in Westminster, and sending his thoughts out over the world from which for six years now he had been so helplessly shut in, to know this fact, and to be able to imagine the continued recollection of him as still alive among the myriads moving in that vast darkness.

This fruit of his past labours, he says, he would "gratefully enjoy," but with no vulgar satisfaction.

He would not confess it even to be with any lingering in him now of the last infirmity of a noble mind.