The advice of an enthusiastic idealist, Puritan by the accident of his times, but whose true affinities were with Mill and Shelley and Rousseau.
An interesting question arises in connection with Milton's official duties: had he any real influence on the counsels of Government?
or was he a mere secretary?
It would be pleasing to conceive of him as Vizier to the only Englishman of the day whose greatness can be compared with his; to imagine him playing Aristotle to Cromwell's Alexander.

We have seen him freely tendering Cromwell what might have been unpalatable advice, and learn from Du Moulin's lampoon that he was accused of having behaved to the Protector with something of dictatorial rudeness.

But it seems impossible to point to any direct influence of his mind in the administration; and his own department of Foreign Affairs was neither one which he was peculiarly qualified to direct, nor one in which he was likely to differ from the ruling powers.

"A spirited foreign policy" was then the motto of all the leading men of England.

Before Milton's loss of sight his duties included attendance upon foreign envoys on State occasions, of which he must afterwards have been to a considerable extent relieved.