in the present volume).

These nine Letters, with the completion and publication of his _Defensio Secunda_, and now the preparation of a Reply to More's _Fides Publica_, and also perhaps occasional calls at Thurloe's office and occasional presences at interviews with ambassadors and envoys in Whitehall, were all he had been doing for fifteen months for his salary of L288 a year.

The fact cannot have escaped notice.

He had himself called attention to it, as if by anticipation, in that passage of his _Defensio Secunda_ in which he spoke of the kind indulgence of the State-authorities in retaining him honourably in full office, and not abridging his emoluments on account of his disability by blindness.

The passage may have touched Cromwell and some of the Councillors, and there was doubtless a general feeling among them of the worth, beyond estimate in money, of Milton's name to the Commonwealth, and of his past acts of literary championship for her.