Supporting the
Protector's policy, he admired his conduct, and has recorded his
admiration in the memorable sonnet xii. How the Protector thought of
Milton, or even that he knew him at all, there remains no evidence.
Napoleon said of Corneille that, if he had lived in his day, he would
have made him his first minister.
Milton's ideas were not such as could have value in the eyes of a
practical statesman. Yet Cromwell was not always taking advice, or
discussing business. He, who could take a liking for the genuine
inwardness of the enthusiast George Fox, might have been expected to
appreciate equal unworldliness, joined with culture and reading, in
Milton. "If," says Neal, "there was a man in England who excelled in
any faculty or science, the Protector would find him out and reward
him." But the excellence which the Protector prized was aptness for
public employment, and this was the very quality in which Milton was
deficient.
The poverty of Milton's state letters has been often remarked.
Whenever weighty negotiations are going on, other pens than his are
employed. We may ascribe this to his blindness.
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