Far too much is made of these, when they are made the scapegoat of
the moralist. The style of court manners was a mere incident on the
surface of social life. The national life was more profoundly tainted
by the discouragement of all good men, which penetrated every shire
and every parish, than by the distant reports of the loose behaviour
of Charles II. Servility, meanness, venality, time-serving, and
a disbelief in virtue diffused themselves over the nation like a
pestilential miasma, the depressing influence of which was heavy, even
upon those souls which individually resisted the poison. The heroic
age of England had passed away, not by gradual decay, by imperceptible
degeneration, but in a year, in a single day, like the winter's snow
in Greece. It is for the historian to describe, and unfold the sources
of this contagion. The biographer of Milton has to take note of the
political change only as it affected the worldly circumstances of the
man, the spiritual environment of the poet, and the springs of his
inspiration.
The consequences of the Restoration to Milton's worldly fortunes were
disastrous.
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