As a partisan he was necessarily involved in the ruin of
his party. As a matter of course he lost his Latin secretaryship.
There is a story that he was offered to be continued in it, and that
when urged to accept the offer by his wife, he replied, "Thou art in
the right; you, as other women, would ride in your coach; for me, my
aim is to live and die an honest man." This tradition, handed on by
Pope, is of doubtful authenticity. It is not probable that the man who
had printed of Charles I. what Milton had printed, could have been
offered office under Charles II. Even were court favour to be
purchased by concessions, Milton was not the man to make them, or to
belie his own antecedents, as Marchmont, Needham, Dryden, and so many
others did. Our wish for Milton is that he should have placed himself
from the beginning above party. But he had chosen to be the champion
of a party, and he loyally accepted the consequences. He escaped with
life and liberty. The reaction, though barbarous in its treatment of
its victims, was not bloodthirsty. Milton was already punished by the
loss of his sight, and he was now mulcted in three-fourths of his
small fortune.
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