Immediately upon the appearance of this book, the Council of State unanimously selected Milton to answer it; and he, in obedience to this call, prepared and published his Defense of the People of England, a work of great worth and power, and which was written at intervals, during the moments snatched from his official duties, when he was weakened and infirm. This book was read everywhere. Europe rang with it, and wonder at its force filled all minds.
By some it has been said that the Council presented him with £1000 as a reward, which was no mean sum in those days of specie circulation. But empty thanks were all that he received. Neither this nor any other of his writings ever obtained one cent for him from the public purse, as he asserts in his Second Defense. While Milton was thus receiving attentions from all quarters, it was much otherwise with his arrogant opponent; for he suffered not only by the severity of Milton’s reply, but was slighted and treated ill by Christiana, Queen of Sweden, who had invited him to her court, among other learned men. Upon the reading of Milton’s “Defense,” she was so delighted therewith, that her opinion of Salmasius changed, and she became indifferent to him, which he perceiving, left her court, and retired to Spa, in Germany, where he shortly after died of chagrin.
Milton had been for many years suffering from a weakness in his eyes, arising out of his severe application to his studies. Year after year his sight became more and more dim, until his physicians warned him that unless he ceased his continual toil, he would become totally blind. This for a while he heeded; but the urgent call made upon him in the production of this answer to Salmasius, led him again to over-application, and he became wholly blind. Notwithstanding his blindness, he still continued the discharge of his official duties, and employed his leisure moments in the production of various other political tracts, in answer to the many abusive works issued by the royalists.
On the death of Oliver Cromwell, and the taking place of the difficulties that followed, he wrote a “Letter to a Statesman,” [supposed to be General Monk,] in which he gave a brief delineation of a “free Commonwealth, easy to be put in practice, and without delay.” Finding affairs were growing worse and worse, the people more and more unsettled, and that a king was likely to be reëstablished, and the Commonwealth subverted, he wrote and published his “Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Excellence thereof, Compared with the Inconveniences and Dangers of admitting Kingship in this Nation.” This short paper was published in 1659-60, and even after this he published his “Notes on a late Sermon entitled the Fear of God and the King, preached at Mercer’s Chapel, on March 25th, 1660, by Dr. Matthew Griffith,” the very year, and within a month of the Restoration; so that his voice was the last to bear witness against the overthrow of liberty and the restoration of tyranny.