Then came Milton with the fairy melodies, always sweet, of “Comus”--the cantankerous pamphleteering--the soured home-life--the bloody thrusts at the image of the King, and the grander flight of his diviner music into the courts of Paradise. _Charles II. and his Friends._ Some fourteen years or so before the death of Milton, the restoration of Charles II. had come about. He had drifted back upon the traces of the stout Oliver Cromwell, and of the feebler Richard Cromwell, on a great tide of British enthusiasm. Independents, Presbyterians, Church of England men, and Papists were all by the ears; and it did seem to many among the shrewdest of even the Puritan workers that some balance-wheel (of whatever metal), though weighted with royal traditions and hereditary privileges, might keep the governmental machinery to the steady working of old days. So the Second Charles had come back, with a great throwing up of caps all through the London streets; Presbyterians giving him welcome because he was sure to snub the Independents; the Independents giving him welcome because he was sure to snub the Presbyterians; the Church of England men giving him welcome because he was sure to snub both (as he did); and finally, the Papists giving him high welcome because all other ways their hopes were lean and few. You know, or should know, what manner of man he was: accomplished--in his way; an expert swordsman; an easy talker--capable of setting a tableful of gentlemen in a roar; telling stories inimitably, and a great many of them; full of grimaces that would have made his fortune on the stage; saying sweetest things, and meaning the worst things; a daredevil who feared neither God nor man; generous, too--most of all in his cups; and liberal--with other people’s money; hating business with all his soul; loving pleasure with all his heart; ready always to do kindness that cost him nothing; laughing at all Puritans and purity; yet winning the maudlin affection of a great many people, and the respect of none. Notwithstanding all this, the country gentlemen of England, of good blood, who had sniffed scornfully at the scent of the beer-vats which hung about the name of Cromwell, welcomed this clever, swarthy, black-haired, dissolute Prince, who had a pedigree which ran back on the father’s side to the royal Bruce of Scotland, and on the mother’s side to the great Clovis, and to the greater Charlemagne.