From the Barbican issued the first volume of his poems, including Comus, Lycidas, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, &c.; a strange Parnassus, as it now seems to us. In 1647, his large troop of inmates having left him, he once more flitted, to use the good old Saxon term, into a smaller house in Holborn, opening backward into Lincoln's Inn Fields; this house will now be sought in vain. Here he published, in 1649, his bold Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in which he vindicated what the Parliament had done in 1648, in the execution of the king; this was followed by some other political pamphlets. As he had made himself a marked man before, this open defense of the royal decapitation bound him up at once with the measures of the ruling government. Such a champion was not to be overlooked; and accordingly, immediately afterward, he was invited by the Council of State, without any expectation or solicitation on his part, to become Latin secretary; as they had resolved neither to write to others abroad, nor to receive answers from any, except in that language, which was common to them all. Thus the vaporing schoolmaster, without any anxious solicitation, any flatteries, or compromise of his dignity and integrity, had steadily advanced to that post in which he could effectually serve his country. He was here not merely the secretary, he was the champion of the government; and, accordingly, the _Eicon Basiliké_, attributed to King Charles himself, was ordered by him to have an answer; which answer was his _Eiconoclastes_, or the Image-breaker. Then came his great Defense of the People of England against Salmasius; this work was received, both at home and abroad, with the greatest excitement, abuse, and applause, as the different parties were affected: at Paris and Toulouse it was burned; at home, Milton was complimented on his performance of his task, by the visits or invitations of all the foreign ministers in London; his own government presented him with a thousand pounds, as a testimony of their approbation of the manner in which he had acquitted himself; and even Queen Christina, of Sweden, the patron of Salmasius, could not avoid applauding it, and soon after dismissed Salmasius from her court. The work itself, and the effect it produced, are said to have shortened the life of Salmasius, who died about two years afterward, without having finished his reply, upon which he was laboring.