there is little difficulty in seeing what must have happened in Milton's particular. My belief is that he signified, or caused it to be signified, that he had no desire to retire on a life-pension, that it would be much more agreeable to him to continue in active employment for the State, that for certain kinds of such employment he found his blindness less and less a disqualification, that the arrangement as to salary might be as the Council pleased, but that his own suggestion would be that his salary should be reduced to £200, so that he and Mr. Meadows should henceforth be on an equality in that respect. Such, at all events, was the arrangement adopted; and we may now dismiss this whole incident in Milton's biography by saying that, though in April 1655 there was a proposal to superannuate him entirely on a life-pension of £150 a year, the proposal did not take effect, but he went on from that date, just as before, in the Latin Secretaryship Extraordinary, though at the reduced salary of £200 a year instead of his original £288. [Footnote 1: My notes from the Money Warrant Books of the Council.] [Footnote 2: Money Warrants of Feb. 15, 1658-9 and Oct. 25, 1659.] [Footnote 3: Money Warrant of Oct. 25, 1659.] [Footnote 4: Ibid.] [Footnote 5: Ibid.] As if to prove that the arrangement was a perfectly suitable one, and that Milton's retirement into ex-Secretaryship would have been a loss, there came from him, immediately after the arrangement had been made, that burst of Latin State-letters which is now the most famous of his official performances for Cromwell. It was in the second week of May, 1655, that the news of the Massacre of the Piedmontese Protestants reached England; and from the 17th of that month, onwards for weeks and weeks, the attention of the Protector and the Council was all but engrossed, as we have seen (ante pp. 38-44), by that dreadful topic. Here are a few of the first Minutes of Council relating to it:--