Note 261 — Chapter XVI

Taine, Hist. of English Literature, i. 419, attributes the sonnet to this time, but it manifestly belongs to an earlier date. The great French scholar, Claude Saumaise, or, as he is more common! called, Salmasius, wrote a Latin treatise in defence of the divine right of kings, and in vindication of the memory of Charles I. (1649.) Milton wrote an answer to the Defensio Regia, also in Latin (1651). He had lost the sight of one eye in 1651, and became totally blind not long afterwards. His enemies taunted him with his blindness as being a judgment for having written in defence of the king’s death, He lived on for fourteen years after the Restoration.