Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow XXXI.: To the accomplished Peter Heinbach, Counsellor to the Elector of Brandenburg. - The Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 2

Return to Title Page for The Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 2

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: History
Subject Area: Religion
Topic: The English Revolution

XXXI.: To the accomplished Peter Heinbach, Counsellor to the Elector of Brandenburg. - John Milton, The Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 2 [1847]

Edition used:

The Prose Works of John Milton, With a Biographical Introduction by Rufus Wilmot Griswold. In Two Volumes (Philadelphia: John W. Moore, 1847). Vol. 2.

Part of: The Prose Works of John Milton, 2 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


XXXI.

To the accomplishedPeter Heinbach,Counsellor to the Elector of Brandenburg.

It is not strange as you write that report should have induced you to believe, that I had perished among the numbers of my countrymen who fell in a year so fatally visited by the ravages of the plague. If that rumour sprung as it seems out of a solicitude for my safety, I consider it as no unpleasing indication of the esteem in which I am held among you. But by the goodness of God, who provided for me a place of refuge in the country, I yet enjoy both life and health; which, as long as they contiuue, I shall be happy to employ in any useful undertaking. It gives me pleasure to think, that after so long an interval I have again occurred to your remembrance; though, owing to the luxuriance of your praise, you seem almost to lead me to suspect that you had quite forgotten one in whom you say that you admire the union of so many virtues; from such an union I might dread too numerous a progeny, if it were not evident that the virtues flourish most in penury and distress. But one of those virtues has made me but an ill return for her hospitable reception in my breast; for what you term policy, and which I wish that you had rather called patriotic piety, has, if I may so say, almost left me, who was charmed with so sweet a sound, without a country. The other virtues harmoniously agree. Our country is wherever we are well off. I will conclude after first begging you if there be any errors in the diction or the punctuation to impute it to the boy who wrote this, who is quite ignorant of Latin, and to whom I was, with no little vexation, obliged to dictate not the words, but, one by one, the letters of which they were composed. I rejoice to find that your virtues and talents, of which I saw the fair promise in your youth, have raised you to so honourable a situation under the prince; and I wish you every good which you can enjoy. Adieu.

the end.