With this piece ended his controversies; and he from this time gave
himself up to his private studies and his civil employment.

As secretary to the Protector he is supposed to have written the
Declaration of the reasons for a war with Spain. His agency was
considered as of great importance; for, when a treaty with Sweden
was artfully suspended, the delay was publicly imputed to Mr.
Milton's indisposition; and the Swedish agent was provoked to
express his wonder that only one man in England could write Latin,
and that man blind.

Being now forty-seven years old, and seeing himself disencumbered
from external interruptions, he seems to have recollected his former
purposes, and to have resumed three great works which he had planned
for his future employment--an epic poem, the history of his country,
and a dictionary of the Latin tongue.

To collect a dictionary seems a work of all others least practicable
in a state of blindness, because it depends upon perpetual and
minute inspection and collation. Nor would Milton probably have
begun it, after he had lost his eyes; but, having had it always
before him, he continued it, says Philips, "almost to his dying day;
but the papers were so discomposed and deficient, that they could
not be fitted for the press." The compilers of the Latin
dictionary, printed at Cambridge, had the use of those collections
in three folios; but what was their fate afterwards is not known.

To compile a history from various authors, when they can only be