upon Milton, who on his part had twitted Salmasius with having been
complimented by the exiled King with a purse of 100 Jacobuses for his
performance. The one insinuation was as false as the other. Charles
II. was too poor to offer more than thanks. Milton was too proud to
receive for defending his country what the Parliament was willing to
pay. Sir Peter Wentworth, of Lillingston Lovell, in Oxfordshire, left
in his will 100 l. to Milton for his book against Salmasius. But this
was long after the Restoration, and Milton did not live to receive the
legacy.

Instead of receiving an honorarium for his _Defence of the English
People_, Milton had paid for it a sacrifice for which money could not
compensate him. His eyesight, though quick, as he was a proficient
with the rapier, had never been strong. His constant headaches, his
late study, and (thinks Phillips) his perpetual tampering with physic
to preserve his sight, concurred to bring the calamity upon him. It
had been steadily coming on for a dozen years before, and about 1650
the sight of the left eye was gone. He was warned by his doctor that
if he persisted in using the remaining eye for book-work, he would
lose that too. "The choice lay before me," Milton writes in the
_Second Defence_, "between dereliction of a supreme duty and loss of
eyesight; in such a case I could not listen to the physician, not if
Aesculapius himself had spoken from his sanctuary; I could not but
obey that inward monitor, I know not what, that spake to me from
heaven. I considered with myself that many had purchased less good
with worse ill, as they who give their lives to reap only glory, and I
thereupon concluded to employ the little remaining eyesight I was to
enjoy in doing this, the greatest service to the common weal it was in
my power to render."