Letter to Peter Heimbach. (Familiar Letters, No. XXXI.)
P. 102. a country retreat: ‘a pretty box,’ secured for him by his Quaker friend, Elwood, at Chalfont St. Giles; the house still exists, having undergone little or no change.
I hardly like to express in the text a fancy that has occurred to me in translating the letter and studying it in connection with Heimbach’s, to wit, that Milton may not merely have been ironically rebuking Heimbach for his adulation and silly phraseology, but may also have been suspicious of the possibility of some trap laid for him politically. Certainly, if this letter of Milton’s to a Councillor of the Elector of Brandenburg had been intercepted by the English government, it is so cleverly worded that nothing could have been made of it. But Heimbach may have been as honest as he looks. Even then, however, Milton, knowing little or nothing of Heimbach for the last nine years, had reason to be cautious.—Masson.