“For the Sake of Liberty” 1652–1654from late 1651 to 1655 have been proposed, but in the absence of facts we can only
turn to internal evidence and external circumstances.^68 The difficulty with any date
in the 1650s arises from the sonnet’s second line: what lifespan can Milton be
projecting for himself if, at age 43 in 1652, he supposes he has more than half his
days before him? Not, obviously, the biblical three score and ten. Probably, as
Parker suggests, he has in mind his father’s lifespan of at least 84 years.^69 As we have
seen, Milton is often inexact about chronology and tends to perceive and represent
himself as younger than he is: he predated some of his youthful poems in the 1645
Poems, and in the Defensio Secunda takes pride in a youthful appearance that belies
his actual age by ten years.^70 The time frame of this sonnet is set by thematic and
emotional concerns, not the calendar, as Milton seeks to come to terms with the
fact that he has been blinded in the prime of life with his major work yet undone.
His perception of himself as still youthful, here and elsewhere, offers subconscius
support for the hope that there is still time to write his great poem. The title “On
His Blindness” has no authority, but most readers agree that the poem is about a
spiritual crisis prompted by blindness: how in this darkness to understand and fulfill
the responsibilities of vocation, the duties arising both from God’s general election
and his particular call to each individual?^71 The opening words, “When I con-
sider,” imply, not a response to a new condition of blindness, but some passage of
time allowing for recurrent questions and answers. Milton thought himself obliged
to answer the Regii Sanguinis Clamor and the imminent new attack from Salmasius;
he had proved that he could carry on with his quotidian tasks of translation and
Latin correspondence, but could he produce another major prose epic in defense
of his countrymen and himself, to say nothing of his long-planned epic poem? He
could write small sonnets in the service of religious liberty, but could he any longer
undertake his cherished role as classical orator and humanist counsellor in crises
present and future? That those larger challenges seemed all but insurmountable
in these months is implied in Milton’s Pro Se Defensio, when he explained his
long delay in answering the Clamor by instancing his “infirm health,” his distress
over the two family deaths, and “the complete failure of my sight” (CPW IV.2,
703). As that other vocation sonnet (“How Soon Hath Time”) marked the ap-
proach of Milton’s twenty-fourth birthday,^72 this one may have been prompted by
the approach of his forty-fourth birthday on December 9. It is discussed on pages
305–7.
In the months following the publication of Clamor, Milton surely collected tidbits
of international gossip about More. Most of the reports ascribed the Clamor to him
and repeated with salacious glee the (mostly accurate) stories about his break with
Salmasius over his seduction and refusal to marry an English gentlewoman servant
of Madame Salmasius, sometimes adding the false rumor that she was pregnant by
him.^73 The earliest report was a letter from Leyden in Mercurius Politicus (September
17/27, 1652), observing that More’s Clamor “hath been much cryed up and down,
till the Author decryed himself and his reputation by violating the Chastity of