“I... Steer Right Onward” 1654–1658friend Henry Oldenburg, the erstwhile agent for Bremen and a student of science;
Milton may have recommended him to Lady Ranelagh. There were also visits
from other “particular Friends that had a high esteem for him”: Phillips specifies
Andrew Marvell, Marchamont Nedham (presumably not so often as when Milton
was nominal licenser for Politicus), and Edward Lawrence, elder son of the powerful
president of Cromwell’s Council of State and perhaps also a former student at the
Barbican house. Young Lawrence was a virtuous and studious young man with
bright prospects and literary interests, according to Oldenburg and the poet William
Davenant.^47 Oldenburg was probably an occasional visitor while he was in London,
as were Hartlib (who now lived at Charing Cross), Theodore Haak, John Dury
when he was home from his travels, and others of the learned circle that formed
around Hartlib and Lady Ranelagh’s brother, the scientist Robert Boyle.^48
Edward Lawrence was the recipient of one sonnet and Cyriack Skinner of two
sonnets written by Milton in the winter of 1655–6. All three exhibit and express
Milton’s delight in warm friendships and the companionship of intelligent young
men; Lawrence was about 28 and Skinner 22. Skinner copied part of his into the
Trinity manuscript, an indication that he sometimes served as amanuensis for Milton
in this period.^49 That sonnet and the one to Lawrence, in the Horatian vein, de-
scribe the delights and the value of recreation in pleasant society – a persistent
theme of Milton’s – and also afford a glimpse of his recreations with these young
friends. The other sonnet to Skinner, “Cyriack, this three years day,” is occasioned
by the three years’ anniversary of Milton’s total blindness in 1652 – not the precise
day, but the year.^50 The sonnet proudly proclaims Milton’s capacity to sustain his
spirits because he takes pride in having sacrificed his eyes in the service of liberty, a
theme Milton sounds with some frequency in these years. At this juncture he wants
to assure friends and enemies alike that his terrible affliction has not defeated him;
and no doubt he has derived strength from finding ways to continue his studies and
his writing. If the cheerfulness seems a bit strained, it gives evidence of Milton’s
remarkably sanguine temperament. These three sonnets are discussed on pages 352–
6.
Milton’s nephew John Phillips was no longer a member of his household. Milton
probably helped him find some employment in Scotland with his acquaintance
from Christ’s, Arthur Sandelands.^51 On August 17, 1655, nine days after the publi-
cation of Milton’s Pro Se Defensio, John Phillips burst upon the literary scene with
an anonymous poem in rhyming couplets, A Satyr against Hypocrites.^52 Sometimes
witty and often grossly indecent with its language of stinks and the lechery of “Fat
Wives,” the poem’s ridicule of hypocritical Puritans and their practices recalls Jonson’s
Bartholomew Fayre. It debunks Puritan church services and fast-day sermons for
social posturing, canting biblical language, and out-of-tune psalmody, and describes
clergy and laity turning immediately after church to gluttony, drunkenness, and
fornication. London (Presbyterian) parish clergy preach meekness but are avari-
cious, ambitious of political power, and eager to control others; ignorant mechanics