“I... Steer Right Onward” 1654–1658offers genial teacherly advice: Jones did well to spurn the temptations of Paris for
Saumur, but he must not thirst overmuch for Saumur wine unless he dilutes it “with
more than a fifth part of the more liberal drink of the Muses”; he should listen to
Oldenburg and thereby please his excellent mother; and he must strive to “return to
us upright and as accomplished as you can.” Milton says he will find that “the most
joyful thing of all” (503–4). Oldenburg’s reply (October 4/14) reports gossip: Queen
Christina is to visit, but people think three queens on the ground – Christina, the
French Queen Maria Theresa and the exiled English Queen Henrietta Maria – are
rather too many. Jones and he will not go to Italy because of the plague. More is to
be presented at Charenton and thinks that Milton’s answer has only wounded Milton
himself. Oldenburg assures Milton, with some embarrassment, that he would never
cast away his writings, “which speak things worthy of immortality” (504–5), and
closes with greetings to “your excellent wife” and to Lawrence.
In two letters to Henry de Brass, whom Milton addresses as a young person of
distinction and promise, he expatiates on the writing of history. At some visit, de
Brass and Milton had discussed the relative merits of Tacitus and Sallust and the
young man wrote Milton (in letters now lost) with further observations and ques-
tions. Replying (July 15, 1657) with his usual courtesy to intelligent young men
who seek him out as an internationally renowned scholar, Milton praises him for
traveling to gain “richer learning from every source,” though he is already able “to
impart knowledge to others” and will soon be equal to anyone in learning. Then he
responds to the questions, “lest I seem wholly unresponsive to your great need for
my authority.” He reaffirms “that I prefer Sallust to any other Latin historian what-
ever,” and that he finds Tacitus worthy chiefly because “he imitated Sallust with all
his might” (CPW VII, 500–1). That comment registers a moral as well as a stylistic
preference. His own analyses in the History of Britain found a model in Sallust’s
interpretative narrative of the Roman republic: the expulsion of kings gave rise to
the virtues of industry and justice that called a republic into being; it flourished in
adversity but declined in prosperity as avarice and ambition took root. Milton might
also see Sallust’s eloquent denunciations of corruption and the dangers of military
rule as a lesson for the Cromwellian court.^117 To the young man’s query as to how
a historian can acquire a style equal to the deeds he reports, as Sallust dictates,
Milton repeats his familiar equation of writer and subject:
He who would write worthily of worthy deeds ought to write with no less largeness
of spirit and experience of the world than he who did them, so that he can compre-
hend and judge as an equal even the greatest, and having comprehended, can narrate
them gravely and clearly in plain and temperate language. (501)Milton sets down other principles for writing history: not to use the ornate lan-
guage of an orator, not to break up the narrative by injecting frequent maxims or
judgments, not to invent or conjecture but tell the truth, and to join brevity of