“I... Steer Right Onward” 1654–1658in one man, seems to sound a warning from a republican perspective: “In every
Republick, an excessive Authority given to one or two persons for a long time,
proveth dangerous, chiefly when the same is not restrained. Example, the Dictator-
ship given to Caesar for life, was an occasion to oppress the Liberties of the Ro-
mans.”^141 Milton does not suggest that this is yet Cromwell’s case or that there is
now any other viable option for England. But he registers his uneasiness about the
Protectorate in the fact that from 1654 on he has avoided any direct address to or
comment about Cromwell, and in the subtext of what he does write or publish.
That subtext is: if the people were only the lovers of liberty they should be, they
would have better political discourse and a better republic.
Before Cromwell could call a new parliament, and perhaps this time accept the
offer of the crown, nature intervened. An epidemic of influenza swept the country,
killing Cromwell’s favorite daughter Elizabeth Claypole on August 6, and attacking
Cromwell himself. He rallied for a time but then grew steadily worse. Pressed on
his deathbed to settle the succession, he reportedly confirmed the choice of his
eldest son, Richard – though many refused to credit that story.^142 Milton’s reaction
to the death of Cromwell on September 3, the anniversary of his great battles of
Worcester and Dunbar, is not on record. He was allotted 9s.6d to buy mourning
attire for the funeral, as were Marvell, Philip Meadows, and Nathaniel Sterry; John
Dryden was allotted 9s. But something might be inferred from what Milton did not
do. Both Marvell and Dryden produced lengthy, laudatory funeral elegies for the
death and funeral of the Lord Protector. Milton’s Muse did not even rise to an
epitaph.
“Immortal Notes”: Milton’s Last Five Sonnets
The five sonnets Milton wrote during these years are all occasional poems that deal
with specific personal or historical events. They extend the sonnet’s range to take in
a very wide spectrum of subjects and a stunning range of tone and style; and two of
them – the Piedmont sonnet and the sonnet on his deceased wife – bring that genre
to new heights of formal complexity and emotional intensity. They do so in part by
incorporating other generic elements into the small confines of the Petrarchan son-
net form. No major poet would attempt to follow Milton’s achievement in that
kind for well over a century.
Both in form and subject “On the late Massacher in Piemont” is unique among
Milton’s sonnets and in the entire repertoire of the genre. Incorporating many
details of the massacre from news reports and his own state letters of protest, this
sonnet forces that lyric kind to deal with a historical event of tragic or epic propor-
tions, transforming it into a species of jeremiad. Echoing prophetic language from
Lamentations, Psalms, Isaiah and the Book of Revelation, a denunciatory voice
calls down God’s vengeance for the slaughtered Waldensians, and over the course