“Teach the Erring Soul” 1669–1674position. They call down God’s vengeance on the prideful wicked and the furious
foes that – now as then – threaten the Lord’s “dear Saints” on every side.^83 Milton
published Of Education as the final item in this volume, calling attention to its ad-
dressee – “To Master Samuel Hartlib” – and its composition “above twenty Yeares
since.” This was his only interregnum prose work apparently innocuous enough to
republish, but it also accords with his intense focus on education in these last years.
During the final two years of his life failing health from attacks of gout led Milton
to make further arrangements about his unpublished papers. At about the time of
Richard’s succession, he had obtained a collection of personal and diplomatic let-
ters and addresses to Oliver Cromwell, which he now turned over to Thomas
Ellwood for safekeeping and publication at some future time.^84 At the suggestion of
the Danish diplomatic resident, Milton had copies made of the letters of state he
himself wrote as Latin Secretary and offered them to the bookseller Brabazon Aylmer,
probably early in 1674.^85 He added 31 of his private letters written from 1625 to
- Aylmer’s preface to the small octavo he subsequently published sometime
before May 26, 1674 explains that he was refused permission to publish the state
letters and thought that the private letters would make too slim a volume, so he
negotiated with the author through a mutual friend, to see if he had “any little
work perhaps laid aside” to fill out the volume.^86 That friend, whoever he was,
elicited the seven college orations known as Prolusions; Milton perhaps kept – or
chose to publish – these particular orations because many of them engage issues of
education.^87 Aylmer hoped that “however youthful they are... they will be no less
salable for me than they were not unpleasing formerly to their hearers when they
were recited”;^88 evidently Milton’s reputation was now such that Aylmer could
expect his private letters and youthful orations to be “salable.” At about the same
time, probably, Milton turned over to Aylmer his Brief History of Moscovia, but it
was not published until 1682. Aylmer’s preface to that work claims that Milton
wrote it in his own hand “before he lost his sight” and offered it to Aylmer “some-
time before his death,” but that he postponed publication in the hope of finding
“some other suitable Piece of the same Authour’s to have join’d with it.”^89 Aylmer
seems to have thought there might be a cache of Milton writings yet to surface.
Daniel Skinner’s association with Milton may have begun during 1673 or 1674.
In a letter to Pepys written after his efforts to publish Milton’s state papers and De
Doctrina Christiana landed him in trouble, Skinner sharply dissociates himself from
Milton’s views but seems to suggest that he enjoyed for a time the kind of relation-
ship Milton had with some other young men – some tutoring in exchange for
services as an amanuensis:
I happen’d to be acquainted with Milton in his lifetime, (which out of mere love to
learning I procur’d, and noe other concerns ever pass’d betwixt us but a great desire
and ambition of some of his learning,) I am and ever was... farr from being in the
least tainted with any of his principles.^90