204 



MILTON 



ness or ostentation. Counts and Lycidai tell UK 

 nnirli of the IIIHII ; iti tin- former we see the scholar's 

 lii-iluin. perhaps slightlv tinged with morosencss, 

 fur all save LnteUeetluJ pleasures ; ill the latter 

 tin- patriot ami tin- I'urilan speaks his hitter scorn 

 <if tlie ruling fitrtiun in the church. Perhaps he 

 had spoken IIMI freely ; at all events verv shoitly 

 after the piihlicatiun of his elegy, aUiut tlie licgin- 

 ning of IfL'iS, its part of nil obituary collection in 

 memory of Edward King, he left England for a 

 tour in Italy. 



Milton's ' visit to Itnly is one of the moot 

 agreeable chapters of hia life. He was cordially 

 ived by the Italian literati, especially at 

 Florence, where he made not only pleasant ac- 

 quaintanceships, hut permanent friendships. At 

 Koine, notwithstanding his undaunted profession 

 of Proteslanlisni, he wan treated with especial 

 Attention, and at Naples the vvneralilc Manpiis 

 Manso. half a century earlier the protector of Ta-so, 

 gave him hospitality and presents, which Milton 

 reipiited \vithan elegant Latin poem. Theimpics- 

 siou which Milton thus produced niMin foreigners is 

 a proof of something imposing and attractive in 

 his personality, for all his solid claims to fame were 

 of course a sealed liook to the Italians. His 

 journey home was hastened by news of the out- 

 lireakof hostilities l.ct ween Charles I. and theScote, 

 nml his return was saddened hy tidings of the 

 death of his friend Diodali, whom he celebrated in 

 his elegy 'Damon,' the lines! and the last, of his 

 Latin )>ocms. lie .-cttlcd in St Bride's Churchyard, 

 afterwards in Aldersgate Street, and devoted him- 

 self to the educat ion of his widowed -inter's children, 

 the two young 1'hillipses. I'ncoiiscions of the long 

 farewell he was alxiiit to liid to ]>oetry, he occu- 

 pied his leisinu with schemes for ]>oems mostly 

 dramatic and scriptural, of which numerous 

 skeleton outlines are preserved. The conception 

 of J'linniinr Lost as a mystery or miracle play 

 gradually dawned ii|>on liis mind, and Satan's 

 address to the Sun was actually written about, this 

 tim& But the Civil War came, and for long 

 silenced Milton's muse, except for an occasional 

 sonnet. 



It has been much debated whether the world 

 has lost or gained more hy Milton's aWrption in 

 polities. The i| nest ion U somewhat idle: to wish 

 for Milton other than he was is to wish for a 

 MI. 'cession of Comuset rather than a Paradise Lost. 

 No man capable of conceiving such a work as 

 Milton's epic could !" unaffected l>y tin; situation 

 of his country at that tremendous crisis, and with 

 Milton's ]>oetical tcmgicramcnt lively interest in any- 

 thing Minified total occupation hy it for the time. 

 The tracts which he now poured forth are as truly 

 lyiiral inspirations as any of his poems ; hy no 

 means ma-tei pieces of reasoning, hut dithyranihic 

 ecstasies of love or hate. Three apjicarcd in 1G41, 

 two in 1042. All five relate tochnrch government : 

 never was diction so magnificent called forth hy a 

 theme so unpromising. In fact, however, the 

 writer's thoughts are much higher and dee|>er than 

 his subject, and, snipped of what is temporary 

 and accidental in the latter, they appear magni- 

 ficent idealisations of the (MMihuuiM of a tar oil' 

 future, which to Milton seemed ever at the door. 

 The great drawback to their enjoyment at tin- 

 present day is the scurrility of their invective, 

 which passed comparatively unjierceivcd amid the 

 excitement of revolution. 



In Hil.'t Milton's activity as a public writer was 

 diverted into a new channel by private affairs, 

 which, however, he so handled as to render of 

 universal concern. In June of this year, after a 

 very short courtship, he married a young lady, 

 Mary I'owell, daughter of an Oxfordshire squire, 

 previously known to him as a debtor to his father 



for money advanced on mortgage. The bride's 

 family were cavaliers, and she would seem to have 

 licen a> little suited to her hiishnnd in every other 

 res[>ect as by her education and connections. 

 The idealising imagination of the ixH-t must in all 

 prolmbility have lieen at work, and the thoughtless 



I precipitancy of the whole transaction would alone 

 show how greatly in many respects the popular 

 estimate of Milton's character needs revision. The 

 |n)or girl was naturally shocked at the sudden 



| transfer from a jovial country household to the 

 apartments of an austere scholar, whose intellect 

 and clmiactcr she was utterly unable to appreciate, 



i and whose principles lan counter to all her preju- 

 dices. After a few weeks' trial of matrimony she 

 went back to her friends, under a promise, Milton's 

 nephew says, to return at Michaelmas ; hut doubt 

 is cast upon lliis .statement by the fact, discovered 

 by 1'iofessor Masson, that Milton's first tract on 

 divorce was written and printed at the very time of 

 the separation. She ccrlainlv did not, return, and 

 early in the following year Milton put forth another 

 edition of his linrlrnn nm/ IHnri/iline of Divorce, 

 greatly extended, and enriched with erudition and 

 argument. It brought many attacks upon him, 

 mainly from the Presbyterians, from whose views 

 on church and state he had lieen more and more 

 dissociating himself. Ho replied to his opponents 

 in three supplementary pamphlets, and a threat of 

 piosecution by a parliamentary committee, which 

 came to nothing, occasioned the production (Novem- 

 ber 1644) of the most famous of his prose-works, 

 Areojxiijitirn, n SjMzechfur the. liberty of UnttetHMi 

 J'rintni't, which has come to be regarded as almost 

 I he gospel of freedom of speech, and, if less elo- 

 quent than his tracts on church government, 

 nevertheless contains the liest known passages of 

 his prose-writings. It must be remcmliereiV that 

 even here Milton docs not contend against the 

 prosecution of published opinions deemed perni- 

 cious, but merely against the right to forbid publi- 

 cation through the instrumentality of a licenser. 

 A few months previously he had composed and 

 published, at the instance of his friend Samuel 

 Hartlih, a Trartute of Education, of little practical 

 pedagogic value, but full of inspiration and 

 suggestion. 



M ikon was not the man to permit his opinions to 

 remain empty speculations, and in the course of 

 1645 he was taking serious steps towards earning 

 the most obnoxious of them into practice by paying 

 his addresses to ' a very handsome and witty 

 gentlewoman,' when the absent wife thought it 



| time to return. Her repentance may probably have 



j lieen further stimulated by the overthrow of the 

 Itoyalist cause, which had occasioned the total ruin 

 of her family. Conscious, probably, of his own 

 failings in temper and considerateness, Milton did 

 not prove olid u rate; and by September his house, 

 hold was re-established in the Harhican. She 

 further induced him to receive her mother and 

 other members of her Impoverished family, persons 

 whom he had little reason to love, and of whose 

 incompatibility he complains in a letter to an 

 Italian friend. Little else can lie said of her, 

 evept that she brought him three daughters, and 

 died in 1(.V2. He lost tin- father to whom he owed 

 so much in 1647, a year after the fruits of his 

 education and the partial accomplishment of the 

 pui|K>se of his life hail IM-CII manifested in a collected 

 edition of his poetical works, Kngli-h and Latin. 



Dining all this time Milton's calling, apart from 

 his studies and polemics, had been educational ; 

 other pupils, mostly sons of friends, had lieen 

 gradually added to his nephews, and he seemed to 



the world a scl Imasier. lie was now to enter 



public life. The execution of Charles I., .January 

 30, 1C4U, was followed within a fortnight by his 



