THE POPULAR EDUCATOR, 



" Thus Night, oft see me in thy pale career, 

 Till civil-suited Morn appear, 

 Not tricked and frounced as she was wont, 

 With the Attic boy to hunt, 

 But kerchiefed in a comely cloud, 

 While rocking winds are piping loud, 

 Or ushered with a shower still, 

 When the gust hath blown his fill, 

 Ending on the rustling leaves, 

 With minute drops from off the eaves." 



One is tempted to linger over those exquisite poems ; but we 

 must leave them, for we have now to regard Milton in a very 

 different character. When he returned to England, after his 

 short sojourn abroad, it was no longer to enjoy the peaceful 

 repose of the scholar and poet. From henceforth we have to do 

 with him for some years as a prose-writer, one of the most 

 eager and most bitter combatants in the controversies which 

 then stirred men so profoundly. Milton's sympathies as a 

 Puritan would naturally have been on the side of the Parlia- 

 ment and against the King, on the side of the Nonconformists 

 and against the bishops. But Milton was no mere partisan 

 of any of these causes. He was the champion of liberty 

 liberty of thought, liberty of speech, liberty of worship, liberty 

 of action. Liberty was the passion of his life. " Liberty's de- 

 fence, my noble task," was his work in life. He resisted the 

 dogmatism of the "new presbyter" as strongly as of the "old 

 priest;" and resented the intolerance of popular opinion as 

 keenly as that of the State. 



We cannot examine Milton's prose writings in any detail ; 

 but the student ought to understand something of their general 

 character, and we treat of them now a? a class because most 

 of them belong to this period, though several are of a later 

 date. The greater part of them relate to three great sub- 

 jects of controversy, in which Milton took an active part 

 the controversy as to Church government ; iiiat as to divorce ; 

 and that as to the right or wrong of putting the king to death. 

 In the first of these controversies he engaged almost imme- 

 diately after his return from abroad. Several Presbyterian 

 ministers had published a treatise bearing upon Church govern- 

 ment, under the title of Smectymnus, a name formed from the 

 initial letters of their own names ; and in the controversy which 

 insued, Milton fought eagerly in their defence and against epis- 

 copacy, his chief antagonists being Archbishop Usher and Bishop 

 Bramhall. 



Into the divorce controversy Milton was led through the cir- 

 Dumstances of his own domestic history. His first wife was 

 Mary Powell : their marriage was an unhappy one ; and at last 

 the lady left her husband and returned to her father, and only 

 came back to her home when it was plain that Milton thought of 

 acting upon those very liberal views as to the liberty of divorce 

 and re-marriage which he consistently maintained. 



In the third main controversy in which Milton engaged he 

 appeared as the champion of the people of England, to defend 

 their conduct in putting Charles I. to death ; his chief opponent 

 being the celebrated scholar La Saumaise, or, in the Latinised 

 form, Salmasius. 



These controversial labours, however, by no means represent 

 the whole fruits of Milton's labours during this period of his 

 life. For some years after his return to England he supported 

 himself by keeping a school for boys in London. In 1649 he 

 was appointed to the important office of Latin secretary to 

 Cromwell, and in this capacity conducted the diplomatic corre- 

 spondence of the Commonwealth. 



There still remain a few isolated prose works of Milton, not 

 relating to any of the great controversies of the clay, which 

 must not pass unnoticed. The most important of these are, an 

 unfinished " History of England," a Tractate or treatise on 

 Education, aud especially the " Areopagitica," a speech for the 

 liberty of unlicensed printing. This last is the greatest of 

 Milton's prose works, and one which every student of English 

 literature ought to study, for it exhibits the characteristics of 

 his style in a peculiar degree. That style is always dignified, 

 always rhythmical, though sometimes a little unwieldy and 

 above his subject. But its great peculiarity is the occurrence, 

 from time to time, of bursts of eloquence which no English writer 

 has ever equalled. We can only give two examples : 



" Truth indeed came once into the world, with her divine Master, 

 ind was a perfect shape most glorious to look on; but when He 

 asoen^od, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight 



arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as the story goes of the 

 Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the 

 good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a 

 thousand pieces, and scattered them' to the four winds. From that 

 time, ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imi- 

 tating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, 

 went up and down, gathering up limb by limb still as they could find 

 them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor 

 ever shall do, till her Master's second coming; He shall bring together 

 every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal 

 feature of loveliness and perfection." 



The other passage we give refers to the national revival of 

 thought and liberty in which Milton bore so great a part : 



" Metliinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation, rousing 

 herself like a strong man after sleep, shaking her invincible locks ; 

 methinks I see her as an eagle, muing her mighty youth, and kin- 

 dling her undazzled eyes at the full mid-day beam ; purging and 

 unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly 

 radiance." 



LESSONS IN FRENCH. LXXXII. 



114. USE OP THE TENSES. THE PBESENT OP THE 

 INDICATIVE. 



(1.) THIS tense denotes what exists, or is taking place at the 

 time we speak : 



Je lis ; vous parlez. | I read you speak. 



(2.) The French have only one form of the indicative 

 present : 



Je parle means, therefore, J speak, do speak, or am speaking. 



(3.) The indicative present is used in French, as well as in 

 English, for expressing ideas or facts which are and will always 

 be true : 



Dieu est eternel, sa puissance 

 est sans bornes, et sa cldmence 

 est grande. GIRAULT DUVIVIEE. 



God is eternal, his power is bound- 

 less, aocl Uis clemency is great. 



(4.) It is often used to express a proximate future : 



Je SUis de retour dans un mo- 

 ment. MOLIERE. 



Si Titus a parte, s'il 1'epouse, 

 jo pars. RACINE. 



I shall le lack in a moment. 



If Titus has spoken, if he marries 

 her, I go (mil go). 



(5.) The present is frequently used for the past, to awaken 

 attention, and place the event, as it were, before the reader : 



I saw, my lord, I saw your unfor- 

 tunate son dragged by the horses 

 which his ovm hand has fed ; he 

 wishes to recall them, but Jits voice 

 frightens them. 



J'ai vu, Seigneur, j'ai vu votre 



malheureux fils, 

 Traine par les chevaux que sa main 



a nourris : 

 II veut les rappeler, mais sa voix 



les effraie. RACINE. 



115. THE IMPERFECT. 



(1.) The imperfect, or simultaneous past, is used to express 

 something which was in progress while another thing was taking 

 place. It leaves the beginning, duration, and end of an action 

 undetermined : 



J'e"crivais, quand je recus votre I I was writing, when I received your 

 lettre. | letter. 



(2.) The French imperfect, as may be seen in the above 

 example, represents the English tense formed of the past tense 

 of the auxiliary to be, and the participle present of a leading 

 verb. 



(3.) The imperfect is also used to express repeated or cus- 

 tomary action. It is then rendered in English by the infinitive 

 of the verb preceded by used to : 



Lorsque j'etais a Londres, 

 j'allais me promener le matin, 



eusuito je dlnais, et je passais le 

 reste de la journe'e a lire et a 

 e"crire. 



When I was in London, I walked 

 (used to walk) in the morning, after- 

 wards dined (usually dined), and 

 spent (usually) the remainder of the 

 \ day in reading and writing. 



(4.) The use of this tense will be further explained in the 

 next paragraph. 



