822 



MILTON. 



hi-r expression of penitence, he not only received 

 again with affection, but also took her parents and 

 brothers, in the most generous manner, into his own 

 house. He continued to employ his pen on public 

 topics, and, in 1044, published his celebrated Trac- 

 tate on Education. The Presbyterians, then in 

 power, having continued the subsisting restraints 

 upon tin- press, he also printed, in the same year, his 

 Areopagitica, a Speech tor the Liberty of Unlicensed 

 Printing, a spirited and energetic defence of a free 

 press. In 1645, he published his juvenile poems, in 

 Latin and English, including, for the first time, the 

 Allegro and Penseroso. Milton's notion of the 

 origin and end of government carried him to a full 

 approbation of the trial and execution of Charles I., 

 which he sought to justify in a tract, entitled the 

 Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Even in the title- 

 page he asserts the right to put " a tyrant or wicked 

 king " to death on due conviction, " by any who 

 possess the power," should the ordinary magistrates 

 have no means to do so. He further employed his 

 pen in the same cause by the composition of a His- 

 tory of England, of which, however, he had only 

 completed six books, when he was interrupted, by 

 being nominated Latin secretary to the new council 

 of state. He had scarcely accepted the appointment, 

 when he was requested to answer the famous book, 

 attributed to Charles I., entitled Icon Basilike. This 

 task he accomplished in a work, which he called 

 Iconoclastes, or the Image-breaker, which is consi- 

 dered by many writers as one of the ablest of his 

 political tracts. His celebrated controversy with 

 Salmasius soon after followed, which originated in 

 the latter's defence of Charles I., and of monarchs, 

 under the title of Defensio Regis, written at the 

 instigation of the exiled Charles II. Milton entitles 

 his reply, Defensio pro Populo Anglicano. It was 

 published in 1651, and though tainted with party 

 virulence and the discreditable personal acrimony 

 which distinguished the controversies of the times, 

 exhibits a strain of fervid eloquence, which com- 

 pletely overwhelmed the great but inadequate powers 

 of his opponent. He acquired by this production a 

 high reputation both at home and abroad, and was 

 visited on the occasion by all the foreign ambassadors 

 then in London ; he also received from the govern- 

 ment a present of ;1000. He, however, bought this 

 triumph dear, as an affection of the eyes, previously 

 produced by intense study, terminated, as his physi- 

 cians predicted, by an irremediable gutta serena,o\v\ng 

 to his exertions on this occasion. It is unnecessary to 

 observe how nobly and feelingly he has alluded to 

 his blindness in more than one passage of his exalted 

 poetry. His loss of sight did not, however, impede 

 his facility of composition, and in 1652 he wrote a 

 second Defence of the People of England, against an 

 attack by Du Moulin, under the name of More, similar 

 to that of Salmasius. In 1652, Milton lost his wife, 

 who had born him three daughters, and soon after 

 married another, who died in childbed the same year. 

 To divert his grief for this loss, he resumed his His- 

 tory of England, and also made some progress in a 

 Latin dictionary, and still composed much of the 

 Latin correspondence of his office. On the death of 

 Cromwell, he employed his pen with great alacrity 

 to check the increasing feeling in favour of the 

 restoration. On the restoration, Milton took refuge 

 for some time in the house of a friend. His Defences 

 of the People and Iconoclastes were callsd in, and 

 ordered to be burned ; but the author was reported to 

 have absconded ; and in the act of indemnity which 

 followed, his name formed no exception. He appears, 

 however, to have been some time in the custody of 

 the sergeant-at-arms, but was at length discharged, 

 ns it is said, owing to the friendly interposition of 



Sir William Davenant, who had received similar 

 kind offices from Milton, when endangered by his 

 adherence to the royal cause. In reduced circum- 

 stances, and under the discountenance of power, he 

 now removed to a private residence, near his former 

 house in the city, and, his infirmity requiring female 

 aid, was led, in his fifty-fourth year, to take, as a 

 third wife, Elizabeth Minshull. He now resumed 

 the poetical studies which he had for some years 

 laid aside, and, left in repose to meditate upon the 

 lofty ideas that filled his mind, produced his im- 

 mortal Paradise Lost, which was finished in 1665, 

 and first printed in 1667, in a small 4to. The sum 

 which he obtained for it was five pounds, with a con- 

 tingency of fifteen dependent upon the sale of two 

 more impressions, the copyright, however, remaining 

 his own. Paradise Lost long struggled with bad 

 taste and political prejudices, before it took a secure 

 place among the few productions of the human mind 

 which continually rise in estimation, and are un- 

 limited by time or place. In 1670, appeared his 

 Paradise Regained, which he is said to have pre- 

 ferred to its predecessor. With Paradise Regained, 

 appeared the tragedy of Samson Agonistes, composed 

 upon the ancient model, and abounding in moral and 

 descriptive beauties, but exhibiting little pure dra- 

 matic talent, either in the development of plot or 

 delineation of character, and never intended for the 

 stage. In 1672, he composed a system of logic, 

 after the manner of Ramus ; and the following year 

 again entered the field of polemics, with a Treatise 

 of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and 

 the best Means of Preventing the Growth of Popery. 

 A publication of his familiar epistles, in Latin, and 

 of some academical exercises, occupied the last year 

 of his life, which repeated fits of the gout were now 

 rapidly bringing to a close. He sank tranquilly 

 under an exhaustion of the vital powers in Novem- 

 ber, 1674, when he had nearly completed his sixty - 

 sixth year. His remains, with a numerous and 

 splendid attendance, were interred in the church of 

 Cripplegate, where the elder Samuel Whitbread has 

 erected a monument to his memory. Dr Sprat, 

 bishop of Rochester, as dean of Westminster, denied 

 him a monument in the abbey, where, however, in 

 1737, one was erected to his memory by auditor 

 Benson. 



Milton %vas distinguished in his youth for personal 

 beauty ; his habits of life were those of a student 

 and philosopher, being strictly sober and temperate > 

 his chief relaxations consisted of music and conversa- 

 tion. His temper was serene and cheerful ; and 

 although warm and acrimonious in controversy, he 

 appears to have indulged no private enmities, and to 

 have been civil and urbane in the ordinary inter- 

 course of society. Of the sublimity of the genius, 

 and the depth and variety of the learning of Milton, 

 there can be no difference of opinion ; and in respect 

 to the first, his own countrymen, at least, will 

 scarcely admit that he has ever been equalled. 

 Had he never even written Paradise Lost, his Al- 

 legro, Penseroso, and Comus, must have stamped 

 him a poet in the most elevated sense of the word. 

 In his prose writings his spirit and vigour are also 

 striking, and his style, although sometimes harsh and 

 uncouth, is pregnant with energy and imagination. 

 Moving in the ranks of party himself, no man's fame 

 has been more rancorously attacked than that of 

 Milton, by political animosity ; but after all the 

 deductions it has been able to make, as a man of 

 geniuS he will ever rank among the chief glories of 

 the English nation. 



The best editions of the poetical works of Milton 

 are those of Newton, Hawkins and Todd (6 vols., 

 8vo, with his life in one volume). His prose works 



