ee 
JOHN MILTON 57 
tention of visiting Greece, and turn homeward. The 
day of reckoning, which he had foretold in “ Lycidas,” 
was at hand. Civil war was coming, and he felt that 
his country needed him. The date of his return home 
is fixed by that of his halt at Geneva. An Italian 
nobleman, driven from home for heresy, was living in 
the Swiss city, and the ladies of his family kept an 
album of autographs, in which, on June 10, 1639, Mil- 
ton wrote his name with the sentiment from “ Comus ”: 
“Tf Virtue feeble were, 
Heaven itself would stoop to her.” 
In recent times this album came into the possession 
of Charles Sumner, and it may now be seen at Har- 
vard College Library. It contains also the autograph 
of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford. 
The mention of this name brings us to the work 
which began to absorb Milton’s time and strength 
soon after his return to England. We have not time 
enough for many details of it, nor is it worth our while 
to follow the poet in his various changes of domicile. 
The days in the earthly paradise of Horton were over, 
and he was to dwell henceforth in London, and fight 
for his ideal of liberty and good government. Soon 
after the opening of the Long Parliament, his inter- 
est in Church reforms led him to begin writing those 
remarkable political pamphlets in which he did such 
valiant service to the Puritan party. In the first 
series of such pamphlets, published in 1641, he at- 
tacked what he called “ Prelacy,” or the undue author- 
ity of priests and bishops. Opposed to the tyrannical 
policy of Archbishop Laud were two parties, one of 
moderate reformers, the other of Root-and-Branch 
