JOHN MILTON 63 
defective. Blindness had come on in his forty-fourth 
year, and it was now confessed to be incurable. The 
appearance of his eyes had not changed, but all sight 
was gone. He was then beginning to work steadily 
upon “ Paradise Lost.” 
In two years more came Charles II., and then the 
headsman’s axe was busy. Milton had to hide for his 
life, but was arrested and kept for several weeks in 
prison. While there, he could hear the dismal story 
of friends and companions beheaded and quartered. 
In that cruel time how did the man escape who had 
been the mouthpiece of the rebel government? When 
even the lifeless body of Cromwell was taken from the 
grave and hung on the gallows at Tyburn, what mercy 
could be hoped for the man who defended the regicides 
before all Europe? Professor Masson tells in detail 
how skilfully the affair was managed, when the least 
slip would have sent Milton to the scaffold. My own 
ympression is that Clarendon, himself a scholar and 
historian, could not quite bear to see England’s great- 
est scholar put toa shocking death. But if Milton had 
not been blind and helpless, I doubt if anything would 
have saved him from the fate of Sir Henry Vane. 
After his release Milton lived the remaining fourteen 
years of his life in London. His third wife, to whom 
he was married in 1663, survived him for many years. 
Their life seems to have been happy. The blind man 
needed constant help in his literary work. Sometimes 
young men would gladly come and serve as readers 
and scribes for the sake of his society and talk; some- 
times his grown-up daughters were pressed into the 
work. The eldest went scot-free because she stam- 
mered; but Mary and Dorothy were taught the Greek 
