448 
JOURNAL OP THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
THE PROSE WRITINGS OF JOHN MILTON. 
ABSTRACT OF MR. W. HARVEY'S PAPER. 
(Read November 18th, 1875.) 
The lecturer referred in the first instance to the comparative dis- 
regard of Milton's prose works. Milton became a politician and 
controversialist rather from the excited feeling and great events of 
his period than from any inherent love of such topics. 
Milton's college career and early manhood evinced his lofty 
genius, and on many occasions his uncompromising independence, 
while glimpses of a tendency to the Puritanical sternness of his 
after life are not wanting. 
The college themes which have been preserved are interesting, 
not only for their great merit, but that many thoughts are ger- 
minated there which are expanded in fuller vitality in "17 Allegro," 
" Comus," and "Lycidas." Milton now became drawn into the 
fierce ecclesiastical controversy of the period, and placed himself 
at one bound at the head of the anti-episcopal party. His great 
research, learning, and acquirements, probably superior to that of 
any man of his day, were all thrown into whatever he wrote. 
His onslaught on the bishops was continued by several successive 
treatises. 
The whole nation were at this time aroused in the great struggle 
for religious and political liberty. 
The narrow tyranny of Laud, the ill-advised and vacillating 
despotism of Charles, had produced their natural results : they had 
sown the storm and reaped the whirlwind. At this time Milton had 
the misfortune to form an unhappy marriage ; this and the deser- 
tion of his wife led him to write freely on the whole question of 
marriage and divorce. His divorce treatises, although full of vigour, 
are the least palatable of his writings, and throughout the whole 
of them we may see traces of the individual smart which led to 
their appearance. 
