language in which Milton almost uniformly speaks of "bishops" is a singular illustration of the times. They are a tyrannical crew, and corporation of impostors that have blinded and abused the world so long." Their mouths cannot open without the strong breath and loud stench of avarice, simony, and sacrilege, embezzling the treasury of the Church on painted and gilded walls of temples, wherein God hath testified to have no delight; warming their palace kitchens, and from thence their unctuous and epicurean paunches, with the alms of the blind, the lame, the impotent, the aged, the orphan, the widow." Their supposed greed and gluttony is a special and constantly recurring subject of attack. ‡ "What a plump endowment," he says, "would brotherly equality, matchless temperance, frequent fasting, incessant prayer and preaching, be to the many-benefice-gaping mouth of a prelate! what a relish it would give to his canary-sucking and swaneating palate !"S "A race of Capernaïtans," he elsewhere exclaims, "senseless of divine doctrine, and capable only of loaves and belly-cheer! " || "A man shall commonly find more savoury knowledge in one layman than in a dozen of cathedral prelates."

This coarse vehemence of tone, wherever the image of well-endowed Prelacy crosses his argument, can only be understood or at all excused when we remember that it was Prelacy that seemed to Milton, more than anything else, to have "filled the land with confusion. and violence." The Laudian bishops seemed to him *Of Reformation, book i. +Ibid.

It is remarkable how constantly this line of attack runs through the anti-Episcopal polemics of the seventeenth century. Some of the expressions in which it is conveyed, in the Scottish Presbyterian writings, are equally ludicrous and nauseous in their plainness and strength. Animadversions, &c.

§ Of Reformation, book i,

all that he painted them. The institution with which they were identified looked to his eyes a mere "tyrannical duncery," a mere "tetter of impurity," without ancient dignity or catholic beauty. Calvin does not take a more extremely polemical view of the rise of Catholicism, or manifest more incapacity in appreciating the circumstances of its historical growth, and its conservative fitness for great practical ends. He can only see fraud, avarice, faithless and tyrannical ambition, in the picture which history brings before him. The dogmatic present obscured all fair and discerning appreciation of the Catholic past. In this respect Milton was a Puritan, scarcely, if at all, above the popular level of his age. The same spirit shows itself in his scornful contempt of the Liturgy, and his abuse of what he calls "Antiquity,"-the Patristic writings, namely, of the fourth and fifth century. The one still "serves to all the abominations of the antiChristian temple," and "while some men cease not to admire its incomparable frame, he cannot but admire as fast what they think is become of judgment and taste in other men, that they can hope to be heard without laughter;"+ the other is an "undigested heap and fry of authors." "Whatsoever time, or the heedless hand of blind chance, hath drawn down from of old to this present in her huge drag-net, whether fish or seaweed, shells or shrubs, unpicked, unchosen, those are the fathers."

In all this Milton shows that while he had imbibed the moral spirit and Christian earnestness of Puritanism, he had also learned its dogmatic narrowness. The reaction against Laudism had driven him to an excess

*Institutes, book iv. cap. 6, 7.

+ Apology for Smectymnuus, sect. xi.

Of Prelatical Episcopacy.

of opinionativeness, and of passionate and resentful feeling on the other side. He had lost the balance of candid judgment on the great topics in dispute: few men had it in his day. In knowledge and argumentative clearness he must be placed below such men as Usher or even Hall. There is a wild unfairness in him that provokes sympathy for his opponents, and which is felt to be but ill sustained by his irregular and loosely-compacted masses of argument. Yet there is also in his very unfairness a strength of moral indignation, and crowning his most straggling reasonings a light of principle, that carries him into higher regions of discussion than any of his contemporary controversialists.

The Apology for Smectymnuus closed the series; and an important incident of his life requires to be narrated before we can understand the origin and character of the second phase of his controversial career.

Milton had now attained his thirty-fifth year, and save his passion for the fair unknown Bolognese, his heart had remained untouched-so far as is clearly known. There is no evidence that he was now seized with any sudden and romantic passion: all the circumstances of the case rather seem to show the contrary. The fact is, that in his new mode of life he felt the want of some one to assist him in his household cares and duties; and this probably more than anything else suggested the thought of marriage to him. It is a poor ideal of a poet's marriage, but it is the one that most exactly suits the circumstances. All that is really known is, that "about Whitsuntide of the year 1643, Milton took a journey into the country, nobody about him certainly knowing the reason, or that it was more than a journey of recreation. After a month's stay, home he returns a married man who set out a

*

bachelor-his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr Richard Powell, then a Justice of the Peace, of Forest Hill, near Shotover, in Oxfordshire." Such is the statement of his nephew Phillips; and none of his biographers have been able to add any clearly ascertained details to the story, however ingeniously and happily it may have been filled up by the pleasant conjectures of the authoress of The Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell. There is reason, indeed, to believe that he had some previous acquaintance with the Powells. This is suggested by the story itself, as well as by the discovery of certain pecuniary relations long pending between the families. † The Miltons, it will be remembered, came from this very district. It is very probable, therefore, that Milton's unexplained journey about Whitsunday 1643, was by no

* Mr Masson has not yet reached this stage of his task, and his power of research may throw some clearer light upon the story.

The researches of Mr Keightley have discovered that a loan of £500 had been made by Milton's father, in his son's behalf, to Mr Powell. So far back as the year 1627, the third year of his university course, this debt is found to have been contracted to Milton by his future father-inlaw. In whatever way we explain this circumstance-even if we suppose it to have been a pure business transaction on the part of the scrivener with one who, belonging to his native district, had naturally applied to him for the money-it serves as a point of connection between the families. Milton could not help feeling some interest in a family, the head of which stood indebted to him in such a sum, especially as it is evident that difficulties arose regarding the payment of the debt. We can well imagine, therefore, that the journey into Oxfordshire in 1643 was by no means Milton's first visit to the Powells. We may even suppose, with Mr Keightley, that, while staying at Horton, he had "taken many a ride over to Forest Hill, and that on his return from the Continent he may have gone down more than once to try to get his money." Setting up house, as he then was, the money must have been an object to him, and such occasional journeys to Forest Hill seem exceedingly natural in the circumstances. The attachment may have thus grown up more gradually than has been supposed. On such visits he may have seen and admired Mary Powell, and, forgetful of the debt, courted and won the daughter.

means his first visit to "Forest Hill, near Shotover." But, whether it was so or not, there is too good reason to conclude that his courtship and marriage were hasty and ill-considered.

Mrs Milton had scarcely settled in her new residence when she returned on a visit to her parents, and, notwithstanding her husband's entreaties, refused again to leave them. Michaelmas, when she promised to be back, came, but she remained at home; her husband's letters remained unanswered; and a special messenger, at length despatched by him to escort her back, was dismissed with "contumelious treatment." Such are the well-known facts of this unhappy affair in our poet's life. Into these bare facts we must read the best meaning we can.

Incompatibility of temper and character is the natural explanation, and the one suggested by Milton's own allusions to the subject. A young girl, the daughter of a devoted royalist family, married on a sudden to one whom, at the best, she had more learned to respect than to love-transported from the happy country, and a romping household of eight children, where, Aubrey tells us, there was a "great deal of company and merriment, as dancing," &c., to the dull and studious retirement of Aldersgate Street, where "no company came to her, and she often heard her nephew cry and be beaten ;" it is easy to understand how rapidly the elements of incompatibility might develop themselves in such a combination of circumstances. It was a sufficiently harsh change for the young wife, and it would have required a character of more firmness and elevation than she seems to have possessed to resist the depressing influences of the change, and to adapt herself to her new duties.