MEMOIR.

xxix to put down the revolution in its infancy; the latter, branding heretics in the cheek, shipping off Puritans in shoals to the plantations, and dragooning the clergy into submission. Prynne, Lilburne, and a host of others, were imprisoned in the Tower, or undergoing horrible mutilations in the pillory. Hampden was defending the rights of the parliament and people of England, in Westminster Hall. The Star Chamber and High Commission Court were in full swing, confiscating, imprisoning, transporting, cutting off the ears and noses of stubborn recusants. Scotland was in a ferment, from Berwick to John o' Groats, signing the Covenant, or rising in arms to resist the insane attempt to force prelacy upon them. Milton was preparing to pass over into Sicily and Greece, but he says, "I thought it base to be travelling for my amusement abroad when my fellow citizens were fighting for liberty at home." That it was with profound regret that he abandoned the refined society of Italy, its courts thronged with scholars, artists, and poets, to plunge into the rude violence of our English rebellion, we may be well assured. He repeatedly laments the necessity which was laid upon him, as he felt himself "forced to interrupt the pursuit of my hopes, and to leave a calm and pleasing retirement, fed with cheerful and confiding thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes; called off from beholding the bright countenance of Truth, in the quiet and still air of delightful studies. For surely to every good and peaceful man it must needs be a hateful thing to be the molester and displeaser of thousands: much better would it please him to be the messenger of gladness and content. But when God commands him to put the trumpet to his lips, and

blow a dolorous or a jarring blast, it lies not in man's will what he shall say or what he shall conceal." In another place he expresses his regret at having to abandon for a time his poetical and historical studies; to postpone yet further his noble ambition to produce some epic or drama of immortal and world-wide fame; and to devote himself to prose composition, in which, he says, "Knowing myself to be inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account, but of my left hand." How far his prose compositions deserved these disparaging references, the following selections from them may help the reader to judge.

On his return to England, in the autumn of 1639, he took up his abode in London, hiring a lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard, Fleet Street, subsequently removing into Aldersgate Street, for the sake of more ample accommodation. Here he received as pupils his two nephews, John and Edward Philips, the one nine, the other ten years old; to whom some other pupils were afterwards added. He now put in practice those theories of education which he afterwards developed in his tractate on the subject. We are told that in a year's time his nephews could interpret a Latin author at sight, and a formidable list is given of Greek and Latin writers which were read by his pupils between ten and fifteen years of age. In questions of this kind, it is difficult to arrive at the exact truth. A translation which would be accepted as adequate by one examiner, would be rejected as faulty by another. There are likewise many collateral circumstances to be taken into account, such as the capability of the scholars and the previous educational advantages they had enjoyed. The remarks of Johnson, though marked

by his characteristic spitefulness wherever Milton was concerned, are not without force.

"Those who tell or receive these stories should consider, that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The speed of the horseman must be limited by the power of the horse. Every man that has ever undertaken to instruct others can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd misapprehension."

Still, after having made all due allowance for possible exaggeration, it is evident that the progress of Milton's pupils was remarkably rapid, and that his educational theories stood the test of experiment.

In his letters to his friends, Milton had at a very early period intimated the hope that he might, at some future day, produce a great poem which "the world would not willingly let die." The consciousness of power which these words imply grew stronger with his years, and at length assumed the form of a settled purpose. It was with this end in view that he had prosecuted his preliminary studies with such unwearied diligence, and it was to fit himself yet more fully for the task that he undertook his journey to the south of Europe. But the same cause which made him hasten home, led him to postpone it for a time. How reluctantly, and under how stern a compulsion from a sense of duty he did so, may be seen in the passages from his prose writings already quoted, and in many others which will be found in the following pages. Whilst his fellow-citizens were fighting the battle of liberty in the field and the council-chamber, he, in the closet, was even more effectually serving their common cause. During the next twenty years (1640

to 1660) he published in rapid succession a series of controversial tracts, the learning, eloquence, and power of which have seldom been approached, never surpassed. In the introduction to each of these treatises, the circumstances which elicited it are narrated, and an analysis of the treatise itself given. It will not be necessary, therefore, to do more than to mention them here. He returned home in July or August, 1639, and early in 1641 the first of his prose writings appeared, entitled, Of Reformation in England, and the Causes that hitherto have hindered it.* This was followed in the same year by Prelatical Episcopacy,† The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty, Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence,§ and An Apology for Smectymnuus.|| Heavier blows were never dealt against tyranny and priestcraft than by these treatises. Each of them was worth more than a regiment of soldiers in the conflict then impending; and each contains passages of permanent value, as distinctly prophetic of Paradise Lost, so Coleridge says, as the red clouds of dawn are of the rising sun. It is marvellous that Johnson, with these treatises before him, could have written :—

+

"Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree of merriment on great promises and small performance; on the man who hastens home because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and when he reaches the scene of performance vapours away his patriotism in a private boarding school."

It is even more marvellous that so many of Milton's biographers should not have known how to reply to Johnson's sneer.

* Page 1. Page 30. + Page 34. § Page 65. | Page 66.

The story of Milton's unhappy marriage shall be told in the words of his nephew Philips :

*

"About Whitsuntide (1643) it was, or a little after, that he took his journey into the country, nobody about him certainly knowing the reason, or that it was any more than a journey of recreation. After a month's stay, home he returns a married man that went forth a bachelor; his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr. Richard Powell, then a justice of the peace, of Forest Hill, near Shotover, Oxfordshire; some few of her nearest friends accompanying the bride to her new habitation, which by the reason the father nor anybody else were yet come, was able to receive them; where the feasting was held for some days, in celebration of the nuptials and for entertainment of the bride's friends. At length they took their leave, and returning to Forest Hill, left the sister behind; probably not much to her satisfaction, as appeared by the sequel. By the time she had for a month, or thereabouts, led a philosophical life, after being used to a great house and much company and joviality, her friends, probably incited by her own desire, made earnest suit by letter to have her company the remaining part of the summer, which was granted on condition of her return by Michaelmas or thereabouts."

To this statement it may be added that there had evidently been some connection between the families at a much earlier date. Powell was a ruined spendthrift, and so early as 1627 the elder Milton, who, it will be remembered, belonged to an ancient Oxfordshire family, had advanced to him the sum of £500, on mortgage. As was the case with so many of the

* Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire, being ravaged by the civil war at this period, Milton's father, perhaps too his brother Christopher and family, took up their abode in his house in the course of this year.