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indued with, what prodigies of wit* and learning might they have proved!"†

While Milton was thus engaged in training the mind of youth, and instilling into it principles of piety and virtue, the civil and religious despotism under which men had groaned for years reached its close. The monarch, foiled in his efforts to impose this double yoke on his northern subjects, found it necessary to call a Parliament; and on the 3rd of November, 1640, the Long Parliament met at Westminster. Soon were seen Strafford and Laud, the great upholders of the twin despotism, the one perishing on the block, the other a close prisoner in the Tower. Men now might speak and write without danger; and Milton was one of the first to break the silence. In the early part, as it would appear, of 1641, he published a treatise named Of Reformation in England, and the Causes that hitherto have hindered it; in two books, written to a Friend. In this same year the learned and excellent Hall, Bishop of Norwich, published, at the request of Laud, An humble Remonstrance in favour of Episcopacy; which institution Milton had vigorously assailed. To this an answer was written under the title of Smectymnuus (a word composed out of the initials of their names), by five Puritan ministers. Archbishop Ussher, renowned for learning and integrity, then published in reply, The Apostolical Institution of Episcopacy; and Milton, whose former tutor

*Wit at that time, and perhaps down to the middle of the eighteenth century, retained its original Anglo-Saxon sense of mind, talent, and answered to the French esprit.

† Aubrey says, that in a year's time he made his nephews capable of interpreting a Latin author at sight.

Stephen Marshall, Edward Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spenstow. The w in this last was resolved into two us.

and friend was one of the Smectymnuans, again buckled on his controversial armour, to engage this doughty champion of prelacy. He published in reply to him, first, a treatise Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and then The Reasons of Church Government urged against Episcopacy. Bishop Hall now produced a defence of his Remonstrance in reply to Smectymnuus; on which Milton wrote Animadversions. Such was the state of the controversy at the close of the year 1641. In the following year appeared an anonymous reply to the Animadversions, under the title of A Modest Confutation against a Slanderous and Scurrilous Libel, written, as was generally believed, by a son of Bishop Hall's. As in this As in this very intemperate production Milton's private character was assailed, he took occasion to vindicate it in his reply named An Apology for Smectymnuus. With this the controversy terminated. The question which had occupied it, namely the divine origin and the authority of Episcopacy, had been by this time settled in a somewhat different manner by the Parliament.

We do not conceive ourselves to be called on to enter into this controversy, or to give any opinion on the subject. In learning Ussher, in wit and literary talent Hall, were, in Milton's own opinion, superior to their antagonists, and therefore, he says, he came to their aid. But such controversies are to be decided neither by learning nor by wit; the truth is only to be arrived at by the application of just rules of logic and sound principles of interpretation; things never in much favour with controversialists we must confess, and never less so than at that time, when he who could bring into the field the largest park of book-artillery and of authorities was generally regarded as the victor.

*

Milton thus gives his reasons for engaging in the controversy. "As soon as liberty, at least of speech, began to be conceded, all mouths were opened against the bishops; some complained of the faults of the men, others of those of the order itself, and that we alone differed from all the other Reformed churches, and said that the Church ought to be guided after the example of our brethren, but chiefly after the Word of God. Aroused

at this when I saw the true path to liberty taken, and men proceeding in the best manner from this beginning, with these steps, to free from servitude the whole of human life, if a discipline originating in religion should flow to the manners and institutions of the Commonwealth; when even from my younger days I had so prepared myself that above all things I should not be ignorant of anything relating to divine or human laws, and had asked myself if ever I should be of any use if I were now wanting to my country, nay, rather to the Church and to so many brethren who were exposing themselves to danger for the sake of the Gospel,-I resolved, although I was then meditating some other things, to transfer hither all my mental power and industry."

It would appear that it was toward the end of this year, when the royal forces had advanced to Brentford, that Milton wrote his sonnet "Captain or Colonel," etc.

The year 1643 found Milton at rest from religious controversy, and only occupied with his pupils. We may now therefore suppose him to be revolving in his mind the great poetic work of which he had already given so many intimations, particularly that splendid one in the Apology for Smectymnuus; his daily and

*Defensio Secunda.

nightly thoughts dwelling habitually on the Muses' hill, and thence perhaps at times taking their flight to the highest heaven of heavens, absorbed in dreams of sweet sounds and splendid visions. But, alas for poor human nature! he had at this time ideas of a far more sublunary character, for in this eventful year the quiet gardenhouse in Aldersgate-street was destined to receive a new inmate. "About Whitsuntide," says Phillips," he 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." If we had only this account to guide us, we might say that his marriage was a very precipitate affair indeed, one of those to which the old saying, Marry in haste and repent at leisure," would apply in its full force. But we have reason to suppose that this was by no means the exact state of the case, and that he had long been well-acquainted with the young lady and her family.

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Before we proceed to the consideration of this matter, we must direct the reader's attention to the circumstance of how very little the Civil War seems to have interfered with the relations of social and domestic life. At this time London was the head-quarters of the Parliament, and Oxford those of the King. We might therefore be inclined to regard them as the respective capitals of two belligerent states, between which all civil intercourse had ceased. But not so. We find Milton, a strenuous Parliamentarian, setting out from London as if on a mere country excursion, going through Oxford to the house of

a Royalist, marrying his daughter, remaining there for a month, and then taking her back with him to London, accompanied by many members of her family. Such was the mild and gentle spirit in which that noble civil contest was conducted!*

From the Royalists' Composition Papers, published in 1826, it appears that on the 11th of June, 1627, Richard Powell, of Forest Hill, in the county of Oxford, gent., and William Hearne, of London, citizen and goldsmith, did by their writing or recognizance of the nature of a statute-staple acknowledge themselves to owe unto John Milton, then of the University of Cambridge, gent., son of John Milton, citizen and scrivener of London, the sum of £500, which statute was defeazanced for the payment to John Milton, the son, of £312 on the 12th of December then next ensuing. As Milton was in his nineteenth year at the time, we are to suppose that this sum was intended to defray the expenses of the remainder of his time at the University; and it raises our opinion of his father when we find him thus, to a certain extent, making his son independent of him at that early age. We also learn from this transaction that John Milton, when cast off by his father, did not sever all connection with his native county, from which possibly much of his business came; for the Powells and Mil

* See in our History of England the letter of Sir William Waller to his "noble friend" Sir Ralph Hopton, on the breaking out of the

war.

“Oh, gran bontà de' cavalieri antiqui!

Eran rivali, eran di fe diversi,

E si sentian degli aspri colpi iniqui

Per tutta la persona anco dolersi;

E pur per selve oscure e calli obliqui

Insieme van senza sospetto aversi.”—Orl. Fur. i. 22.

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