"with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out "his Seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, "to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. "To this must be added, industrious and select "reading, steady observation, and insight into all "seemly and generous arts and affairs; till which "in some measure be compast, I refuse not to sus"tain this expectation," From a promise like this, at once fervid, pious, and rational, might be expected the Paradise Lost.

He published the same year two more pamphlets, upon the same question. To one of his antagonists, who affirms that he was vomited out of the University, he answers, in general terms: "The "Fellows of the College wherein I spent some 66 years, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many times "how much better it would content them that I should stay.-As for the common approbation

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or dislike of that place, as now it is, that I "should esteem or disesteem myself the more for "that, too simple is the answerer, if he think to "obtain with me. Of small practice were the

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physician who could not judge, by what she and "her sister have of long time vomited, that the "worser stuff she strongly keeps in her stomach, "but the better she is ever kecking at, and is 66 queasy; she vomits now out of sickness; but "before it will be well with her, she must vomit "by strong physick. The university, in the time "of her better health, and my younger judgment, "I never greatly admired, but now much less."

This is surely the language of a man who thinks that he has been injured. He proceeds to describe

the course of his conduct, and the train of his thoughts; and, because he has been suspected of incontinence, gives an account of his own purity; "That if I be justly charged," says he, "with "this crime, it may come upon me with tenfold "shame."

The style of his piece is rough, and such perhaps was that of his antagonist. This roughness he justifies, by great examples, in a long digression. Sometimes he tries to be humourous : "Lest I should take him for some chaplain in "hand, some squire of the body to his prelate, one "who serves not at the altar only, but at the Court" cupboard, he will bestow on us a pretty model of "himself; and sets me out half a dozen ptisical "mottoes, wherever he had them, hopping short "in the measure of convulsion fits; in which la"bour the agony of his wit having escaped nar"rowly, instead of well-sized periods, he greets us "with a quantity of thumb-ring poesies.-And "thus ends this section, or rather dissection of "himself."-Such is the controversial merriment of Milton; his gloomy seriousness is yet more offensive. Such is his malignity, that hell grows darker at his frown.

His father, after Reading was taken by Essex, came to reside in his house; and his school increased. At Whitsuntide, in his thirty-fifth year, he married Mary, the daughter of Mr Powel, a justice of the peace in Oxfordshire. He brought her to town with him, and expected all the advantages of a conjugal life. The lady, however, seems not much to have delighted in the pleasures of spare diet and hard study; for, as Philips relates,

"having for a month led a philosophick life, after "having been used at home to a great house, and "much company and joviality, her friends, possibly "by her own desire, made earnest suit to have her company the remaining part of the summer; "which was granted, upon a promise of her re"turn at Michaelmas."

Milton was too busy to much miss his wife; he pursued his studies; and now and then visited the Lady Margaret Leigh, whom he has mentioned in one of his sonnets. At last Michaelmas arrived; but the lady had no inclination to return to the sullen gloom of her husband's habitation, and therefore very willingly forgot her promise. He sent her a letter, but had no answer: he sent more with the same success. It could be alledged that letters miscarry; he therefore dispatched a messenger, being by this time too angry to go himself. His messenger was sent back with some contempt. The family of the lady were Cavaliers.

In a man whose opinion of his own merit was like Milton's, less provocation than this might have raised violent resentment. Milton soon determined to repudiate her for disobedience; and, being one of those who could easily find arguments to justify nclination, published (in 1644) The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; which was followed by The Judgment of Martin Bucer, concerning Divorce; and the next year, his Tetrachordon, Expositions upon the four chief Places of Scripture which treat of Marriage.

This, innovation was opposed, as might be expected, by the clergy, who, then holding their famous assembly at Westminster, procured that the

author should be called before the Lords; "but "that house," says Wood, "whether approving "the doctrine, or not favouring his accusers, did

soon dismiss him."

There seems not to have been much written against him, nor any thing by any writer of eminence. The antagonist that appeared is styled by him, A Serving-Man turned Solicitor. Howel, in his Letters, mentions the new doctrine with contempt; and it was, I suppose, thought more worthy of derision than of confutation. He complains of this neglect in two sonnets, of which the first is contemptible, and the second not excellent.

From this time it is observed, that he became an enemy to the Presbyterians, whom he had favoured before. He that changes his party by his hu mour is not more virtuous than he that changes it by his interest; he loves himself rather than truth.

His wife and her relations now found that Milton was not an unresisting sufferer of injuries; and perceiving that he had begun to put his doctrine in practice, by courting a young woman of great accomplishments, the daughter of one Doctor Davis, who was however not ready to comply, they resolved to endeavour a re-union. He went sometimes to the house of one Blackborough, his relation, in the lane of St Martin's-le-Grand, and at one of his usual visits was surprized to see his wife come from another room, and implore forgiveness on her knees. He resisted her entreaties for a while : "bu: partly," says Philips, ❝ his own 66 generous nature, more inclinable to reconcilia"tion than to perseverance in anger or revenge, "and partly the strong intercession of friends on

"both sides, soon brought him to an act of obli"vion and a firm league of peace.' "" It were injurious to omit, that Milton afterwards received her father and her brothers in his own house, when they were distressed, with other Royalists.

He published about the same time his Ariopagitica, a Speech of Mr John Milton for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing. The danger of such unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of government, which human understanding seems hitherto unable to solve. If nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must always be the standard of truth: if dreamer of innovations may propagate his every projects, there can be no settlement; if every murmurer at government may diffuse discontent, there can be no peace; and if every sceptic in theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The remedy against these evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed that every society may punish, though not prevent, the publication of opinions which that society shall think pernicious; but this punishment, though it may crush the author, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.

But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestick, poetry was never long out of his thoughts. About this time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems appeared, in which the