holding it; the second is concerned with objections and their answers, and makes much use of the Bible. This work substantially gives Milton's theory; the succeeding works amplify, explain, and develop what is laid down in it, but they can hardly be said to modify, and certainly not to contradict, its principles. The work next in order, The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce, appeared in July, 1644. Milton himself contributed a preface, headed To the Parliament, and a Postscript, but the body of the piece consists of chapters translated by Milton from the Second Book of Bucer's De Regno Christi1. Milton tells us in his preface that he found himself in complete agreement with Bucer, and published the translation to support what he had previously written. Hence it is proper to regard the opinions expressed in this work as Milton's own. This is the more true because, as he says in the Postscript, he has 'epitomized' Bucer, and has followed the wellwarranted rule not to give an inventory of so many words, but to weigh their force'; yet, so far as I have observed, he is right in asserting that he has done so 'without injury to either part of the cause?' Milton's next and longest work is Tetrachordon: Expositions upon the Four Chief Places in Scripture which Treat of Marriage or Nullities in Marriage. It appeared in March, 1645, and was written largely in deference to those who wished fuller explanation of the passages of Scripture dealing with divorce, and the citation of more authorities, than had been given in the first pamphlet. It was the result of Milton's zeal to make his theory acceptable to the public, and, as he knew, added to what he had already written nothing essential. His remaining work, published in the same month, is entitled Colasterion: A Reply to a Nameless Answer against The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Wherein the Trivial Author of that Answer is Discovered, the Licenser Conferred with, and the Opinion which They Traduce Defended. It is worth the reading of any disposed to carp at Milton's opinions on divorce.

It is apparent from the mere bulk of these works that Milton spent much labour on them. They occupy more pages than his anti-episcopal pamphlets, and almost as many as his Latin Defences. During the two years or more in which he was engaged on them he produced, it is true,

1 Milton used this work as it appears in the volume entitled Scripta Anglicana, Basel, 1577, the only volume issued of a projected complete edition of Bucer's works. For other editions of De Regno Christi see J. W. Baum, Capito und Butzer, p. 609. 2 See p. 24, infra.

On the state of public opinion on divorce, see Masson, Life of Milton, vol. I, books 1 and 2, and Chilton L. Powell, English Domestic Relations, 1487-1653, chaps. 2 and 3. See also Howard, History of Matrimonial Institutions, chaps. 9–11.

the tractate Of Education and the Areopagitica, but these two must have demanded much less time than did the other four.

Moreover, Milton considered these treatises on divorce a significant part of the work of his life. It is apparent from their tone that he regarded them quite as seriously as he did most of his prose writings; in addition he states that he did not take his task lightly, calling heaven to witness with what severe industry and examination' of himself he 'set down every period1.' In fact the prefatory portions-addressed to Parliament of the three longer works abound with references to his diligence in searching after the truth. This search probably had its beginning long before the time, perhaps early in the year 1643, when Milton began the actual preparation of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. At least we read in his earliest biography:

The lawfulness and expedience of [divorce], duly regulate in order to all those purposes for which marriage was at first instituted, had upon full consideration and reading good authors been formerly his opinion; and the necessity of justifying himself now concurring with the opportunity, acceptable to him, of instructing others in a point of so great concern he first writ The Doctrine and Discipline of

Divorce.

But Milton's devotion to truth required of him more than 'study and true labour' in the search for it. As may be learned from the address To the Parliament preceding the second edition of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, he had been attacked because of the first edition, and expected further attacks because of the second3; the addresses prefixed to the two following works show that they were published against a storm. Indeed Milton relieved his feelings by writing the two sonnets On the Detraction which Followed upon My Writing Certain Treatises.

Not only did Milton prepare these works with labour and meditation, but he continued to hold the opinions he had announced in them, as is witnessed by his De Doctrina Christiana, published posthumously, in which he again sets them forth, with a reference to Tetrachordon. In his Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda, which appeared about ten years after the treatises on divorce, he assigns them a position in the work of his life quite in harmony with the feeling shown in the treatises themselves, writing as follows:

Since I had decided that there were three kinds of liberty in all, without which any life could scarcely be satisfactorily lived, namely, ecclesiastical liberty, domestic

1 The Judgment of Martin Bucer, To the Parliament, p. 297. This and other references to the works on divorce depend on the Pickering edition (1851) of Milton's Works, vol. IV. The Earliest Life of Milton, in the volume entitled Of Education, etc. by John Milton, edited by Laura E. Lockwood (Riverside Literature Series), p. xxviii.

3 Cf. The Judgment of Martin Bucer, To the Parliament, p. 297.

4 See also Masson, loc. cit.

or private liberty, and civil liberty, and since I had now written on the first, and had seen that the magistracy was zealously engaged on the third, and that the second remained, I took domestic liberty for my province. Since this also seemed threefold, if the conjugal relation and the training of children should be properly ordered, and if there should be opportunity to think freely, I explained what I had perceived not merely on the proper contracting of marriage, but also on the proper dissolving of it; and I justified divorce according to the divine law which Christ did not remove, and for which he did not, like a civil lawyer, substitute another more severe than the whole Mosaic law. On what ought to be believed concerning fornication, which alone was excepted, I expressed my own opinion and that of others, and a very famous man, our countryman Selden, has more fully demonstrated it in his Uxor Hebraica, published about two years after. For it is vain for a man to make a great outcry about freedom in public assemblies and in the market-place, if at home he serves his inferior with a servitude most unworthy of a man. Hence on this matter I published several books, especially since at that time husband and wife were often the bitterest enemies, and the husband was at home with the children, while the mother of the family resided in the camp of the enemy, menacing death and ruin to her husband2.

This passage reveals the connexion between Milton's writings on divorce and his lifelong effort for liberty. The amount of labour spent on these treatises, the permanence in the author's mind of the opinions he expressed in them, the tone in which in later years he mentioned them, and above all the spirit animating them, declare them representative expressions of Milton's character and beliefs3.

The problem of marriage and divorce, as the quotation shows, was in his mind inseparably associated with matters of the utmost importance to the individual and the state. Public affairs could not go well when domestic matters went badly. We frequently meet such expressions as the following:

Farewell all hope of true reformation in the state, while such an evil as this [i.e., household unhappiness] lies undiscerned or unregarded in the house. On the redress whereof depends not only the spiritual and orderly life of our grown men, but the willing and careful education of our children.

1 Milton here refers to Of Education and the Areopagitica, composed during the period when he was writing on divorce. He speaks of them in sentences following those here quoted.

2 Defensio Secunda, Pickering ed., vol. vr, p. 291.

3 Since preparing my paper I have consulted Chilton L. Powell's English Domestic Relations, 1487-1653 (New York, 1917), and found his conclusions on Milton's beliefs generally in agreement with what I had written. He gives evidence (pp. 225–31), in part consisting of biographical details outside the scope of my paper, to show that the first of Milton's tracts on divorce was written so early that it had no connection whatever with his own domestic life.' I am sure that Milton's interest in divorce was at least the result of something in addition to, and much higher than, a mere feeling that he had been injured by his wife, yet I cannot wholly accept Dr Powell's conclusion, though it would fortify my own. He overlooks The Earliest Life of Milton (see p. 9, supra), which plausibly, and I suspect truly, represents Milton as moved to write on divorce partly by zeal for the public welfare, and partly by resentment at the conduct of his wife; thus it suggests that Phillips' statement, that the poet wrote on divorce as a result of his own experience, has more weight than Dr Powell gives it. If this is true, Dr Powell's biographical discussion, though valuable, is not final.

+ Divorce, To the Parl., p. 10. For a similar expression see Bucer: Divorce, To the Parl., p. 294.

Milton often declares that the troubles of an unfortunate marriage make men dead to the commonwealth',' and 'unprofitable and dangerous to the commonwealth. Yet the connexion between happy marriages and the training of children is in itself sufficient to account for Milton's interest in divorce, for he believed that nothing was more, necessary to the vitality of the state than suitable education”.

Turning to the doctrines set forth in the treatises, we find Milton certain that the husband should be the head of the house, and that the wife should be subordinate; he asks: Who can be ignorant that woman was created for man, and not man for woman?4' Yet this rule that the husband should be the head is subject to exceptions. It is, Milton admits, 'something reasonable' for a wife to contend 'who shall be the head in point of house-rule' for any parity of wisdom. Also, saying of man that ‘it is no small glory to him that a creature so like him' as is woman should be made subject to him, Milton continues:

Not but that particular exceptions may have place, if she exceed her husband in prudence and dexterity, and he contentedly yield, for then a superior and more natural law comes in, that the wiser should govern the less wise, whether male or female".

But these exceptions serve to make clear his general opinion, founded on the Scriptures, for example 1 Corinthians 11. 3-9. As a result Milton was contemptuous of a man under the government of an inferior wife. One of his charges against the character of Salmasius was that he lived in fear of a shrew. And he remarks on King Charles' praise of his Queen that she may have been a good wife, but was a bad subject, and continues:

He ascribes rudeness and barbarity worse than Indian to the English parliament, and all virtue to his wife, in strains that come almost to sonneting. How fit to govern men, undervaluing and aspersing the great council of his kingdom, in comparison of one woman. Examples are not far to seek, how great mischief and dishonour hath befallen to nations under the government of effeminate and uxorious magistrates, who, being themselves governed and overswayed at home under a feminine usurpation, cannot but be far short of spirit and authority without doors, to govern a whole nation.

As Milton said in the extended quotation from the Defensio Secunda already given, the slave at home could not be the free man abroad.

Yet though Milton is sure of the superior position of the husband,

he is far from placing the wife under despotic power, and depriving her of all independence.

In the first place, unlike many of his contemporaries, he would have marriages contracted only with the free consent of the parties; for example he writes:

As for the custom that some parents and guardians have of forcing marriages, it will be better to say nothing of such a savage inhumanity, but only thus, that the law which gives not all freedom of divorce to any creature endued with reason so assassinated is next in cruelty1.

Marriage should result from love on both sides, and the cause that leads 'them both at first to think without other revelation that God had joined them together' is 'their esteemed fitness one for the other?.' It is only 'the uniting of another compliable mind' that constitutes a true marriage. It would be well if before marriage both parties had 'thoroughly discerned each other's disposition,' but if this has not been done, and the couple find a 'powerful reluctance and recoil of nature on either side blasting all the content of their mutual society,' 'such persons are not lawfully married.' In the following passage consent before marriage is taken for granted, and 'consent' further interpreted:

As for consent of parents and guardians, it seems rather a concurrence than a cause [of marriage]; for as many that marry are in their own power as not; and where they are not their own, yet are they not subjected beyond reason.... Until [the parties' consent] be, the marriage hath no true being. When I say consent, I mean not error, for error is not properly consent. And why should not consent be here understood with equity and good to either part, as in all other friendly covenants, and not be strained and cruelly urged to the mischief and destruction of both? Neither do I mean that singular act of consent which made the contract, for that may remain, and yet the marriage not true nor lawful; and that may cease, and yet the marriage both true and lawful, to their sin that break it....That consent I mean which is a love fitly disposed to mutual help and comfort of life.

This passage on 'consent' is part of Milton's comment on his definition of marriage, which is as follows:

Marriage is a divine institution joining man and woman in a love fitly disposed to the helps and comforts of domestic life".

As further comment on the definition shows, this 'love' and these 'helps and comforts' are mutual, and intended for the benefit of women as well as for that of men; and the same thought often appears elsewhere. Even the title of Milton's first pamphlet speaks of divorce as 'restored to the good of both sexes.' In the Bible we read that it is not good that the man should be alone,' but Milton, going beyond the Scripture,