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, insight into all seemly and generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compassed, at mine own peril and cost I refuse not to sustain this expectation from as many as are not loth to hazard so much credulity upon the best pledges that I can give them. Although it nothing content me to have disclosed thus much before hand; but that I trust hereby to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident thoughts, to imbark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of Truth, in the quiet and still air of delightful studies."

In 1642 he closed the preceding controversy with an Apology for Smectymnuus, in answer to the Confutation of his Animadversions, written, as he supposed, by bishop Hall or his son. He thought all this while, says Dr. Newton, that he was vindicating ecclesiastical liberty. Yet he has confessed, that he was not disposed to "this manner of writing, wherein knowing myself inferiour to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have

y Introduction to the second Book of his Reason of Church Government.

the use, as I may account it, but of my left hand." This left hand, indeed, has recorded many sentiments which we must reject, and many expressions which we must lament. By his asperity the repulsive form of puritanism is rendered more hideous and disgusting, and the cause which he would support is weakened. But the general character of his prose-works is not yet before us.

SECTION II.

From his Marriage to the time of his being appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues.

AT Whitsuntide in 1643, and in his thirty-fifth year, (as I have before observed,) Milton married Mary, the daughter of Richard Powell, a gentleman who resided at Forest Hill near Shotover in Oxfordshire, and was a justice of the peace for the county. He brought his bride to London; who, after living only a few weeks with him, obtained his consent to accept the invitation of her friends to spend the remaining part of the summer with them in the country. He gave her permission to stay till Michaelmas; but she declined to return at the expiration of that period. The visit to her friends was, in fact, only a pretence for conjugal desertion. This desertion has been imputed, by Phillips, to the different principles of the two families. Her relations, he tells us, being generally addicted to the Cavalier party, and some of them possibly ingaged in the King's service, (who by this time had his head quarters at Oxford, and was in some prospect of success,) they began to repent them of having matched the eldest

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daughter of the family to a person so contrary to them in opinion; and thought it would be a blot in their escutcheon, whenever that Court should come to flourish again: however, it so incensed our author, that he thought it would be dishonourable ever to receive her again after such a repulse." The same biographer intimates, that she was averse to the philosophical life of Milton, and sighed for the mirth and jovialness to which she had been accustomed in Oxfordshire. And Aubrey relates, that she "a was brought up and bred where there was a great deal of company and merriment, as dancing, &c.; and, when she came to live with her husband, she found it solitary, no company came to her, and she often heard her nephews cry and be beaten. This life was irksome to her, and so she went to her parents. He sent for her home after some time. As for wronging his bed, I never heard the least suspicion of that; nor had he of that any jealousie."

It has escaped the biographers of the poet, however, that, while Milton ingenuously admits " that every motion of a jealous mind should not be regarded," he has not failed to enumerate, among the reasons which are said to have warranted divorce in elder times, "the wilfull haunting of feasts, and invitations with men not of her near kindred, the

b Doct. and Discip. of Divorce, B. ii. Ch. xviii.

lying forth of her house without probable cause, the frequenting of theatres against her husband's mind," &c. If this be not pointed directly at the conduct of his wife, the following passage certainly exhibits his indignation at her continuance under her father's roof, while at the same time it confirms Aubrey's account that he did not suspect her as faithless to his bed. "He [Grotius] shews also, that fornication is taken in Scripture for such a continual headstrong behaviour, as tends to plain contempt of the husband, and proves it out of Judges xix. 2, where the Levite's wife is said to have played the whore against him; which Josephus and the Septuagint, with the Chaldean, interpret only of stubbornness and rebellion against her husband: and to this I add that Kimchi, and the two other rabbies who gloss the text, are in the same opinion. Ben Gersom reasons, that had it been whoredom, a Jew and a Levite would have disdained to fetch her again. And this I shall contribute, that had it been whoredom, she would have chosen any other place to run to than to her FATHER'S HOUSE, it being so infamous for a Hebrew woman to play the harlot, and so opprobrious to the parents. Fornication then in this place of the Judges is understood for stubborn disobedience against the husband, and not for adultery."

Milton sent for his wife, however, in vain. As all

Doct. and Discip. of Divorce, B. ii. Ch. xviii.