1

From a lodging 'next door to the Bull's Head Tavern Charing Cross, opening into Spring Garden,' he had removed to Scotland Yard, where his rooms were hung with tapestry which had been part of the furniture of the royal apartments. In June 1651 he quitted this residence by order of Parliament, and took a 'pretty garden-house next to Lord Scudamore's, and opening into the Park.' It is now 19 York Street, Westminster. On the parapet of the present back (the former front) is a commemorative tablet, 'Sacred to Milton, Prince of Poets,' placed there by William Hazlitt, who occupied the house in 18122. Here Milton's first wife died in child-bed, leaving him with three daughters. The supposed date of her death is 1653.

When Peter Du Moulin (afterwards prebendary of Canterbury) wrote his Regii Sanguinis Clamor (1652), Milton, in a Second Defence fastened the authorship on More, a French minister who had the care of the publication, and relentlessly exposed the scandals of his private life. But in the Defensio Secunda, as in most of the prose works, the magnificent episodes, expository of his own thoughts or narrative of his own career, engage the reader's interest far more deeply than the violent rhetoric about the venality of Salmasius or the frailties of More. 'The egotism of such a man as Milton is a revelation of spirit.' And we have in this instance more than selfreferences. There is an eloquent eulogium upon Cromwell, and then a solemn warning if he should hereafter invade that liberty which he had defended.' The valour and virtue of other Commonwealth leaders are also heartily extolled by the writer, whom Johnson has stigmatized as 'very frugal of his praise.'

Milton was involved in some trouble by the misfortunes of his first wife's father, Richard Powell, who came to London after the surrender of Oxford, having lost great part of his

1 It is (Feb. 1872) a fishmonger's and has been refronted. Formerly it had a gabled front, like that of a house opposite. Barracks now intercept the view of the Park.

2 Haydon, Autobiography 1. 211; Memoirs of William Hazlitt 1. 189, 213, 215.

estate in the King's service, and hoping to recover some of the remainder, which had been sequestrated by the Parliament. He took the oath of the Covenant, was admitted to compound for his estate, and died in January 1647, at the house of his son-in-law. His daughter's promised dowry had never been paid, and Milton's claim of £500 on his estate was allowed on payment of £130, as a fine to the Exchequer. His widow claimed her thirds out of this part of his property, and Milton paid them (without any allowance being made to him on that account) until she demanded them as her legal right. The Commissioners disallowed her claim, and she wrote the petition wherein the statement is made that 'Mr. Milton is a harsh and choleric man,' and that 'her daughter would be undone if any course were taken against him by Mrs. Powell, he having turned away his wife heretofore for a long space 'upon some other occasion 1. (April to July 1651.)

But Milton seems to have forgiven this also, for two years after his brother Christopher took up the cause of the Powells, and succeeded in proving that the fines levied on their lands had been exorbitant, and in violation of the Oxford Articles. The family appear to have resumed (though with diminished wealth) their social position at Forest Hill.

6

On Nov. 12, 1656 Milton wedded his second wife, Catherine Woodcock. They were married by Sir John Dethicke, knight and alderman, according to the then Act of Parliament, after the publication of their agreement and intention on three market days.' On Feb. 10, 1658, Catherine Milton was buried in St. Margaret's Church, Westminster. Her monument is the sonnet in which the widower commemorated his loss. (Sonnet xviii.)

'As Secretary to the Protector Milton is supposed to have written the Declaration of the Reasons for a War with Spain. His agency was considered as of great importance; for when a treaty with Sweden was artfully suspended, the delay was publicly attributed to Mr. Milton's indisposition; and the Swedish agent was provoked to express his wonder, that

1 Or 'upon a small occasion.' This phrase had been written first, then struck through with a pen, and the words in the text substituted.

only one man in England could write Latin, and that man blind 1.'

Milton retired from the more active duties of Secretary with a reduced allowance, paid until Oct. 1659. His assistant was Andrew Marvell, whom, as early as Feb. 1653, he had recommended to President Bradshaw.

He appears to have undertaken at this time several great works, a Latin Dictionary, a Body of Divinity, and the continuation of his History of England. Of the last-named, he had written four books before he was made Latin Secretary. He is said to have begun Paradise Lost' about two years before the king came in 2.' Yet he retained his interest in public affairs, and unavailingly strove to turn the current of public feeling with pamphlets on the Removal of Hirelings out of the Church, and on a Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth. In the latter is clearly seen, even by Milton's own admissions, the hopeless ruin of the Puritan cause. It spoke (as its author feared) for that generation 'the last words of our expiring liberty,' and the appeal was made in a letter to General Monk, whose unscrupulous duplicity well fitted him for his task as pioneer of the Restoration. During Monk's dubious neutrality Milton wrote. 'Notes' on a royalist sermon by Dr. Griffiths, and on the general's behalf repudiated the insinuation that his 'public promises and declarations, both to the parliament and to the army were soon to be falsified by his bringing in 'the late king's son.'

At the Restoration (May 1660) Milton shared .the peril of the down-trodden Puritans. There is a tradition that Sir William Davenant, in gratitude for a like kindness, saved the life of the poet, whose biographers record that he was for a time concealed in a friend's house in Bartholomew Close. The proclamation (Aug. 13, 1660) against him as the author of Eikonoclastes and Defensio (which were ordered to be

1 Johnson, Life of Milton.

2 He may have edited the pamphlet by Raleigh entitled The Cabinet Council, or Aphorisms of State, but it is doubtful.

burnt by the hangman) states that he 'had withdrawn himself, so that no endeavours for his apprehension could take effect.' He was in a few days after relieved from the necessity of further concealment by the passing of the Act of Indemnity (Aug. 30, 1660). But for some unexplained reason he was, in the following December, in the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms, whence he was released by order of the House (Dec. 15, 1660).

Milton now lived for a short time in Holborn, near Red Lion Street, but soon removed to Jewin Street, Aldersgate, and at the recommendation of his friend Dr. Paget, he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, a lady of a good Cheshire family, and the Doctor's kinswoman.

The same physician introduced to him a serviceable Latin reader, Thomas Ellwood, a young Quaker, who had his full share in the persecutions that attended the first followers of George Fox. Milton taught Ellwood to pronounce Latin in the Italian manner, and knowing by his tone when he did not understand what he read, would stop him and 'open the most difficult passages1'.

2,

Soon after his marriage, Milton lodged at the house of Millington, the bookseller of Little Britain, who used to lead him about, lending 'a guiding hand' to his 'dark steps.' Thence he removed to a small house in 'Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill Fields.' This was his last permanent residence. On the appearance of the Plague (1665), Ellwood found a temporary retreat for him in a 'pretty box 'in Chalfont St. Giles. It was there that he gave Ellwood the manuscript of Paradise Lost for his persual and judgment. When Ellwood returned the poem, and had 'modestly but freely' told its author how he liked it, after some further discourse, he added pleasantly, 'Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?' Milton made no answer, but sate some time in a muse, then brake off the discourse and fell upon another subject.' As to the composition of Paradise Lost, we have a curious

1 Ellwood, Life, p. 135, ed. 1714.

2 Ibid. p. 233.

fact related by Milton himself to his nephew Phillips, to account for his making no progress with his poem in the summer, 'that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal, and that whatever he attempted [at other seasons] was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much.'

On his return to town, the poem was published, the copyright having been sold to Samuel Simmons (April 27, 1667,) by an agreement, under which Milton received £10 for two editions, and his widow £8, in discharge of that and all other claims. In the second edition (1674) the poem was divided into twelve instead of ten Books.

The licenser Tomkins (Chaplain to Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury) had made some difficulty in according the requisite permission to publish Paradise Lost, on account of a passage (11. 598, 599) in the First Book. The same timid official mutilated Milton's next production, the History of England (1670); but as the author gave the Earl of Anglesea a copy of the suppressed portions, they have since been inserted in their proper places.

The next year (1671) appeared Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. The former poem Milton acknowledged was owing to' Ellwood's question at Chalfont, and he could not 'hear with patience' any censure of it as inferior to . Paradise Lost.

These, the last of his poetical works, were succeeded (1672) by a treatise on Logic according to the Method of Ramus, whom he had already followed in his Scheme of Education. In a tract on True Religion, Heresy, Schism and Toleration (1673), he exhorts Protestants to avoid contentions among themselves, and to unite against Popery. Punishment for religion in person or property he supposes 'not to be agreeable to the clemency of the Gospel;' but he declares against any toleration of the rites of Roman Catholic worship, whether performed publicly or in private. He speaks of the Church of England as 'our Church,' and adduces its authority in his argument.

Milton reprinted his early poems (with some additions) in