mer with them in the country. He gave her permiffion to stay till Michaelmas; but the declined to return at the expiration of that period. The visit to her friends was, in fact, only a pretence for conjugal defertion. 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 fome of them poffibly ingaged, in the King's fervice, (who by this time had his head quarters at Oxford, and was in fome profpect of fuccefs,) they began to repent them of having matched the eldest daughter of the family to a perfon fo contrary to them in opinion; and thought it would be a blot in their efcutcheon, whenever that Court fhould come to flourish again : however, it fo incensed our author, that he thought it would be difhonourable ever to receive her again after fuch a repulfe." The fame biographer intimates, that she was averse to the philofophick life of Milton, and fighed for the mirth and jovialnefs to which the had been accustomed in Oxfordshire. And Aubrey relates, that the "was brought up and bred where there was a great deal of company and merriment, as dancing, &c.; and, when he came to live with her husband, the found it folitary, no company came to her, and the often heard her nephews cry and be beaten. This life was irkfome to her, and fo fhe went to her parents. He fent for her home after fome time. As for wronging his bed, I never heard the leaft fufpicion of that; nor had he of that any jealoufie." It has escaped the biographers of the • MS. as before. poet, however, that, while he ingenuously admits " that every motion of a jealous mind should not be regarded," he has not failed to enumerate, among the reasons which are faid to have warranted divorce in elder times, "the wilfull haunting of feafts, and invitations with men not of her near kindred, the 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 paffage certainly exhibits his indignation at her continuance under her father's roof, while at the fame time it confirms Aubrey's account that he did not suspect her as faithless to his bed. "He [Grotius] fhews alfo, that fornication is taken in Scripture for fuch 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 faid to have played the whore against him; which Jofephus 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 glofs the text, are in the fame opinion. Ben Gerfom reasons, that had it been whoredom, a Jew and a Levite would have dif dained to fetch her again. And this I fhall contribute, that had it been whoredom, fhe would have chofen any other place to run to than to her FATHER'S HOUSE, it being fo infamous for a Hebrew woman to play the harlot, and fo opprobrious to the parents. Fornication then in this place of the Judges is under ▸ Doct. and Difcip. of Divorce, B. ii. Ch. xviii. 9 Ibid. ftood for Stubborn difobedience against the husband, and not for adultery." He fent for her, however, in vain. As all his letters, defiring her to return, were unanswered; fo the meffenger, whom he afterwards employed for the fame purpose, was difmiffed from her father's house with contempt. He refolved therefore, without further ceremony, to repudiate her; and, in defence of his refolution, he published four treatifes, the two first in 1644, the two lait in 1645. The Doctrine and Difcipline of Divorce; The Judgement of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce; Tetrachordon, or Expofitions upon the four chief Places of Scripture which treat of Marriage, or Nullities in Marriage; and Colafterion. The last is a reply to the anonymous author of "An Anfwer to a Book, intituled The Doctrine and Difcipline of Divorce, or a Plea for Ladies and Gentlewomen, and all other Married Women against Divorce. Wherein both Sexes are vindicated from all bondage of Canon Law, and other miftakes whatfoever; and the unfound principles of the Author are examined and fully confuted by Authority of Holy Scripture, the Laws of this Land, and found Reafon. Lond. 1644." This pamphlet was licensed and recommended by Mr. Jofeph Caryl, a Presbyterian divine, and author of a voluminous commentary on the book of Job; whom Milton, in his reply, roughly ftigmatizes with repeated charges of ignorance, as he also styles his antagonist "a ferving-man both by nature and by function, an idiot by breeding, and a folicitor by prefumption!" The application of thefe and fimilar terms, in the difpute, may remind us of the elegant dialogue be tween Nym and Pistol in Shakspeare's King Henry the fifth but there a wife retained, and not a wife repudiated, is the cause of so much eloquence! There had been another tract written against Milton's doctrine, which he briefly notices at the beginning of his Colaflerion, entitled "Divorce at pleasure." Nor was he inattentive to the remark of Dr. Featley, who in the Epiftle Dedicatory to his Dippers dipt," published in 1645, enumerates, among "the audacious attempts upon Church and State, a Tractate of Divorce, in which the bonds of marriage are let loose to inordinate luft, and putting away wives for many other caufes befides that which our Saviour only approveth, namely, in cafe of adultery." Milton fpeaks contemptuoufly of the author as having written an "equivocating treatise," and as 66 diving the while himself with a more deep prelatical malignance against the present State and Church-government." Dr. Johnfon and Mr. Warton are mistaken in fuppofing the new doctrine to have been unnoticed, or neglected: indeed the two Sonnets, which Milton wrote on the fame fubject, seem to discountenance the opinion. It certainly was received with ridicule, as we learn from Howel's' Letter to Sir Edward Spencer. But it gave rise to a band, not perhaps very formidable, who were called Divorcers, and even Miltonifts. Pagitt, in his "Defcription of the Hereticks and Sectaries" of that period, notices the former fect with him, who wrote Herefiography, &c. 1654. p. 129. See alfo Ibid. p. 77. And "A brief defcription &c. of Phanatiques in generall 1660." p. 33. the Tractate of Divorce, at their head. The latter title occurs in "The Epilogue, fhewing the Parallell in two Poems, the Return, and the Restauration, Addreffed to her Highneffe the Lady Elizabeth, by Christopher.] W[affe]. 1649." 8vo. "Force can but in a Rape engage, ""Tis choice must make it Marriage : "This must enchant our confcious hands, "This book was obligingly pointed out to me by Thomas Park, Efq; to whom the literary world is indebted for fome of the sweetest Sonnets in the English language. The fame gentleman directs me to the following bitter application of Milton's doctrine to himfelf by G. S. (whom I fuppofe to be the fame perfon as the author of the weak performance noticed in Mr. Warton's and my own remarks on the poet's Sonnet to Cyriack Skinner,) in Britain's Triumph, for her imparallel'd deliverance and her joyful celebrating the Proclamation of her most gracious incomparable king Charles the fecond &c. 1660." 4to, G, S. the author, after fatirizing the members of the Rump Parliament, thus proceeds, p. 15, "But who appears here with the curtain drawn ? 66 Swung himself weary, and fo gone to hell. |