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of certain features which some of the best schools now exhibit, but which were practically unknown in his day; such as systematic gymnastic and military drill, original investigations in natural history, object-teaching, business studies, theoretical and practical agriculture, and making language the key to science.

In 1643, Milton strolled away from London to Forest Hill, Oxfordshire. It was his spring vacation.

"In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love."

His ostensible business was to collect a debt of £500, due to his father from Mr. Richard Powell, a justice of the peace. Whether he knew of the existence of Mr. Powell's daughter Mary, may be questioned; but it would appear that here was a genuine case of love at first sight. The handsome scholar probably encountered no opposition from the young lady, and still less from the father, who saw in the speedy marriage not only a desirable match for his daughter, but a quasi settlement, at least for a time, of the long-standing debt. After a mouth's absence, says Milton's nephew Phillips, he returned with a wife. Married in haste, he repented at leisure. A few weeks revealed the utter unfitness of the alliance. There was not only nothing in common between the two, but there was an utter contrariety of sympathies and of views on the most important subjects. She hated the studious habits of her schoolmaster husband, and longed for her old home. They do not appear to have parted in anger; but they saw no more of each other for two years, and it is certain that her desertion of him was voluntary.

In the early fall he wrote to her to return. It seems a little singular that he did not make the short journey in person to the spot where he had wooed and won her. Had he awakened to the fact that he had been entrapped by the artful debtor, who had palmed off an indifferent daughter upon him instead of paying the old claim in current funds? To his letter, twice repeated, he received no response. He then despatched a messenger to bring the lady, but she refused an interview.

Important consequences grew out of this quarrel, if so we may call it. He wrote four long treatises to prove that reason and Scripture justify a divorce from the bands of matrimony, whenever there exists "any cause, in nature unchangeable, hindering and ever likely to hinder the main benefits of conjugal society." An avalanche of argument and of obloquy descended upon the head of the bold advocate of divorce. There is no reason to suppose that he ever retracted his views; but his magnanimous conduct in forgiving and receiving back the erring wife, and taking beneath his hospitable roof her father's family, to shelter them from the storm that soon threatened all royalists, shows the goodness of his heart, whatever we may think of the soundness of his opinions.

The year 1644 was one of his busiest. In it, while his wife was absent, he wrote his Areopagitica, or Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. In some respects this is the best of his prose works. We have given it entire. It will be found an excellent discipline and a valuable preparation for public life, for the student to master the argument in all its details. 'Every statesman," says Macaulay, "should bind this treatise as a sign upon his hand and as frontlets between his eyes."

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His nephew Phillips tells us there was, about the year 1647, some talk of making Milton Adjutant-General, and Masson gives us good reason to believe that Milton had carefully studied military tatics. We know from his own statement that he was an adroit fencer. Conceive of our poet in military uniform! He had doubtless admiraable qualifications, courage, quickness, energy, enthusiasm combined with coolness; but there was one sufficient obstacle; his eyesight was failing. An inherited weakness of vision had been aggravated by intense study in many a midnight. He appears to have continued to teach until about the time of the execution of the king, January 30, 1649.

Immediately after this extraordinary and astonishing event, he published an able treatise entitled, "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates: Proving that it is Lawful and hath been so Held in all Ages, for any that have the Power, to Call to Account a Tyrant or Wicked King, and, after Conviction duly had, to Depose and Put him to Death, if the ordinary Magistrate have neglected or denied to do the same: And that they who, of late, so much blame Deposing, are the Men that did it Themselves." This is a remarkable document. In it he sets forth, with great clearness and energy, the very principles on which, a century and a quarter afterwards, our fathers of the American Revolution, the "Jeffersonian Democracy" of our nascent republic, based their resistance against British tyranny. Not even in our famous Declaration of American Independence, are presented more vividly and more eloquently than in this treatise, the principles of the natural equality and freedom of man, of the foundation of all the just authority of magistrates upon the consent of the governed, and of the right of the people to alter or abolish a form of government that proves destructive of their interests or dangerous to their rights.

Hardly had he given this to the world, when he was called to the position of Latin Secretary to the Council of State. The council requested him to answer Bishop Gauden's Eixov Baбıλıиý [Icon Basilike, The King's Image], A Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings, purporting to have been written by the king himself in his last days. The book was having an unprecedented sale, and apparently turning the tide of popular sentiment in favor of monarchy. Milton's smashing answer was entitled Elnovouλáórn5 [Iconoclastes, The Image Breaker], for which parliament voted him a thousand pounds.

Now came the world-renowned controversy with Salmasius. Claudius Salmasius [Claude Saumaise], professor in the University of Leyden, had been hired and flattered by Prince Charles, afterwards Charles II., into writing a treatise in defence of Charles I. and of monarchical principles. The treatise was producing a great effect not only in England, but on the continent. The Council of State voted "that Mr. Milton do prepare something in answer to the book of Salmasius." But Milton's eyesight was now so precarious that his physicians forbade him to engage in literary labor, on penalty of total blindness. "I did not long balance," says Milton, "whether my duty should be preferred to my eyes." Accordingly he wrote his Defence of the People of England, a work in the sledge-hammer style of argument and abounding with terrible invective. Salmasius was annihilated. The controversy was in Latin. It was disfigured by the personal abuse in which the best men of that period were too prone to indulge; but we must not judge them too harshly for their lack of familiarity with the amenities of a later age.

The service which Milton rendered to the cause of liberty by this treatise and his subsequent publications in the same controversy was felt to be very great, and his fame spread over Europe. But the effort cost him his eyes. There is nothing sublimer than the attitude of this giant champion of human rights, when darkness had settled upon him forever. Read this calm utterance of a heroic soul:

TO CYRIACK SKINNER.

Cyriack, this three years day, these eyes, though clear,

To outward view, of blemish or of spot,

Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot;

Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear

Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied

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In liberty's defence, my noble task,

Of which all Europe rings from side to side.

This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask,
Content, though blind, had I no better guide.

On the death of Cromwell, in 1658, Milton was filled with forebodings. Popular sentiment was becoming strong in favor of the restoration of monarchy. Milton issued pamphlet after pamphlet, urging the establishment of a republic, and setting forth, in striking language, the dangers and inconvenience of kingship. To the final moment he lifted up his voice like a trumpet, "the last words of expiring liberty," as he himself characterizes them. One favorite plan of his, which now, after two hundred years, seems really to be in process of gradual accomplishment, was to abolish monarchy and the House of Lords, and to concentrate power in the House of Com

mons.

His worst fears were more than realized. The shameful period of the Restoration is best described by Macaulay. "Then came those days, never to be mentioned without a blush; the days of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without love; of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices; the paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds; the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The king cringed to his rival, that he might trample on his people; sunk into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with complacent infamy, her degrading insults and more degrading gold. The caresses of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government which had just ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute."

Powerful friends appear to have saved Milton from the fate that befell good Sir Harry Vane and so many others in those dark days. And now, with singular calmness, when the cherished hopes of his manhood had all been blasted, and the great battle of twenty years had gone against him, he turned to the fulfillment of a dream of his youth. He knew his strength. In prose, he said he had but the use of his left hand. For six years he labored on his Paradise Lost.

This poem has been much criticised of late. One essayist finds fault with its Latinisms; another with its learned allusions; another, with its occasional imitations of the language of Homer or Virgil, instead of the language of the street; another, with its incorrect theology; another, with its representation of Adam and Eve as persons of learned and philosophic minds, instead of babes or semi-monkeys; another, with the language and arguments which Milton, after the manner of the Bible, attributes to the Deity; another with Milton's evident moral purpose, his desire to teach a lesson; another, with his conception of the angels as having material bodies, as if everybody knew that there is not a particle of matter in them; another, because, contrary to orthodox views, his Satan is not wholly bad; another, because he makes Sin and Death allegorical personages; another, because he introduces the devils and angels as joking and punning, contrary to their actual usage. The best way to answer these critics, as Hazlitt remarks, is to take down the book and read it. Read it in a loving, sympathetic spirit, from the author's stand-point, as a poem and not as a philosophical or theological treatise. Whoever fails to recognize its power and beauty, after careful study, may well ask himself whether he is not more likely to be mistaken in judgment than the great critics from Addison and Johnson to Coleridge, Channing, Emerson, and Macaulay.

Paradise Lost was published in 1667. For the first edition of this, the greatest epic poem in the language, he received only five pounds; and a like sum for the second edition! In 1671 he produced his Paradise Regained, pronounced by Macaulay the second best epic in English. In the same year he wrote Samson Agonistes, the best modern imitation of a classic Greek tragedy. He also compiled a Latin Grammar, a treatise on logic, and a Latin lexicon; wrote grand sonnets, some happy translations, a history of England, and several religious works. Among the last named,

was an elaborate system of theology, written in Latin and built up wholly of scriptural arguments and citations. The manuscript of this work was lost for a hundred and fifty years; but in 1824 it was discovered in the State Paper Office at London. It has been translated. Whatever may be thought of its premises or its conclusions, it fully sustains his reputation as a scholar and a Christian.

On the eighth of November, 1674, this great man died. I cannot better express my opinion of him than by quoting the language of the learned Dr. Symmons, one of the editors of Milton's prose works. We have now completed the history of John Milton, a man in whom were illustriously combined all the qualities that could adorn or could elevate the nature to which he belonged; a man who at once possessed beauty of countenance, symmetry of form, elegance of manners, benevolence of temper, magnanimity and loftiness of soul, the brightest illumination of intellect, knowledge the most various and extended, virtue that never loitered in her career nor deviated from her course; a man, who, if he had been delegated as the representative of his species to one of the superior worlds, would have suggested a grand idea of the human race, as of beings affluent in moral and intellectual treasure, raised and distinguished in the universe as the favorites and heirs of heaven."

Consult lives of Milton by Phillips, Ellwood, Toland, Todd, Fenton, Newton, Warton, Symmons, Johnson, Mitford, Griswold, E. P. Hood, Keightly, Brydges; and, especially, Masson, two volumes of whose Life and Times of John Milton have been published. See also essays on Milton by Macaulay, Channing, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others. Allibone's Dictionary of Authors should not be omitted, nor the works on English Literature by Taine, Collier, Craik, Chambers, Angus, Arnold, Cleveland, Minto, Hart, etc. See also Whipple's Essays and Reed's Lectures, and the article on Milton in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

AREOPAGITICA:*

A SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING.

TO THE PARLIAMENT OF ENGLAND.

EVERY statesman should bind this treatise as a sign upon his hand, and as frontlets between his eyes.-MACAULAY.

Every word leaps with intellectual life.-E. P. WHIPPLE.

Τοὐλεύθερον δ ̓ ἐκεῖνο, εἴ τις θέλει πόλει

Χρηστόν τι βούλευμ ̓ εἰς μέσον φέρειν, ἔχων.

Καὶ ταῦθ ̓ ὁ χρῄζων, λαμπρὸς ἔσθ', ὁ μὴ θέλων,

Σιγά· τί τούτων ἐστιν ἰσαίτερον πόλει ;-ΕURIPID. HICETID.

This is true liberty, when freeborn men,

Having to advise the public, may speak free.

Which he who can, and will, deserves high praise;

Who neither can, nor will, may hold his peace.

What can be juster in a state than this?-EURIPID. HICETID.

They, who to states and governors of the commonwealth direct their

* Areopagitica (Apns, the god of war among the Greeks, Mars; máyos, a district. Hence, Areopagus, Mars' Hill. So called because Mars was said to have been the first person tried there for murder, the murder of Halirrhothius, a son of Neptune), pertaining to the Areopagus or Mars' Hill at Athens. The Council of the Arcopagus, having supreme judicial authority at Athens in cases of murder, and the general superintendence of religion, morals, education, and the public treasury, was the most august tribunal of heathen antiquity. It used to hold its sessions in the night, on the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, and twenty-ninth days of every month. Before this court, St. Paul is supposed to have been arraigned, (see Acts xvii. 19,) and there he pronounced his brief but masterly speech, telling them that Jehovah was "the unknown god" whom they ignorantly worshipped. The British parliament in 1644 occupied a position in some respects similar to that of the Areopagus. But probably the controlling consideration which induced Milton to style this speech Areopagitica, was the similarity between his circumstances and those of the Athenian Isocrates, who, in one of his best discourses, which he styles Areopagiticus, counsels the Athenians to change their, democracy by re-establishing the constitution of Solon in a modified form.

speech, High Court* of Parliament, or, wanting such access in a private condi⚫tion, write that which they foresee may advance the public good,—I suppose them, as at the beginning of no mean endeavor, not a little altered and moved inwardly in their minds; some with doubt of what will be the success, others with fear of what will be the censure; some with hope, others with confidence of what they have to speak. And me, perhaps each of these dispositions, as the subject was whereon I entered, may have at other times variously affected, and likely might in these foremost expressions now also disclose which of them swayed most; but that the very attempt of this address thus made, and the thought of whom it hath recourse to, hath got the power within me to a passion, far more welcome than incidental to

* High Court. Parliament had, and, in the last resort, still has, judicial powers. So it was with the colonial legislatures of this country, before the adoption of their constitutions vested the legislative, judicial, and executive powers in separate branches of the government. Accordingly the legislature was often called the general court (as, "The General Court of Massachusetts ").-Parliament (Fr. parler, to speak; Lat. -mentum, which is a suffix denoting a means for the performance of the action of the verb, so that parliament is strictly, in the language of Thomas Carlyle, the talking apparatus" of a nation).-I suppose them. The sentence begins, They, who, etc.; and they has no predicate verb. The sense is, They I suppose, as at the beginning are not a little, etc. What is anacoluthon? Is this an instance of it? Reconstruct the sentence in several ways.-As the subject was, according as the subject was; according to the nature of the subject.-Likely, it is likely that each of these dispositions (doubt, fear, hope, confidence) might in these introductory expressions disclose, etc.-Attempt thought. These two things are so blended that Milton treats

them as forming a nominative singular, the subject of hath got (i. e., hath aroused).

SYNONYMES.-"All languages tend to clear themselves of synonymes as intellectual culture advances, the superfluous words being taken up and appropriated by new shades and combinations of thought evolved in the progress of society."-De Quincey.

Beginning, commencement, entry upon. Distinguish among the meanings and uses of these words. Incorporate each in a sentence or in sentences, that shall illustrate its peculiar significance. Thus:

"Begin, in German beginnen, is compounded of be and ginnen, probably a frequentative of gehen, signifying to go first to a thing. [Noah Webster gives a different etymology, making A. S. ginnan mean to cut, to split; so that begin would mean cut in Commence, in Fr. commencer, is not improbably derived from the Lat. commendo, signifying 'I betake myself to a thing. Enter, in Lat. intro, within, signifies, with the preposition upon, to go into a thing.

Begin and commence are so strictly allied in signification that it is not easy to discover the difference in their application; although a minute difference does exist. To begin respects the order of time. When beginning to act your part, what can be of greater moment than to regulate your plan of conduct with the most serious attention?'-Blair. To commence implies the exertion of setting about a thing. By the destination of his Creator, and the necessities of his nature, man commences at once an active, not merely a contemplative being.'-Blair. Whoever begins a dispute is termed the aggressor; no one should commence a dispute, unless he can calculate the consequences, and, as this is impracticable, it is better never to commence disputes, particularly such as are to be decided by law. Begin is opposed to end; commence, to complete: a person begins a thing with a view of ending it; he commences a thing with a view of completing it.

"To begin is either transitive or intransitive; to commence is mostly transitive. A speaker begins by apologizing; he commences his speech with an apology. Happiness frequently ends where prosperity begins; whoever commences any undertaking, without estimating his own power, must not expect to succeed.

"To begin is used either for things or persons; to commence, for persons only. All things have their beginning; in order to effect anything, we must make a commencement. A line begins with a particular word; a person commences his career. Lastly, begin is more colloquial than commence. Thus we say, to begin the work; to commence the operation; to begin one's play; to commence the pursuit; to begin to write; to commence the letter.

"To commence and enter upon are as closely allied in sense as the former words; they differ principally in application. To commence seems rather to denote the making [of] an experiment; to enter upon, that of first doing what has not been tried before. We commence an undertaking; we enter upon an employment. Speculating people are very ready to commence schemes; considerate people are always averse to entering upon any office, until they feel themselves fully adequate to discharge its duties."- Crabb's English Synonymes, 10th edition (1858), p. 292.

In like manner let the student write out concisely the respective meanings and uses of the following synonymes, with appropriate sentences to fully illustrate each:

Attempt, endeavor, effort, exertion, trial, struggle. See Crabb's Synonymes, Worcester's Unabridged Dictionary, Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, Graham's English Synonymes, etc.

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