adapted his form to the end in view, which was to impress his contemporaries. Hence, first of all, the negligence of his style; he had to produce quickly, at the proper moment; the only quality he looked for was forcibleness. Hence also the personalities, the insolence, the frequent grossness and vulgarity of his attacks: such were the weapons which left a mark on the adversary, even more than argument or erudition, highly valued as these were. Hence again his pedantry: the opponent had to be crushed under texts and authorities, and proved wrong before a tribunal which admitted that sort of proof. Milton believed in the efficacy of his efforts in this field; his contemporaries did also, and therefore he was right: he produced much of the impression he wanted to produce. In after life, he looked back upon his pamphleteering career as a success. Eikonoklastes and the Defences gave him fame. Much of his work was done at the request of the best political heads of his time. It is not therefore for us to decide that he lost his pains as a man of action. Such was not the opinion of his century, which surely knew best.

Besides, this character of being a deed, an action in the world of real fact, is found in Paradise Lost. After the fall of all his hopes and his country's hopes, the problem was, no longer for an ignorant public, but for the very conscience of mankind itself, not to give way to despair, but to find out the causes of the failure, and to discern therein reasons for eternal hope. Between 1642 and 1657, Milton learned that reality only too often refuses to adapt itself to abstract ideas; he learned what stuff human nature was made of. The great question and the great answer became clear to him. It was Milton's turn of

mind to reason from one particular case to the general. Just as in the divorce pamphlets he does not mention his own case, so in Paradise Lost he does not speak of the failure of the Commonwealth; yet it was his marriage that made him write the treatises on divorce, and it was the ruin of the Commonwealth that set the problem for Paradise Lost. It was still the same old Milton that had written a violent pamphlet pro populo Anglicano. Paradise Lost is only a sublime pamphlet for the defence of God:

To justify the ways of God to men.

I shall now examine the pamphlets solely from the point of view of the formation of Milton's ideas, in order to find in them evidences of his philosophical tenets and also of the state of his feelings.

The study of the pamphlets falls naturally into several periods. First comes the period of ecclesiastical controversy, 1641-1642, which produced Of Reformation in England, Of Prelatical Episcopacy, Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence, The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy, and An Apology for Smectymnuus. During this period Milton is with the Presbyterians. Then comes the group of treatises on divorce, from 1643 to 1645: The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Tetrachordon, Colasterion. Here Milton parts from the Presbyterians and joins the Independents. During this same period, in 1644, he publishes two works which have remained the most interesting in his prose for the public in general: Areopagitica and On Education. From 1649 to 1655 comes the struggle over the King's trial and execution. Milton publishes in 1649 The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and Eikonoklastes. Then come

the three Defences in Latin: Defensio pro populo Anglicano (1651), Defensio secunda (1654), and Defensio pro se (1655). Lastly, from 1658 to 1660, Milton, conscious of the failure of his cause, makes a last effort, first against the prelates again in A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes and Considerations on the likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church, and then against monarchy in The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth. This is the last of Milton's pamphlets; the cause is lost; action has become useless; Milton goes back to literature. In 1673, just before his death, he gives a last word of advice to his contemporaries about their religious quarrels, and in a few pages speaks Of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what best Means may be used against the Growth of Popery.

This division of the pamphlets is not a mere list of titles; it makes up, could we but discover it, the deeply human tale of Milton's hopes and disillusions. A noble heart and a high intelligence were thrown into the struggle in 1641; in 1660, there came out of the fighting a bitterly pessimistic man, conscious of complete failure.

During the struggle against the Bishops, Milton was young, full of ardor and of pride, and did not for one moment doubt of himself or of his cause. His marriage brought him the first great shock of his life. At one blow, he saw one of his noblest ideals shattered, and apparently through his own fault: he had allowed passion to blind him. He knew now that there were evil powers in him; he knew also that his party would help him not one bit in his struggle for his own inner liberty. But his youth and his pride rebelled. He resolved to free himself

and so to free the world. The Areopagitica and On Education are two hymns of certainty, of faith in the final triumph of liberty, in the divine mission of England, in the powers of the human mind. Then Milton grew calmer. His home life was established on a compromise; he lived through the civil wars. Then again he rushed into battle; Cromwell and the Saints had come; the Kingdom was coming. Milton struggled against political evil, and realized, with disgust and indignation, that passion and self-interest rule in the world, and that the corrupt individual could not but corrupt society. His conception of universal evil, the triumph of passion, settled in his mind. Soon he saw that evil was in his own party. Cromwell himself was not satisfactory, and at Cromwell's death, the small number of the Saints was all too insufficient against the upheaval of blind popular passion. All of his hopes had failed. The problem of evil had appeared to him in all the bitterness and despair of personal failure and of vain suffering and vain sacrifice.

II. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE BISHOPS

In January, 1641, Bishop Hall published his Humble Remonstrance against the revolutionary projects of the Parliament in the matter of ecclesiastical discipline. The famous pamphlet against the Bishops signed "Smectymnuus," came out in March of the same year. Thomas Young, who had been preceptor to Milton, was the chief author. Milton was still in connection with him, and Masson thinks that the poet even collaborated on the pamphlet. However this may be, in June, 1641, Milton

9 II, 219, 221, 238, 260. Masson's unruly imagination, however, frequently makes him an untrustworthy guide.

published anonymously his first contribution to the struggle: Of Reformation in England and the Causes that hitherto have hindered it.

The interest of this work is but small if the subjectmatter alone is considered. The general idea, which is endlessly repeated in Milton's pamplets, is that any sort of true reformation has been made impossible in England by the ambition and the caste-selfishness of the Bishops. Milton goes through the history of the Church - in a very unmethodical fashion-from the time of Henry VIII and, in a way, from early Christian times, looking for proofs. No properly equipped historian seems to have tackled the enormous quantity of historical matter in Milton's pamphlets, and I dare say the work is not worth doing. But from our point of view the study of Milton's ideas in 1641-Of Reformation in England is interesting.

Milton attaches himself from the first to the religious aspects of the quarrels of the time. Politics proper interest him less. This will be a permanent trait: even when he comes to pass judgment on his hero Cromwell, he will consider first his religious undertakings, and though approving of his general policy, will condemn him because of his religious measures.

Sir, Amidst those deep and retired thoughts, which, with every man Christianly instructed, ought to be most frequent of God, and of his miraculous ways and works amongst men, and of our religion and works, to be performed to him; after the story of our Saviour Christ, suffering to the lowest bent of weakness in the flesh, and presently triumphing to the highest pitch of glory in the spirit, which drew up his body also; till we in both be united to him in the revelation of his kingdom, I do not know of anything more worthy to take up the whole passion of pity on the one side, and joy on