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funeral was made for him, and that when matters were arranged, the careless and merry monarch laughed at the imposition. It was however ordered that his 'Iconoclastes' and 'Defensio pro Populo Anglicano' should be burned by the common hangman, and that the attorney general should proceed against them by indictment, or otherwise. Of the proscribed books several copies on the 27th of August9 were committed to the flames. Within three days after this, the act of indemnity passed, and he was relieved from the necessity of further concealment. When subsequently he was in the custody of the serjeant at arms, it is supposed that his pardon was obtained by the intervention of some powerful friends.10 Whether the story of Davenant's assistance is authentic, I am not able to say. The house on the 13th of December ordered his release: but how long he remained in custody is not known. Richardson says, that he lived in perpetual terror of being assassinated. It has been asserted, that Milton was offered the place of Latin secretary to the king, an offer that it is obvious, he could not in honour or conscience accept, and that on

9 In 1683 twenty-seven propositions from the writings of Milton, Hobbes, Buchanan, &c. were burnt at Oxford, as destructive to Church and State. This transaction is celebrated in Musæ Anglicanæ, called Decretum Oxoniense, vol. iii. p. 180.

Si similis quicunque hæc scripserit auctor,
Fato succubuisset, eodemque arserit igne:
In mediâ videas flammâ crepitante cremari
Miltonum, cœlo terrisque inamabile nomen.

10 The most copious account of the circumstances attending Milton's pardon are in Richardson's Life, p. 86, &c. communicated by Pope; who is also the authority for the assertion that Milton was offered the place of Latin secretary to the king.

his wife pressing his compliance, he said, 'Thou art in the right, you as other women, would ride in your coach; for me, my aim is to live and die

an honest man.

In 1661 he published his 'Accidence commenced Grammar,' bending his great and comprehensive mind to the construction of those humbler works which he considered of advantage to education. He lived for a short time in Holborn, near Red Lion Street, but soon removed to Jewin Street, by Aldersgate. In 1664, the year previous to the great sickness, he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, of a genteel family in Cheshire, a relation of his particular friend Dr. Paget.1 Mr. Todd considers it worthy of observation, that Milton chose his three wives out of the virgin state; while Sheffield duke of Buckingham selected his three from that of widowhood: but what inference the learned biographer would draw from their respective choices, is, from an entire ignorance on these subjects, to me unknown. Sheffield was probably looking out for a splendid jointure, and Milton for a gentle, virtuous, and attached companion.

11

From some cause, of course too trifling to be known to us, probably from the numerous fiuctuations of his fortune, Milton seems to have

11 The poet's widow died at Nantwich, in Cheshire, in 1727, having survived her husband fifty-two years; her funeral sermon, preached by the Rev. I. Kember, is published. 'I remember,' says Dr. Newton, 'to have heard from a gentleman who had seen his widow in Cheshire, that she had hair of this colour (golden tresses): it is more probable that he intended a compliment to his wife in the drawing of Eve, as he drew the portrait of Adam not without regard to his own person, of which he had no mean opinion.' v. P. L. iv. 305. The Aubrey MSS. say, she was a genteel person, a peaceful and agreeable humour. v. Vol. iii. p. 442.

been extremely unsettled in his choice of a residence. Soon after his marriage he lodged with Millington, the famous book auctioneer, a man of remarkable elocution, wit, sense, and modesty. Richardson says, that Millington was accustomed to lead his venerable inmate by the hand, when he walked the streets; the person who acquainted Richardson with this fact, had often met Milton abroad with his conductor and host. He again removed to a small house in Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill-fields, which, Philips says, was his last stage in this world, but it was of many years' continuance, more perhaps than he had had in any other place besides.

The plague had now begun to rage in London, and his young friend, Elwood the Quaker, found a shelter for him at Chalfont 12 in Buckinghamshire. 'It was on a visit at this place, that after some common discourses, says Elwood, had passed between us, he called for a MS. of his, which, being brought, he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with me, and read it at my leisure: and when I had so done, return it to him with my judgment thereupon. When I came home, and set myself to read it, I found that it was that excellent Poem, which he entitled Paradise Lost.' From this account it appears that Paradise Lost was complete in 1665, and Aubrey represents it

12 See an engraving of this house in Dunster's edition of Paradise Regained, and an account in Todd's Life of Milton, p. 272. I possess a drawing of it made about five years since, by which it appears, that a small part of it has been taken. down and altered. Elwood calls it a pretty box. Milton is supposed to have resided there from the summer of 1665, to the March or April of the following year. It appears that the plague reached even Chalfont, as may be seen by the Register in 1665.

as finished about three years after the king's restoration. Milton describes himself as long choosing and beginning late the subject of his Poem, and when that was selected, it was at first wrought into a dramatic form, like some of the ancient mysteries. There were two plans of the tragedy, both of which are preserved among the manuscripts in Trinity College, Cambridge; and which were printed, I believe, for the first time in Dr. Birch's Narrative of the Poet's Life.13 Such were the early and imperfect rudiments of Paradise Lost; the slender materials which he possessed in the story, and the splendid superstruc tion which he raised upon it, may remind us of the passage, in which he has thrown over the simple language of the ancient prophets, a magnificent description of his own creation.14 Isaiah had said, 'that Lucifer sate upon the mount of the congregation, on the sides of the north."' The key-note was struck on the chords of the Hebrew lyre, and Milton instantly built up a palace for the fallen angel, equal in brilliancy and splendour to the castles of Romance. He piled up its pinnacles from diamond quarries; and hewed its towers out of rocks of gold.

'At length into the limits of the north
They came, and Satan to his royal seat,
High on a hill, far blazing, as a mount
Rais'd on a mount, with pyramids and towers,

From diamond quarries hewn, and rocks of gold.
The palace of great Lucifer, so call
That structure in the dialect of men
Interpreted; which not long after he
Affecting all equality with God,
In imitation of that mount, whereon

13 See p. xlviii. of his Life.
14 See T. Warton's Milton, p. 238.

Messiah was declared in sight of heaven,
The mountain of the congregation call'd,' &c.

How small the spark that could kindle into a poetical flame in Milton's mind! how quick the apprehension that seized the slightest hint! and how rich and fertile the genius to improve what it possessed! Callimachus had (Hymn. Del. 292) mentioned three Hyperborean nymphs, who sent fruits to Apollo in Delos. The word Hyperborean' was sufficient. Instantly Milton converts them into British goddesses, and clothes them in a Pictish dress. Selden had mentioned that Apollo was worshipped in Britain; Milton on those hints joins them to the Druids:

'Hinc quoties festo cingunt altaria cantu
Delo in herbosâ Graiæ de more puellæ
Carminibus lætis memorant Corinëida Loxo,
Fatidicamque Upin, cum flavicoma Hecaergé,
Nuda Caledonio variatas pectora fuco.'

v. Mansus, ver. 45.

What extent of time was passed in the composition of this great work is not with exactness known. Mr. Capel Lofft thinks that Milton began this poem in his forty-eighth year,* and finished it in his fifty-seventh. Philips says that he had the perusal of it from the very beginning, for some years, in parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time; and that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal, so that in all the years he was about the poem, he may be said to have spent about half his time

* v. Preface to Lofft's Milton, p. xxviii. The Aubrey Letters (vol. iii. p. 447). His verse began at the autumnal equinoctial, and ceased at the vernal, or thereabouts (I believe about May); and this was four or five years of his doing it. He began about two years before the king came in, and finished about three years after the king's restoration.'

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