Milton thus gives his reasons for engaging in the controversy. "As soon as liberty, at least of speech, began to be conceded, all mouths were opened against the bishops; some complained of the faults of the men, others of those of the order itself, and that we alone differed from all the other Reformed churches, and said that the Church ought to be guided after the example of our brethren, but chiefly after the Word of God. Aroused at this when I saw the true path to liberty taken, and men proceeding in the best manner from this beginning, with these steps, to free from servitude the whole of human life, if a discipline originating in religion should flow to the manners and institutions of the Commonwealth; when even from my younger days I had so prepared myself that above all things I should not be ignorant of anything relating to divine or human laws, and had asked myself if ever I should be of any use if I were now wanting to my country, nay, rather to the Church and to so many brethren who were exposing themselves to danger for the sake of the Gospel.-I resolved, although I was then meditating some other things, to transfer hither all my mental power and industry."

It would appear that it was toward the end of this year, when the royal forces had advanced to Brentford, that Milton wrote his sonnet "Captain or Colonel," etc.

The year 1643 found Milton at rest from religious controversy, and only occupied with his pupils. We may now therefore suppose him to be revolving in his mind the great poetic work of which he had already given so many intimations, particularly that splendid one in the Apology for Smectymnuus; his daily and

* Defensio Secunda.

nightly thoughts dwelling habitually on the Muses' hill, and thence perhaps at times taking their flight to the highest heaven of heavens, absorbed in dreams of sweet sounds and splendid visions. But, alas for poor human nature! he had at this time ideas of a far more sublunary character, for in this eventful year the quiet gardenhouse in Aldersgate-street was destined to receive a new inmate. "About Whitsuntide," says Phillips, "he took a journey into the country, nobody about him certainly knowing the reason, or that it was more than a journey of recreation. After a month's stay home he returns a married man, who set out a bachelor; his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr. Richard Powell, then a Justice of the Peace, of Forest Hill, near Shotover, in Oxfordshire." If we had only this account to guide us, we might say that his marriage was a very precipitate affair indeed, one of those to which the old saying, "Marry in haste and repent at leisure," would apply in its full force. But we have reason to suppose that this was by no means the exact state of the case, and that he had long been well-acquainted with the young lady and her family.

Before we proceed to the consideration of this matter, we must direct the reader's attention to the circumstance of how very little the Civil War seems to have interfered with the relations of social and domestic life. At this time London was the head-quarters of the Parliament, and Oxford those of the King. We might therefore be inclined to regard them as the respective capitals of two belligerent states, between which all civil intercourse had ceased. But not so. We find Milton, a strenuous Parliamentarian, setting out from London as if on a mere country excursion, going through Oxford to the house of

a Royalist, marrying his daughter, remaining there for a month, and then taking her back with him to London, accompanied by many members of her family. Such was the mild and gentle spirit in which that noble civil contest was conducted !*

From the Royalists' Composition Papers, published in 1826, it appears that on the 11th of June, 1627, Richard Powell, of Forest Hill, in the county of Oxford, gent., and William Hearne, of London, citizen and goldsmith, did by their writing or recognizance of the nature of a statute-staple acknowledge themselves to owe unto John Milton, then of the University of Cambridge, gent., son of John Milton, citizen and scrivener of London, the sum of £500, which statute was defeazanced for the payment to John Milton, the son, of 4312 on the 12th of December then next ensuing. As Milton was in his nineteenth year at the time, we are to suppose that this sum was intended to defray the expenses of the remainder of his time at the University; and it raises our opinion of his father when we find him thus, to a certain extent, making his son independent of him at that early age. We also learn from this transaction that John Milton, when cast off by his father, did not sever all connection with his native county, from which possibly much of his business came; for the Powells and Mil

* See in our History of England the letter of Sir William Waller to his noble friend" Sir Ralph Hopton, on the breaking out of the

war.

"Oh, gran bontà de' cavalieri antiqui!

Eran rivali, eran di fe diversi,

E si sentian degli aspri colpi iniqui

Per tutta la persona anco dolersi ;

E pur per selve oscure e calli obliqui

Insieme van senza sospetto aversi."—Orl. Fur. i. 22.

tons, being such close neighbours,* had probably been always on terms of intimacy. Hence perhaps, when Mr. Powell, of Forest Hill, was in want of money, he applied to his old acquaintance the London scrivener.

Mr. Powell never paid this debt; for in 1650-51 we find Milton asserting on oath, that he had received only about £180, "in part of satisfaction of his said just and principal debt, with damages for the same, and his costs of suit." We We may then suppose that, while residing at Horton, he had to take many a ride over to Forest Hill, and that on his return from the Continent he must have gone down there more than once to try to get his money. He therefore, it is probable, had known Mary Powell from the time she was a child. Whether Milton's father approved of his choice or not, we have no means of determining; it would however appear that he gave no opposition. The bridegroom was now in his thirty-fifth year; the bride was perhaps a dozen years or more younger.

Milton was to have had a fortune of £1000 with his wife, no contemptible sum in those days. But he never got a shilling of it, owing, as we may suppose, to the ruin brought on Mr. Powell by the war. What the personal attractions of the bride were we are not informed, but in all likelihood they were not very great; for the imagination of poets sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt,' and the objects of their affection are often but scantily furnished by Nature with external charms. As to her mind, it was apparently of no high order; and she seems to have been one of those women,-more common in England than perhaps in any other country,―of a dull, sluggish temperament, with little powers of conversation,

Forest Hill is not four miles from Oxford, and Shotover lies directly between them.

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and requiring strong external excitement,-such as dancing, for example, to rouse them to anything like enjoyment. In the works which we shall presently notice he says, evidently alluding to his wife, that "the bashful muteness of a virgin may oftentimes hide all the unloveliness and natural sloth which is really unfit for conversation;" and he hints that he had discerned this defect in her previous to his marriage, but that her friends had glossed it over. He also speaks of a "mute and spiritless mate;" and again, puts the case of a man who "shall find himself bound fast to an image of earth and phlegm, with whom he looked to be the copartner of a sweet and gladsome society."

In the course of the summer Milton returned with his bride to his house and pupils in London. Some few of her nearest relations," says Phillips," accompanied the bride to her new habitation, which, by reason the father nor anybody else were yet come, was able to receive them; where the feasting held for some days in celebration of the muptials, and for entertainment of the bride's friends." A few weeks after there came an invitation to her from her family, probably suggested by herself, to go back and spend some time in the country. To this apparently unreasonable request her husband gave a willing consent, only desiring her to be back at Michaelmas. The period fixed arrived, but no sign of the return of Mrs. Milton. Her husband wrote again and again, but his letters were unanswered; he then sent a special messenger, "who, to the best of my remembrance," says Phillips, "reported that he was dismissed with some sort of contempt;" and thus all the poct's perhaps high-built hopes of conjugal felicity were rudely cast down and scattered to the winds.