In the above quotation from Phillips, it is observed that his father had not at that time come to reside with him. We have seen that the old gentleman lived at Reading, with his younger son; but in the preceding month of April this town had surrendered to the troops of the Earl of Essex; and the derangement in the affairs of Christopher Milton caused by this event, probably making it inconvenient for his father to remain with him any longer, he came and took up his abode in the house of his eldest son in London. Of the exact time of his coming we are not informed, but it was probably after the departure of his daughter-in-law. Phillips says that "the old gentleman lived wholly retired to his rest and devotion, without the least trouble imaginable."

To return to our poet's connubial affairs. Various reasons have been assigned for this most extraordinary conduct of Mrs. Milton and her family. Phillips, who we are to recollect was living in his uncle's house at the time, explains it in the following manner: "The family," he says, "being generally addicted to the Cavalier party, and some of them possibly engaged in the King's service, who by this time had his head-quarters at Oxford, and was in some prospect of success,-they began to repent them of having matched the eldest daughter of the family to a person so contrary to them in opinion; and thought that it would be a blot on their escutcheon whenever that Court should come to flourish again." In this way he tries to account for the conduct of her family; with respect to his young aunt herself, he intimates that the quiet and seclusion of her husband's abode were not agreeable to one who had been used to the rude merriment and joviality of the house of a country squire of those days. Aubrey's account is, that she "was brought

up and bred where there was a great deal of company and merriment, as dancing, etc. and when she came to live with her husband she found it solitary; no company came to her; and she often heard her nephews cry and be beaten. This life was irksome to her, and so she went to her parents; he sent for her home after some time. As for wronging his bed, I never heard the least suspicion of that; nor had he of that any jealousy." When to these accounts we add that Milton was perhaps, as he is described to be, rather "a harsh and cholerie man," there may be little difficulty in explaining the conduct of his wife.

Milton was not a man to sit down tamely under an insult of this nature. He set himself forthwith to consider the questions of marriage and divorce in all their bearings, and he arrived at the conclusion that there were other cases, beside the admitted ones, in which the nuptial tie might be dissolved. In the year 1644 he gave to the world his views on the subject, in a treatise addressed to the Parliament, and entitled The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; at first anonymously; but to a second edition in the same year he prefixed his name. Having, a little time after the publication of this treatise, discovered that the celebrated Martin Bucer had, in a work addressed to the young King Edward VI., treated of the subject of divorce, and arrived at the same conclusions with himself, he published, under the title of The Judgement of Martin Bucer touching Divorce, a synopsis, or epitome, of that portion of his work, with a preface and postscript.

Great was the wrath and fury of the Presbyterian clergy, who were now in the ascendant, and were fully as intolerant and as impatient of opposition as the

Episcopalians had been. Foul language flowed in abundance, but mingled with little argument, for they preferred the simpler confutation of force. By their influence the author was summoned to the bar of the House of Lords, whence however he was honourably dismissed. In a sermon preached before the two Houses of Parliament, on the 13th of August, 1644, Herbert Palmer, B.D., a member of the Assembly of Divines, expressed his indignation at their suffering such a work to exist: "A wicked book," said he, "is abroad and uncensured, though deserving to be burnt; whose author hath been so impudent as to set his name to it, and dedicate it to yourselves." Others took the short road of treating it as "an error so gross as to need no other confutation" than the mere mention of it,-a convenient mode of argument in use at all times among those who are determined not to be convinced, reason the reasoner ever so strongly.

In the following year Milton published on the same subject a treatise named Tetrachordon, in which he examines and expounds the four chief places in Scripture which treat of marriage or nullities of marriage; and this was followed by Colasterion, a reply to a nameless answer to the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Thus ended the controversy, but Milton retained his opinions. to the end of his life.

His efforts to have a change made in the law of marriage and divorce were, as might be expected, a complete failure; though he made some proselytes, on whom the title of Miltonists was bestowed. We are not however to infer that his cause was bad, or his arguments feeble; he had high authorities on his side, and nothing was brought against him but virulent declamation, pointless ridicule, and the vis inertia of long-established prejudice.

We shall, when we arrive at the proper place, give a sketch of his opinions on the subject, and the arguments by which he supported them.

But his whole time was not devoted to this subject. In 1611 he gave to the light, at the request of his friend Mr. Samuel Hartlib, a tractate on Education; and in this year also he addressed to the Parliament his Arcopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, the noblest and most useful of his prose works. In 1615 he published a volume of poems; and as it contains the sonnets to A virtuous Young Lady and to The Lady Margaret Ley, they had been of course written by this time. In this same year he composed the two sonnets on the ill-success of his efforts in the cause of matrimonial liberty, and one to his friend Henry Lawes, on the publishing of his Airs. To this period perhaps we may assign also that to his friend Lawrence, and the first of those to Cyriac Skinner.

As to Milton's mode of life at this period we have little information. His literary labours and his pupils must have engrossed the far greater portion of his time. He had a select circle of friends whom he used to visit. Among these we find particular mention of Lady Margaret Ley, to whom, as we have seen, he addressed one of his sonnets. Still he may have found his domestic life irksome for want of a suitable companion; so, regarding his union with Miss Powell as terminated by her obstinate desertion of him, he began to look out for some more suitable person with whom he might renew the nuptial tie. The lady on whom he fixed his choice, and to whom he actually paid his addresses, was the daughter of a Dr. Davis. She was, as we are assured, both beautiful and accomplished, but of the full meaning of

these words we have no means of judging, as they are in themselves indefinite; and at the present day we know that in newspaper parlance all brides of the better classes are lovely and accomplished, as it were, by patent. As little can we determine how these addresses were received by Miss Davis and her friends, but we should suppose not very favourably; for however they might be convinced of the soundness of the suitor's views on the subject of divorce, still, as the law then stood, and there seemed to be little chance of its being altered, -the issue of such a marriage would be held to be illegitimate. Add to this, that the lady would in all probability have been quite excluded from the society of her own sex-a thing few virtuous women can patiently endure. Accordingly, as Phillips tells us, she was "averse, as 'tis said, to this motion."

The experiment however was not to be made. On the 13th of June, 1645, the fatal battle of Naseby was fought, and the Royal affairs went rapidly to ruin. The Powell family, it is probable, soon saw that it would be their interest to have a friend on the side now triumphant, and deemed it a matter of prudence to endeavour to effect a reconciliation between Milton and his wife. The lady herself probably had heard of his addresses to Miss Davis, and her jealousy was excited; for there are women who can do very well without the society of a lover or a husband, but who cannot endure the idea of its being enjoyed by another. Milton's own friends also, it is probable, thought it would be far better and more becoming, that he should be reconciled to his lawful wedded wife, than engaged in a union with another which the law would not recognize. Accordingly when one day he was paying a visit at the house of one of his