the day. This was his first contribution to the Liberal side of the struggle. In days when there was of course no regular newspaper press, these tracts would have the effect in influencing public opinion which is attained in our time by the works of the great editors and writers of political journals. It was one of Milton's occupations to issue such tracts all through the war. He thus played the part in the Rebellion which would now be given to a great journalist in modern politics. He handled chiefly political subjects, but also some subjects not political. For instance, as he was maintaining himself in part by teaching, this interest induced him to write his famous tractate "On Education : to Mr. Samuel Hartlib," in June, 1644. But in all these years (1638-1649) his main interest was in politics and in the war. Except the sonnets written from time to time to commemorate an occasion of public interest, his poetical compositions almost ceased. He began his prose-writing, as we have said, in 1641 by publishing five pamphlets in a current controversy about "Church Government," advocating the abolition of the office of bishop in the Church of England. His next subject was divorce. In the years 1643 and 1644 he printed four pamphlets to show that any marriages ought to be dissolved if husband and wife were not suitable mates for each other. This subject was doubtless brought to his mind by the unlucky experiences of his own sudden marriage in 1643 with Mary Powell, a young girl of seventeen, daughter of a Royalist. But the matter took on a public and political importance. These pamphlets on divorce brought Milton into a quarrel with his political friends of the Presbyterian party. The Westminster Assembly, a body of divines called together by act of the Long Parliament to advise them upon the religious settlement of England, took offence at these very independent doctrines about marriage and tried to have Milton "investigated" by a Parliamentary committee. This act of

theirs separated him forever from the Presbyterian party. It had the effect, moreover, of stimulating him to write in 1644 his greatest pamphlet, "Areopagitica: a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing: to the Parliament of England." Macaulay speaks on page 84 of this great and beautiful work, which anticipates by more than a hundred years the modern principle of freedom of the press as it was at last introduced and upheld in England and America.

15. It will be seen by one who follows his writing carefully, that as the fight with the king went on, Milton's eager spirit carried him on in the heat of his arguments to separate himself more and more from the moderate supporters of Parliament, consisting chiefly of the Presbyterians and the Scotch party, and to join with the Independents, whose centre was in the army of the military saints commanded by Cromwell. He wrote in their interest, after the execution of the king, his famous pamphlet "On the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates: proving that it is lawfull and hath been held so in all ages for any who have the power to call to account a wicked king or tyrant, and after due conviction to depose and put him to death. The author J. M. 1649." This act identified him finally with the "regicides" and the party of Cromwell. He thought he saw the true principles of liberty there maintained; and here was a refuge for his own imaginative radicalism, which separated him from most parties in the nation. The king had proved, as even his friends ought to admit, an unfit governor of his country in that stormy time. The issues at stake in religion and policy were too difficult for him even to understand. But to Milton and to the Puritans, Charles Stuart was worse than a mistaken partisan; he was the very incarnation of evil. He had made himself guilty of all the innocent blood shed in the war. "The military saints of the army resolved," says Macaulay

in his history, "in defiance of the old laws of the realm, and of the almost universal sentiment of the nation, that the king should expiate his crimes with his blood. A revolutionary tribunal was created; that tribunal pronounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy, and his head was severed from his shoulders before thousands of spectators in front of the banqueting hall of his own palace." So Milton defended this act as a legitimate method of disposing of unsatisfactory "kings and magistrates."

16. After the king's execution the government of England was decreed to be "by way of a republic." The executive administration was nominally intrusted to a Council of State of forty-one members, though the army and Cromwell actually held supreme power. This council in 1649 made John Milton its Secretary for Foreign Tongues. In 1653, when Cromwell dismissed the Rump and founded his Protectorate, according to the "Instrument of Government," a similar council was established, under which Milton held the same office. His duties in these offices were simply to write in his beautiful Latin (the best Latin in Europe of that day) such documents as the government desired to send to foreign powers, and to interpret such documents as came from abroad. In addition to these regular duties, he had a general oversight of any literary work needed by the commonwealth. Such literary tasks were immediately put into his hands. The regicide had to be apologized for and the king's propaganda to be met. The Royalists in 1649 were reading and circulating a book called Eikon Basiliké" (The King's Image), professing to be a legacy from the dead king, containing the thoughts and prayers of his last hours. Milton was employed to write a book to meet the dangerous popularity of this work. He wrote a tract called "Eikonoclastes: the Image Breaker," criticising and sneering in what one must

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say is a rude, brawling tone at the pious sentiments of the king. The Council thought so well of this tract, as to employ Milton again, in 1653, on a similar task. The Royalists, desiring to bring the king's cause before the cultivated and governing classes of Europe, had issued a Latin tract called Defensio regia. It was done for them in

Holland by a famous Leyden professor, Claude Saumaise, "Salmasius," as he was known to the reading world. Milton answered it by a tract called Defensio pro populo Anglicano. This book of Milton's is chiefly interesting as an exhibition of the ferocious personalities which passed for controversy at that time. No cross-roads country editors ever abused each other as these great scholars of European dignity and reputation did. The main question in the Defensio about the king is almost lost under a flood of personalities about Salmasius. But the book created a great stir in the highest circles. Milton is said to have received the compliments of every embassy in London on account of the book. "The only inducement," says Aubrey, of this period, "of severall foreigners that came over to England was chiefly to see O. Protector and Mr. J. Milton." But the book has also the sad interest of costing the author his eyesight. Other pamphlets, including a second Defensio pro populo, which contains interesting portraits of some great commonwealth statesmen, were dictated and published by him during his secretaryship. There are also still in existence many public letters he wrote for the council and for Cromwell himself. In 1653 Milton's wife died, leaving him the three daughters whose education was so curious and whose attitude to their father so very unfilial. In 1656 he married Catherine Woodcock. She died in 1657, and is buried in St. Margaret's, Westminster. To her he addressed the famous Sonnet XXIII.

17. Another misfortune soon befell him. The death of

Cromwell, in 1658, changed the whole face of English politics, and with this change began the last chapter of Milton's life. After several unlucky experiments it became plain to the English nation that they had now only the choice between the old Stuart monarchy again and government by the major-generals of the Model Army. The army settled the question by beginning to quarrel for the prize, whereupon the civilians of all parties drew together for protection. A "free Parliament," supported by General Monk, brought back the Stuarts in 1660. In a last struggle for his convictions, Milton issued some English pamphlets some on the old subject of "Church Government" and one, in the very year of the Restoration, called "A Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth and the Excellence Thereof." But the day for these efforts had gone by. The king returned, and the secretary of the commonwealth and the defender of regicide was glad to vanish into poverty and private life. Why Milton was not punished among the other chiefs of the Cromwellian party is still very obscure; but after remaining in hiding for a while he was restored to liberty. His circumstances were much reduced, however, and his circle of friends much diminished. He was a discreditable acquaintance, a "detestable republican," and almost an outlaw. Such people as came about him were chiefly young men of the more devout and persecuted sects. Independent Baptists or Quakers, like young Ellwood, Andrew Marvell, Cyriac Skinner, remained faithful; Lady Ranelagh and others of his older friends and pupils visited him, and a Dr. Paget, a physician of that neighborhood, came to see him often. By Dr. Paget, Milton was recommended to marry as his third wife Elizabeth Minshull, who cherished and cared for him lovingly till his death.

Under these circumstances of comparative isolation and defeat he went back to the other and earlier hopes and