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Phillips appears to intimate that the penitent's reception began like Dalila's and ended like Eve's. "He might probably at first make some show of aversion and rejection; but partly his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger and revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion, and a firm league of peace for the future." With a man of his magnanimous temper, conscious no doubt that he had himself been far from blameless, such a result was to be expected. But it was certainly well that he had made no deeper impression than he seems to have done upon "the handsome and witty gentlewoman." One would like to know whether she and Mistress Milton ever met, and what they said to and thought of each other. For the present, Mary Milton dwelt with Christopher's mother-in-law, and about September joined her husband in the more commodious house in the Barbican whither he was migrating at the time of the reconciliation. It stood till 1864, when it was destroyed by a railway company.

Soon after removing to the Barbican, Milton set his Muse's house in order, by publishing such poems, English and Latin, as he deemed worthy of presentation. It is a remarkable proof both of his habitual cunctativeness and his dependence on the suggestions of others, that he should so long have allowed such pieces to remain uncollected, and should only have collected them at all at the solicitation of the publisher, Humphrey Moseley. The transaction is most honourable to the latter. "It is not any private respect of

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gain," he affirms; "for the slightest pamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of learnedest men, but it is the love I bear to our own language. I know not thy palate, how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy soul is perhaps more trivial airs may please better. Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing forth into the light as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth since our famous Spenser wrote." The volume was published on Jan. 2, 1646. It is divided into two parts, with separate title-pages, the first containing the English poems, the second the Latin. They were probably sold separately. The frontispiece, engraved by Marshall, is unfortunately a sour and silly countenance, passing as Milton's, but against which he protests in four lines of Greek appended, which the worthy Marshall seems to have engraved without understanding them. The British Museum copy in the King's Library contains an additional MS. poem of considerable merit, in a hand which some have thought like Milton's, but few now believe it to have been either written or transcribed by him. It is dated 1647, but for which circumstance one might indulge the fancy that the copy had been a gift from him to some Italian friend, for the binding is Italian, and the book must have seen Italy.

Milton was now to learn what he afterwards taught, that "they also serve who only stand and wait." He had challenged obloquy in vindication of what he deemed right: the cross actually laid upon him was to fill his house with inimical and uncongenial depen

dants on his bounty and protection. The overthrow of the Royalist cause was utterly ruinous to the Powells. All went to wreck on the surrender of Oxford in June, 1646. The family estate was only saved from sequestration by a friendly neighbour taking possession of it under cover of his rights as creditor; the family mansion was occupied by the Parliamentarians, and the household stuff sold to the harpies that followed in their train; the "malignant's" timber went to rebuild the good town of Banbury. It was impossible for the Powells to remain in Oxfordshire, and Milton opened his doors to them as freely as though there had never been any estrangement. Father, mother, several sons and daughters came to dwell in a house already full of pupils, with what inconvenience from want of room and disquiet from clashing opinions may be conjectured. "Those whom the mere necessity of neighbourhood, or something else of a useless kind," he says to Dati, "has closely conjoined with me, whether by accident or the tie of law, they are the persons who sit daily in my company, weary me, nay, by heaven, almost plague me to death whenever they are jointly in the humour for it." Milton's readiness to receive the mother, deemed the chief instigator of her daughter's "frowardness," may have been partly due to the situation of the latter, who gave him a daughter on July 29, 1646. In January, 1647, Mr. Powell died, leaving his affairs in dire confusion. Two months afterwards Milton's father followed him at the age of eighty-four, partly cognisant, we will hope, of the gift he had bestowed. on his country in his son. It was probably owing to

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the consequent improvement in Milton's circumstances that he about this time gave up his pupils, except his nephews, and removed to a smaller house in High Holborn, not since identified; the Powells also removing to another dwelling. "No one," he says of himself at this period, ever saw me going about, no one ever saw me asking anything among my friends, or stationed at the doors of the Court with a petitioner's face. I kept myself almost entirely at home, managing on my own resources, though in this civil tumult they were often in great part kept from me, and contriving, though burdened with taxes in the main rather oppressive, to lead my frugal life." The traces of his literary activity at this time are few-preparations for a history of England, published long afterwards, an ode, a sonnet, correspondence with Dati, some not very successful versions of the Psalms. He seems to have been partly engaged in preparing the treatise on Christian Doctrine, which was fortunately reserved for a serener day. In undertaking it at this period he was missing a great opportunity. He might have been the apostle of toleration in England, as Roger Williams had been in America. The moment was most favourable. Presbyterianism had got itself established, but could not pretend to represent the majority of the nation. It had been branded by Milton himself in the memorable line: "New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." The Independents were for toleration, the Episcopalians had been for the time humbled by adversity, the best minds in the nation, including Cromwell, were Seekers or Latitude men, or sceptics.

Here was invitation enough for a work as much greater than the "Areopagitica" as the principle of freedom of thought is greater than the most august particular application of it. Milton might have added the better half of Locke's fame to his own, and compelled the French philosophers to sit at the feet of a Bible-loving Englishman. But unfortunately no external impulse stirred him to action, as in the case of the "Areopagitica." Presbyterians growled at him occasionally; they did not fine or imprison him, or put him out of the synagogue. Thus his pen slumbered, and we are in danger of forgetting that he was, in the ordinary sense of that much-abused term, no Puritan, but a most free and independent thinker, the vast sweep of whose thought happened to coincide for a while with the narrow orbit of so-called Puritanism.

Impulse to work of another sort was at hand. On January 30, 1649, Charles the First's head rolled on the scaffold. On February 13th was published a pamphlet from Milton's hand, which cannot have been begun before the King's trial, another proof of his feverish impetuosity when possessed by an overmastering idea. The title propounds two theses with very different titles to acceptance. "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates proving that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the power to call to account a tyrant or wicked king, and after due conviction to depose and put him to death: if the ordinary magistrate have neglected or denied to do it." That kings have no more immunity than others from the consequences of evil doing is a proposition which

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