French, and a competent knowledge of the mathematics and astronomy. The Sunday's exercise for his pupils was for the most part to read a chapter of the Greek Testament, and to hear his learned exposition of it. The next work after this was to write from his dictation some part of a system of divinity, which he had collected from the ablest divines, who had written upon that subject. Such were his academic institutions; and thus by teaching others he in some manner enlarged his own knowledge; and having the reading of so many authors as it were by proxy, he might possibly have preserved his sight, if he had not moreover been perpetually busied in reading or writing something himself. It was certainly a very recluse and studious life, that both he and his pupils led; but the young men of that age were of a different turn from those of the present; and he himself gave an example to those under him of hard study and spare diet; only now and then, once in three weeks or a month, he made a gaudy day with some young gentlemen of his acquaintance, the chief of whom, says Mr. Philips, were Mr. Alphry and Mr. Miller, both of Gray's-Inn, and two of the greatest beaux of those times. But he was not so fond of this academical life, as to be an indifferent spectator of what was acted upon the public stage of the world. The nation was now in a great ferment in 1641, and the clamour ran high against the bishops, when he joined loudly in the cry, to help "A perfect system of Divi"nity," says Philips, "collected "from Amesius, Wollebius, &c." probably from the Medulla The ologiæ of William Ames, a Puritan, and the Compendium Theologic of Wollebius. E. the puritan ministers, (as he says himself in his second Defence,) they being inferior to the bishops in learning and eloquence; and published his two books Of Reformation in England, written to a friend. About the same time certain ministers having published a treatise against episcopacy, in answer to the Humble Remonstrance of Dr. Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich, under the title of Smectymnuus, a word consisting of the initial letters of their names, Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow; and Archbishop Usher having published at Oxford a refutation of Smectymnuus, in a tract concerning the Original of Bishops and Metropolitans; Milton wrote his little piece Of Prelatical Episcopacy, in opposition chiefly to Usher, for he was for contending with the most powerful adversary; there would be either less disgrace in the defeat, or more glory in the victory. He handled the subject more at large in his next performance, which was the Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty, in two books. And Bishop Hall having published a Defence of the Humble Remonstrance, he wrote Animadversions upon it. All these treatises he published within the course of one year, 1641, which show how very diligent he was in the cause that he had undertaken. And the next year he set forth his Apology for Smectymnuus, in answer to the Confutation of his Animadversions, written as he thought himself by Bishop Hall or his son'. And here he very luckily ended a controversy, which detained him from greater and better writings which he was iSee Mr. Warton's concluding note on the Latin poems. E.. meditating, more useful to the public, as well as more suitable to his own genius and inclination: but he thought all this while that he was vindicating ecclesiastical liberty*. In the year 1643, and the 35th of his age, he married; and indeed his family was now growing so numerous, that it wanted a mistress at the head of it. His father, As a specimen of the facility with which men may persuade themselves that their own motives are altogether pure, and those of their adversaries corrupt, I subjoin Milton's account of his motives in writing these pieces, from the Defensio Secunda. Pr. W. ii. p. 384. ed. 1753. Ut primum loquendi saltem cœpta est libertas concedi, omnia in Episcopos aperiri ore; alii de ipsorum vitiis, alii de ipsius ordinis vitio conqueri; iniquum esse, se solos ab ecclesiis omnibus, quotquot reformatæ sunt, discrepare; exemplo fratrum, sed maxime ex verbo Dei, gubernari Ecclesiam convenire. Ad hæc sane experrectus, cum veram affectari viam ad libertatem cernerem, ab his initiis, his passibus, ad liberandam servitute vitam omnem mortalium rectissime procedi, si ab religione disciplina orta ad mores et instituta reipublicæ emanaret, cum etiam me ita ab adolescentia parassem, ut quid divini, quid humani esset juris, ante omnia possem non ignorare, meque consuluissem ecquando ullius usus essem futurus, si nunc patriæ, immo vero ecclesiæ, totque fratribus evangelii causa periculo sese objicientibus deessem, statui, etsi tunc alia quædam meditabar, huc omne ingenium, omnes in Pri dustriæ vires transferre. mum itaque De Reformanda Ecclesia Anglicana, duos ad amicum quendam libros conscripsi; deinde, cum duo præ cæteris magni nominis episcopi suum jus contra ministros quosdam primarios assererent, ratus de iis rebus, quas amore solo veritatis, et ex officii Christiani ratione didiceram, haud pejus me dicturum quam qui de suo quæstu et injustissimo dominatu contendebant, ad hunc libris duobus, quorum unus De Episcopatu Prælatico, alter De Ratione Disciplinæ Ecclesiasticæ, inscribitur, ad illum scriptis quibusdam Animadversionibus, et mox Apologia respondi, et ministris facundiam hominis, ut ferebatur ægre sustinentibus suppetias tuli, et ab eo tempore, si quid postea responderent, interfui.-And Hall and Usher were the men against whom these insinuations were directed. The celebrated passage, alluded to by Bishop Newton, in which Milton promises some great poetical work at a future period, occurs in the preface to the second book of the Reason of Church Government. Parts of it are cited in the notes on P. L. i. 17. and P. R. i. 1. E. who had lived with his younger son at Reading, was, upon the taking of that place by the forces under the Earl of Essex, necessitated to come and live in London with this his elder son, with whom he continued in tranquillity and devotion to his dying day. Some addition too was to be made to the number of his pupils. But before his father or his new pupils were come, he took a journey in the Whitsuntide vacation, and after a month's absence returned with a wife, Mary the eldest daughter of Mr. Richard Powell, of Foresthill near Shotover in Oxfordshire, a justice of the peace, and a gentleman of good repute and figure in that county'. But she had not cohabited with her husband above a month, before she was earnestly solicited by her relations to come and spend the remaining part of the summer with them in the country. If it was not at her instigation that her friends made this request, yet at least it was agreeable to her inclination; and she obtained her husband's consent upon a promise of returning at Michaelmas. In the mean while his studies went on very vigorously m; and his chief diversion, A letter of Sir W. Jones to Lady Spencer, which Lord Teignmouth has preserved in his Life of Sir W. Jones, has given celebrity to the tradition that Milton composed several of his earliest productions, and particularly L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, at Foresthill. It is more probable that these poems were composed during his residence at Horton. There is no evidence that he ever resided at Foresthill, except perhaps during the month of his courtship. And though L'Allegro and Il Penseroso might have been written at that time, for they were not published till 1645, yet in his Ode to Rouse he speaks of the whole volume of poems in which they were included as the production of his youthful days. See Todd's Life of Milton, p. 19–25. and the Life by Symmons, p. 616–618. ed. 2. E. m<< And now the studies went "on with so much the more "vigour, as there were more "hands and heads employed; after the business of the day, was now and then in an evening to visit the Lady Margaret Lee, daughter of the Earl of Marlborough, Lord High Treasurer of England, and President of the Privy Council to King James I. This Lady, being a woman of excellent wit and understanding, had a particular honour for our author, and took great delight in his conversation; as likewise did her husband Captain Hobson, a very accomplished gentleman. And what a regard Milton again had for her, he has left upon record in a sonnet to her praise, extant among his other poems. Michaelmas was now come, but he heard nothing of his wife's return. He wrote to her, but received no answer. He wrote again letter after letter, but received no answer to any of them. He then dispatched a messenger with a letter, desiring her to return; but she positively refused, and dismissed the messenger with contempt. Whether it was, that she had conceived any dislike to her husband's person or humour; or whether she could not conform to his retired and philosophical manner of life, having been accustomed to a house of much gaiety and company; or whether being of a family strongly attached to the royal cause, she could not bear her husband's republican principles; or whether she was overpersuaded by her relations, who possibly might repent of having matched the eldest daughter of the family to a man so distinguished for taking the contrary party, the King's head-quarters being in their neighbourhood at Oxford, and his Majesty having now some fairer prospect of success; "the old gentleman [Milton's "father] living wholly retired "to his rest and devotion, with "out the least trouble imagin"able." Philips. |