CHAPTER III.

EFFECTS OF MILTON'S _AREOPAGITICA_--HIS INTENTION OF ANOTHER MARRIAGE: HIS WIFE'S RETURN AND RECONCILIATION WITH HIM--REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN--FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S COLLECTED POEMS: HUMPHREY MOSELEY THE BOOKSELLER--TWO DIVORCE SONNETS AND SONNET TO HENRY LAWES--CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS ANTI-PRESBYTERIAN SONNET OF REPLY--SURRENDER OF OXFORD: CONDITION OF THE POWELL FAMILY--THE POWELLS IN LONDON: MORE FAMILY PERPLEXITIES: BIRTH OF MILTON'S FIRST CHILD.

The effect of Milton's _Areopagitica_, immediately after its publication in November 1644, and throughout the year 1645, seems to have been very considerable. Parliament, indeed, took no formal notice of the eloquent pleading for a repeal of their Licensing Ordinance of June 1643. As a body, they were not ripe for the discussion of the question of a Free Press, and the Ordinance remained in force, at least as an instrument which might be applied in cases of flagrant transgression. But public opinion was affected, and the general agitation for Toleration took more and more the precise and practical form into which Milton's treatise had directed it: viz. an impatience of the censorship, and a demand for the liberty of free philosophising and free printing. "Such was the effect of our author's _Areopagitica_," says Toland, in his sketch of Milton's life, "that the following year Mabol, a licenser, offered reasons against licensing, and, at his own request, was discharged that office." [Footnote: Toland's Memoir of Milton prefixed to the Amsterdam (1698) edition of Milton's Prose Works, p. 23.] Toland is in a slight mistake here, at least in his dating. The person whom he means--Gilbert Mabbott, _not_ 'Mabol'--was Rushworth's deputy in the office of Clerk to the House of Commons, doing duty for him while he was away with the New Model as Secretary to Fairfax: and not only did this Mabbott occasionally license pamphlets and newspapers, as it would have been Rushworth's part to do, through the year 1645, but he was expressly recommended to be licenser of "weekly pamphlets" or newspapers, Sept. 30, 1647, and he continued to act in this capacity till May 22, 1649, at which time it was, and not in 1645, that he was released from the business at his own request.[Footnote: My notes from the Stationers' Registers of 1645 and subsequent years; Lords Journals, Sept. 30, 1647; and Commons Journals, May 22, 1649. There is some evidence, however, that, before this last date, Mabbott had found the duty irksome (see Commons Journals, Aug. 31, 1648).] The effect of Milton's argument on Mabbott in particular, therefore, was not so immediate as Toland represents. There can be no doubt, however, that as Milton, in his _Areopagitica_, had tried to make the official licensers of books, and especially those of them who were ministers, ashamed of their office, so his reasons and sarcasms, conjoined with the irksomeness of the office itself, did produce an immediate effect among those gentlemen, and modify their official conduct. Several of them, among whom appears to have been Mr. John Downham, who had licensed Milton's own Bucer Tract (_antè_, p. 255, note), became more lax in their censorship than the Presbyterians thought right; and there was at least one of them, Mr. John Bachiler, who became so very lax, from personal proclivity to Independency, that he was denounced by the Presbyterians as "the licenser-general not only of Books of Independent Doctrine, but of Books for a general Toleration of all Sects, and against Pædo-Baptism." [Footnote: _Gangræna_: Part I. (ed. 1646), pp. 38, 39. In Part III. Edwards devotes three pages (102-- 105) to a castigation of Mr. Bachiler for his offences as a licenser. Bachiler, he says, "hath been a man-midwife to bring forth more monsters begotten by the Devil and born of the Sectaries within the last three years than ever were brought into the light in England by all the former licensers, the Bishops and their Chaplains, for fourscore years." He was in the habit, Edwards adds, of not only licensing sectarian books, but also recommending them; and among the Toleration pamphlets he had licensed was the reprint of Leonard Busher's tract of 1614 called _Religious Peace_ (see _antè_, p. 102). "I am afraid," says Edwards, "that, if the Devil himself should make a book and give it the title _A Plea for Liberty of Conscience, with certain Reasons against Persecution for Religion_, and bring it to Mr. Bachiler, he would license it, and not only with a bare _imprimatur_, but set before it the commendations of 'a useful treatise' or 'a sweet and excellent book.'"] The _Areopagitica_, in fact, found out, even among the official licensers of books, men who sympathised with its views; and it established prominently, as one of the practical questions between the Independents and the Presbyterians, the question of the liberty of Unlicensed Printing. It was Milton that had taught the Independents, and the Anti-Presbyterians generally, to bring to the front, for present purposes, this form of the Toleration tenet. For example, one finds that John Lilburne had been a reader of the _Areopagitica_, and had imbibed its lesson, and even its phraseology. "If you had not been men that had been afraid of your cause," is one of Lilburne's addresses to the Presbyterians and the Westminster Assembly Divines, "you would have been willing to have fought with us upon even ground and equal terms--namely, that the Press might be as open for us as for you, and as it was at the beginning of this Parliament; which I conceive the Parliament did of purpose, that so the free-born English subjects might enjoy their Liberty and Privilege, which the Bishops had learnt of the Spanish Inquisition to rob them of, by locking it up under the key of an _Imprimatur_." [Footnote: Lilburne, as quoted by Prynne in his _Fresh Discovery of Blazing Stars_, p. 8.] There is proof, in the writings of other Independents and Sectaries, that Milton's jocular specimens of the _imprimaturs_ in old books had taken hold of the popular fancy. It became a common form of jest, indeed, in putting forth an unlicensed pamphlet, to prefix to it a mock licence. Thus, at the beginning of the anonymous _Arraignment of Persecution_, the author of which was a Henry Robinson (_antè_, p. 387), there is a mock order by the Westminster Assembly, with the names of the two Scribes appended, to the effect that the author, "Young Martin Mar-Priest," be thanked for his excellent treatise, and authorized to publish it, and that no one except "Martin Claw-Clergy," appointed by the author to print the same, presume to do so. [Footnote: Quoted by Prynne in his _Fresh Discovery_, p. 8.] Prynne quotes this as an example of the contempt into which the Ordinance for Licensing had fallen with the Sectaries, and of their supreme effrontery, Robinson, he says, was one of the chief publishers of scandalous libels, having brought printers from Amsterdam, and set up a private printing press for the purpose. [Footnote: I may take this opportunity of announcing a rather curious fact, of which I have ample and incontestable proof, thought the proper place for stating it in detail is yet to come. It is that Milton, the denouncer of the Licensing System, and the satirist of the official licensers of 1644, was himself afterwards an official censor of the Press. He was one of the licensers of newspapers through 1651 and a portion of 1652, doing the very work from which Mabbott had begged to be excused. The fact, however, is susceptible of an easy explanation, which will save Milton's consistency.]

On the whole, then, Milton's position among his countrymen from the beginning of 1645 onwards may be defined most accurately by conceiving him to have been, in the special field of letters, or pamphleteering, very much what Cromwell was in the broader and harder field of Army action, and what the younger Vane was, in Cromwell's absence, in the House of Commons. While Cromwell was away in the Army, or occasionally when he appeared in the House and his presence was felt there in some new Independent motion, or some arrest of a Presbyterian motion, there was no man, outside of Parliament, who observed him more sympathetically than Milton, or would have been more ready to second him with tongue or with pen. Both were ranked among the Independents, as Vane also was; but this was less because they were partisans of any particular form of Church- government, than because they were agreed that, whatever form of Church- government should be established, there must be the largest possible liberty under it for nonconforming consciences. If this was Independency, it was a kind of large lay Independency; and of Independency in this sense Milton was, undoubtedly, the literary chief. Only, when he was thought of by the Independents as one of their champions, it was always with a recollection that his championship of the common cause was qualified by a peculiar private crotchet. He figured in the list of the chiefs of Independency, if I may so express it, with an asterisk prefixed to his name. That asterisk was his Divorce Doctrine. He was an Independent with the added peculiarity of being the head of the Sect of Miltonists or Divorcers.

INTENTION OF ANOTHER MARRIAGE: HIS WIFE'S RETURN AND RECONCILIATION WITH HIM.

In 1645 Milton still gloried in the asterisk. All the copies of the second and augmented edition of _The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ having been sold, there was a reprint of it in this year, forming substantially the third edition of the original treatise. None of his writings hitherto had been in such popular demand; and as, besides the three editions of the original Divorce treatise, there were also in circulation his _Bucer Tract_, his _Tetrachordon_, and his _Colasterion_, he had identified himself with the Divorce subject by a total mass of writing larger than he had yet devoted to any other. While his five Anti-Episcopal pamphlets, of 1641-42, make together 326 pages of his prose works in Pickering's edition, the four Divorce treatises, of 1643-45, make 378 pages of the same; so that, in mere quantity, Milton was 52 pages more a Divorcer than an Anti-Prelatist. He had now, however, as he had announced in his dedication of the _Tetrachordon_ to Parliament, done all that he meant to do on the subject through the medium of mere pamphleteering. But he had hinted to Parliament, while making that announcement, that a man with his opinions might do more than write pamphlets in their behalf. "If the Law make not a timely provision," he had said, "let the Law, as reason is, bear the censure of the consequences." There was a covert threat here that Milton, if the Law would not allow him to marry again, might marry again in defiance of the Law.

Early in 1645, at all events, Milton did think of marrying again. His wife had been away from him for the better part of two years; and she was now nothing more in his memory than a girl who had been in his house in Aldersgate Street as his bride for a few weeks, whom he had found out in that short experience to be stupid and uncompanionable, who had then left him on some pretence, and gone back to her father's house, and whose only communications with him since had been a message or two of contempt and insult. Law or no law, it was all over between him and that girl! All the circumstances where known: his unfortunate position was the talk of neighbours; often, as we have imagined, kindly souls of women, young and older, must have had their colloquies and whispers about his pitiable bachelorhood caused by the shameful desertion of his wife. Kindly talk was all very well: but was there any unmarried lady willing to take the place of the deserter, if asked to do so? This was really the question in Aldergate Street, and in all the round of Milton's acquaintances. Candidates were not likely to be numerous, even among those freer Christian opinionists among whom Milton principally moved; and there was, moreover, a complication in the general difficulty. Milton, having blundered in his choice once, and having principled himself now with very high notions of feminine fitness, was very likely to be careful in a second choice. Was there accessible any lady in whom the two indispensable conditions of fitness and willingness could be found united? This was the problem for Milton, and it is on record that he tried to solve it. One remembers his sonnet "_To a Virtuous Young Lady_," written about the same time as that to the Lady Margaret Ley, and wonders whether the "virgin wise and pure" there commemorated for her excellencies of mind and character was thought of by him as the possible successor of Mary Powell. Can her name have been Miss Davis? That, at all events, was the name of the lady who _was_ thought of as Mary Powell's probable successor. It is from Phillips that we have the particulars of the story:--

"Not very long after the setting forth of these treatises," says Phillips, referring to the Divorce Treatises, "having application made to him by several gentlemen of his acquaintance for the education of their sons, as understanding haply the progress he had infixed by his first undertakings of that nature, he laid out for a larger house, and soon found it out. But, in the interim, before he removed, there fell out a passage which, though it altered not the whole course he was going to steer, yet it put a stop, or rather an end, to a grand affair, which was more than probably thought to be then in agitation: it was indeed a design of marrying one of Dr. Davis's daughters, a very handsome and witty gentlewoman, but averse, as it is said, to this motion. However, the intelligence hereof, and the then declining state of the King's cause, and consequently of the circumstances of Justice Powell's family, caused them to set all engines on work to restore the late married woman to the station wherein they a little before had planted her. At last this device was pitched upon:--There dwelt in the Lane of St. Martin's-le- Grand, which was hard by, a relation of our author's, one Blackborough, whom it was known he often visited; and upon this occasion the visits were the more narrowly observed, and possibly there might be a combination between both parties, the friends on both sides concentring in the same action, though on different behalfs. One time above the rest, he making his usual visit, the wife was ready in another room, and on a sudden he was surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making submission and begging pardon on her knees before him. 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; and it was at length concluded that she should remain at a friend's house, till such time as he was settled in his new house at Barbican, and all things for her reception in order. The place agreed on for her present abode was the Widow Webber's house in St. Clement's Churchyard, whose second daughter had been married to the other brother [Christopher Milton] many years before."

Phillips tells the story very clearly, and a little annotation is all that is wanted:--The lady whom Milton thought of, and had perhaps been thinking of for some time, as a possible substitute for Mary Powell, was "one of Dr. Davis's daughters." Who this Dr. Davis was, Phillips, writing at a time when the mere name was probably enough for Londoners, does not inform us; nor have I been able, with any certainty, to identify him. [Footnote: There had been a Thomas Davies, M.D., born about 1564, and educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he had graduated in medicine in 1591, and who was afterwards a medical practitioner in London, and Licentiate and Censor of the Royal College of Physicians there. As he had died in 1615, the youngest of any surviving daughters of his in 1645 must have been past her thirtieth year. But, on the whole, Phillips's words suggest that the Dr. Davis he means was alive in 1645 or had recently been alive; so that this is not likely to have been the one. There was a Nicholas Davis, or Davys, M.D., who had taken that degree at Leyden in 1638, had been incorporated in the same degree at Oxford in 1642, and may have been afterwards in practice in London (Munk's Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, and Wood's Fasti, II. 9). The date of his graduation at Leyden, however, seems rather late for the hypothesis that he was Phillips's Dr. Davis. After all, there may have been some other conspicuous Dr. Davis among Milton's acquaintances, and he need not have been a medical doctor.] Dr. Davis, at all events, dead or living, had daughters, one of them "a very handsome and witty gentlewoman," between whom and Milton there was some attempt to arrange a marriage. She herself, however, was naturally "averse to this motion;" and, indeed, one can hardly understand what kind of proposition could have been made to her or her friends. That something was in agitation, nevertheless, and that it was talked of more particularly in the spring and early summer of 1645, Phillips had a positive recollection, more by token because at that very time, he also remembered, his uncle had offers of more pupils than he could accommodate in the house in Aldersgate Street. He had consequently been looking about for a larger house, and had found one suitable close at hand, in the street called Barbican.

Was Miss Davis to be persuaded to be mistress of this new house? Would the "several gentlemen" of Milton's acquaintance who meant to board or half-board their sons with him, or would the spouses of those gentlemen, have been satisfied with that arrangement? The experiment was not to be tried. The house in Barbican had been taken, but Milton had not yet removed into it, when, to Miss Davis's relief, another arrangement was brought about.

Rumours of what was going on, and of the new house in Barbican, had been borne to Oxford, and the Foresthill mansion of the Powells. In any case the news of the Miss Davis project, the "grand affair," as Phillips calls it, could not but have caused some excitement there. But the news came at a time when the family-fortunes were no longer what they had been when Mary Powell had left her Parliamentarian husband and taken refuge again under the maternal wing, amid her Royalist relatives and acquaintances, close to the King's head-quarters. Crippled already, like other Royalist families, by necessary contributions to the King's cause, the Powells had begun to be aware, and more poignantly than others because of their more straitened means, that their sacrifices were likely to be all in vain-- that Parliament was to be master, and to have the power of pains and penalties over those whom it called Delinquents. Especially after the shattering blow to the King at Naseby (June 14, 1645), doubt on the subject was nearly at an end. What was then more natural than that distressed Royalist families should be looking forward anxiously to the amount of new distress which the final triumph of Parliament would inflict upon them? And so in the Foresthill mansion there had been grave consultations between Mr. and Mrs. Powell and between Mrs. Powell and her daughter, ending in a resolution, in which Mrs. Powell was perhaps the last to acquiesce--for the daughter afterwards pleaded that her mother all along had been "the chief promoter of her frowardness" [Footnote: Wood, Fasti, I. 482.]--that it would be best for the daughter to return to London and try to make it up with Mr. Milton. At least one member of the family would thus have a roof over her head in the hard time coming; and might not Milton, with his Parliamentarian connexions, be able to befriend the family generally when the time did come? Soon after Naseby, accordingly, we are to imagine the poor young wife taking the journey to London, accompanied by her mother or some other relative, on her humiliating and dubious errand.

How were they to manage when they were in London? It was not a simple matter of going straight to the house in Aldersgate Street and obtaining admission. Ingenuity was necessary, and preparation of a mode for approaching Milton. But that, too, had been thought of. Communications were opened or had already been opened, with those of Milton's friends who, it was supposed, would be willing to co-operate in the intended reconciliation, if not in the wife's interest, at least in his. And which of all Milton's friends was _not_ willing? In such cases, it is in the man himself that the storm rages; he alone passionately feels: the friends that stand by, even most sympathisingly, are cool and collected, regarding the principal only as a difficult patient, who must be soothed and humoured till he can be brought to reason. To Milton's friends his Divorce notion may have seemed a just enough speculation, or one at least about which _they_ would not quarrel with him; the real question with them was as to the continued practical implication of his own life and prospects with such a speculation, infamous as it seemed to respectable society and to the leaders of religious opinion. Let him hold it, if he would, and even write for it still; but was he, at the age of thirty-seven, to wrap up his whole future life in it, and proceed as if he and it must be dashed to pieces together? Was not this reconciliation between him and his wife, of which there seemed now to be a chance, the best thing that could happen for him as well as for her? If once it were brought about, would not things adjust themselves so that the public would hear no more of the perilous stuff of the Divorce Doctrine, or hear of it only in dying echoes? So reasoned Milton's friends then, just as people would reason now in a similar case; and the friendly plot was arranged. Milton, it appears, was in the habit of dropping in, almost daily, in his walk City-wards from Aldersgate Street, on a kinsman of his, named Blackborough, whose house was in St. Martin's-le-Grand Lane-- _i.e._ in that bend of Aldersgate Street which was _within_ the Gate, and where now the General Post-Office of London stands. Here, some day in July or August 1645, he was surprised into an interview with his girl-wife. The good Blackborough had consented to aid and abet, and had lent his house for the purpose; and, other friends being at hand to second him, he had opened, let us say, the door of the room in which Mary Powell was waiting, had ushered Milton in, and had left them together. Then, as Phillips imagines, had come Milton's two moods in succession,-- the first his instinctive mood of anger and rejection, and the second that mood of his slow relenting which was witnessed and helped through by the in-bustling friends:--

_Mood First._

_Samson_. My wife, my traitress! let her not come near me!

_Chorus_. Yet on she moves; now stands and eyes thee fixt, About to have spoke; but now, with head declined, Like a fair flower surcharged with dew, she weeps, And words addressed seem into tears dissolved, Wetting the borders of her silken veil: But now again she makes address to speak.

_Dalila._ With doubtful feet and wavering resolution I came, still dreading thy displeasure, Samson, Which to have merited, without excuse, I cannot but acknowledge: yet, if tears May expiate (though the fact more evil drew In the perverse event than I foresaw), My penance hath not slackened, though my pardon No way assured. But conjugal affection, Prevailing over fear and timorous doubt, Hath led me on desirous to behold Once more thy face, and know of thy estate; If aught in my ability may serve To lighten what thou suffer'st, and appease Thy mind with what amends is in my power, Though late, yet in some part to recompense My rash, but more unfortunate, misdeed.

_Samson._ Out, out! hyæna! _Samson Agonistes_, 725-747.

_Mood Second._

She ended weeping, and her lowly plight, Immoveable till peace obtained from fault Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought Commiseration: soon his heart relented Towards her, his life so late and sole delight, Now at his feet submissive in distress, Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking, His counsel whom she had displeased, his aid; As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon. _Paradise Lost_, X. 937-946.

Was this Milton's idealized history long afterwards of his own two moods in Blackborough's house in St. Martin's-le-Grand Lane some time in July or August 1645? So far as it was autobiography at all, I should not say that it was much idealized, except in so far as Dalila in the land of the Philistines, and Eve in Paradise, had to be represented poetically as beautiful, eloquent, and fascinating, while of poor Mary Powell's claims to beauty we know little, and our information as to her eloquence and fascination consists in our irremovable impression that it was of her that Milton had been thinking in that passage in his first Divorce Tract in which he described the hard fate of a man bound fast by marriage to "an image of earth and phlegm." From the side of Milton there was, I think, no idealizing: hardly else than as his own Samson, or his own Adam, in his poems, did Milton feel or speak on any important occasion of his own real experience. If, then, the second mood now prevailed, and he yielded, it was only, I believe, because despair for himself and pity for another overcame him jointly, and what was alone possible was accepted as disastrously fated. So much by way of necessary anticipation, and that there may not be a mistake, even for a moment, as to the real nature of the reconciliation that had been effected. Meanwhile, the friends of both wife and husband were delighted with their success; and, till the new house in the Barbican should be ready, young Mrs. Milton went to lodge in the house of the Widow Webber, Christopher Milton's mother-in-law, near St. Clement's Church in the Strand.

REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN.

September 1645, when the New Model Army had stormed Bristol and was otherwise carrying all before it in the English South-west, when Montrose in Scotland had been extinguished by David Leslie at Philiphaugh, and when the Presbyterian system had been so far arranged for England that the first order of Parliament for the election of Elders in all the London parishes had gone out, and Triers of the competency of these Elders had been appointed in all the London Presbyteries: then it was, as near as one can calculate, that the interesting house in Aldersgate Street was left by Milton, and he, his wife, his father, the two boys Phillips, and the other pupils, entered together into the new house in Barbican.

It was no great remove. The street called Barbican derived its name, according to Stow, from the fact that at one time there had stood there "a _burgh-kenning_, or watch-tower of the city, called in some language a _barbican_;" and modern etymologists perfect Stow's observation by tracing the name, through the mediæval Latin _barbacana_, to the Persian _bála khaneh_, meaning "upper chamber," whence our less corrupt form _balcony_, actually identical with barbican. [Footnote: Stow, as quoted in Cunningham's _London_, Art. "Barbican;" and Wedgwood's _Dict. of English Etymology_, Art. "Balcony."] There had, in short, been a barbican, or outer defence of the city, at this spot, a little beyond the particular gate called Aldersgate, just as there were such things beyond others of the city-gates; but the name had lingered only here as applied to the street or site where a barbican had been. The street, retaining its warlike name, still exists--a short street going off from Aldersgate Street at right angles on one side, and within a walk of not more than two or three minutes from the site of Milton's Aldersgate Street house. The house in Barbican was larger, and so much farther off from the city- gate; but that was all. There was no real change of neighbourhood or of street-associations. A dingy street now, dingier even than the main thoroughfare of Aldersgate Street, Barbican was then a fair enough bit of suburban London towards the north; and it boasted, as we already know, of at least one aristocratic mansion in which Milton had some interest--the town-house of the Earl of Bridgewater, ex-President of Wales, and the peer of _Comus_. The name "Bridgewater Gardens" still designates, without a shred of garden left there, but only grimy printing-offices and the like instead, the portion of the street which the mansion occupied. Nay more, till within a few years ago; Milton's own house in Barbican, with some modern change of frontage, and some filling-up of interstices right and left, was extant and known. Somehow, while the more important house in Aldersgate Street had perished from the memory of the neighbourhood (probably because the fabric itself had perished), the tradition of Milton still clung around this house in Barbican, I have passed it many a time, stopping to look at it, when it was occupied, if I remember rightly, by a silk-dyer, or other such tradesman, exhibiting on his sign the peculiar name of "Heaven," and using the lower part of it for his shop. Though jammed in with other houses and undistinguished in the line of bustling street, it had the appearance of having once been a commodious enough house in the old fashion; and I have been informed that some of the old windows, consisting of thick bits of dim glass lozenged in lead, still remained in it at the back, and that the occupants knew one of the rooms in it as "the Schoolroom" where Milton had used to teach his pupils. But alas! one of the city railways took it into its head that it required to run through this precise bit of Barbican, and the house, with others near it, was doomed to demolition. When I was last in Barbican part of the shell of the house was still standing, roofless, disfloored, diswindowed, and pickaxed into utter raggedness, as so much rubbish yet waiting to be removed from the new railway gap. The inscription yet remained on the front-door--"This was Milton's House," or to that effect--which had been very properly put there by the contractor or his workmen to lure people to a last look at the interior before the demolition was complete. [Footnote: My information about the interior of the house is from a friend who visited it just when it was doomed. Though I had passed it often when it was yet complete, I had unfortunately, not expecting its doom, deferred going in till it was too late; and my last homage to it had to be a lingering saunter near and in the railway gap behind, when there was only the remnant of it described in the text.]

FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S COLLECTED POEMS: HUMPHREY MOSELEY THE BOOKSELLER.

Among Milton's first employments in his new and larger house in Barbican, while his wife was resuming her duties and the schoolroom was getting gradually into use, we are able to distinguish one of particular interest. It was nothing else than the revision for the press of the proof-sheets of the first collected edition of his Miscellaneous Poems.

By his dealings with the Press hitherto, it is to be remembered, Milton had made himself known to most people chiefly as a prose pamphleteer. Except his lines _On Shakespeare_, written in 1630, and prefixed anonymously to the Second Folio Shakespeare in 1632; his _Comus_, written and acted in 1634, and sent to the press, also without the author's name, by his friend Henry Lawes in 1637; and his _Lycidas_, written in 1637, and printed in 1638, in the Cambridge University volume of Verses on Edward King's death, but only with the initials "J.M.":-- except these, and perhaps another scrap or two of Latin or English verse that had been printed in a semi-private manner, all Milton's poems, written at intervals over a period of more than twenty years, had remained in his own keeping in manuscript, and had been communicated to friends only in that form. In consequence of what had been thus printed, or privately circulated, a certain reputation for Milton as a poet had, indeed, been established; but the voice of this reputation was hardly heard amid the much louder uproar caused by his eleven prose-pamphlets between 1641 and 1645. Now, to a man who believed Poesy to be his true calling, who had consented reluctantly to put aside "his garland and singing robes" in order that he might engage in the work of politics, and who had announced while doing so that in that work it was but the strength of his left hand he could lend and not the nobler cunning of his right, this state of public opinion about himself must have begun to be a little disagreeable. It was the most natural thing in the world that, as soon as there should be a lull in the political tumult, the least leisure of the public for a return to purer and blander literature, Milton should make some sign of resuming his garland, so as to remind those about him of his original vocation. But, precisely in the year 1045, when Naseby had assured the victory of Parliament, there did come, for the first time since the war had begun, or indeed since the Long Parliament had met, such a lull of the polemical tumult. The statistics of the English book- trade, as they are presented in the Registers of the Stationers' Company, verify and illustrate this statement.

Even in the year 1640, when there was political agitation enough in England, but the Long Parliament had not yet met, there was still so much leisure for the purer forms of literature in English society that London publishers were bringing out such things as Masques and other remains of Ben Jonson, the Works of Thomas Carew, various Plays by Shirley, Glapthorne, Habington, Heywood, Killigrew, and Brome, an edition of Herrick's Poems, and Thomas May's Supplement to Lucan. As soon, however, as we pass beyond 1640, and the real work of the Long Parliament is begun, such books almost entirely cease to appear. The matter then provided for the reading of the English public consisted of a huge jumble of Pamphlets on the Church-question, Sermons, semi-controversial Treatises of Theology, Political Speeches, fragments of Ecclesiastical History, Prose Invectives and Satires, and latterly, when the Civil War was in progress, an abundance of Diurnals, Intelligencers, Mercuries, and other news-sheets. Between 1640 and 1645 one does indeed discern twinkling in this jumble some gems or would-be gems of the purer ray serene. The "Epigrams Divine and Moral" of Sir Thomas Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, were published in April 1641; Howell's "Instructions for Foreign Travel" came out in September in the same year; Baker's "Chronicle of the Kings of England" in the following December; in April 1642 there was a London edition of Thomas Randolph's Poems, which had appeared originally at Oxford in 1638; and the publication of Denham's "Cooper's Hill" and his "Tragedy called The Sophy" is a rather notable event of August 1642, the very month in which the King raised his standard. In the same month one London publisher, Francis Smethwick, registered for his copies a number of books of the poetical kind which had been the property of his late father, including "Mr. Drayton's Poems," "Euphues's Golden Legacy," Meres's "Witt's Commonwealth," and also "Hamblett, a Play," "The Taming of the Shrew," "Romeo and Juliet," and "Love's Labour's Lost." This transaction, however, hardly implied that these books were in demand, but only that Smethwick wanted to secure his interest in them on succeeding to his father's business. Afterwards, while the war was actually raging, it is not till December 1644 that one comes upon anything of the finer sort worth mentioning. On the 14th of that month there was registered for publication the first edition of "Poems, &c., written by Mr. Edmund Waller, of Beckonsfield, Esq., lately a member of the Honourable House of Commons," but then, as we know, a disgraced plotter, who, having, by great favour, been permitted to carry his dear-bought life, and his remaining wealth, into exile in France, left this parting gift to his countrymen, that they might think of him meanwhile as kindly as they could. Except that I have not taken notice of a publication or two of the voluminous Scotchman Alexander Rosse, Chaplain to his Majesty, [Footnote: This Alexander Rosse, or "Dr. Alexander Ross," made famous in _Hudibras_, was one of the singular characters of the time, and a memoir of him, with a complete list of his writings, would be a not uninstructive curiosity. He was a native of Aberdeen, born about 1590, but had migrated to England, where he became Master of the Free School at Southampton, and Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles. By a succession of publications of all kinds, in Latin and in English., he acquired the reputation of being "a divine, a poet, and an historian." He made a good deal of money, and, at his death in 1654, left bequests, for educational purposes, to Aberdeen, Southampton, Oxford, and Cambridge. ] the foregoing enumeration fairly represents, I believe, the amount of book-production of the purer or non-controversial kind that went on in London in the four loud-roaring years between 1640 and 1645.

In 1645, however, and especially after Naseby, there are symptoms of a slightly revived leisure for other kinds of reading than were supplied by Diurnals, Sermons, Pamphlets, and books of Polemical Theology, and of a willingness among the London booksellers to cater for this leisure. In that year, interspersed amid the still continuing tide of Pamphlets, Diurnals, Sermons, and other ephemerides, were such novel appearances in the London book-world as these--two Treatises, one physical, the other metaphysical, by Sir Kenelm Digby, then abroad; an edition of Buxtorf's Hebrew Grammar; an Essay by Lord Herbert of Cherbury; some metrical religious remains of Francis Quarles, then just dead; some attempts to introduce the mystic Jacob Bohme, by specimens of his works; a translation of Æsop's Fables and those of Phædrus; the issue of the second and third parts of the _Epistolæ Hoelianæ_ or James Howell's Letters, with a re-issue of his "Dodona's Grove;" and a re-issue of Randolph's comedy of "The Jealous Lovers." Clearly, as the Civil War was drawing to a close, the Muses of pure History, pure Speculation or Philosophy, Scholarship for its own sake, and even lighter Phantasy, did hover over England again, timidly seeking some spots where they might rest themselves in the all-prevailing controversy between Independency and Presbyterianism.

Almost always, in such cases, a social tendency is represented in the activity of some particular person. Nor is it otherwise here. So far as Poetry and so-called Light Literature are concerned, one has no difficulty in pointing to the particular London publisher who in 1645, and from that year onwards, stood out from all his fellows by his alertness in the trade. This was HUMPHREY MOSELEY, who had his shop at the sign of the Prince's Arms in St Paul's Churchyard. Something in his personal tastes, I am inclined to think, must have determined him to the line of business which he selected; so marked is his avoidance of all dealings in sermons, ephemeral treatises on theology, and pamphlets either way on the present crisis, and his preference for poetry and books of general culture. He had been in the trade, in partnership with a Nicholas Fussel, in St. Paul's Churchyard, as early as 1634, [ Footnote: Wood's Ath. II 503.] and shortly after that is heard of as in business for himself. I have a note of him as registering for his copyright, on March 16, 1639-40, Howell's "Dodona's Grove;" and thenceforward, in worse times, he stuck to Howell. He not only published Howell's "Instructions for Foreign Travel" in September 1641, and again the second and third parts of Howell's "Letters" in 1645, with a re-issue of "Dodona's Grove;" but he acquired, in the same year, the copyright of the first part of the "Letters," which had been originally brought out by another publisher. More significant still is the fact that it was Moseley that was the publisher of Waller's Poems in December 1644. [Footnote: "Poems &c. written by Mr. Ed. Waller of Beckonsfield, Esquire; lately a member of the Honourable House of Commons. All the Lyrick Poems in this Booke were set by Mr. Henry Lawes, Gent. of the King's Chappell, and one of his Majestie's Private Musick. Printed and Published according to Order. London. Printed by T.W. for Humphrey Mosley at the Princes Armes in Paul's Churchyard: 1645:" pp.96 small 8vo. My authority for the date of the publication of the volume--December 1644--is the Stationers' Registers.] After that date his tendency to trade-dealings in Poetry and the like is so manifest in the Stationers' records that I find appended to my MS. notes, from these records, for the London Bibliography of the year 1646, this memorandum:--"_Poetry and Pure Literature looking up again this year, and chiefly through the medium of Moseley's shop._" By that time Moseley had distinguished himself as the publisher of original editions of books, not only by Howell and Waller, but also by Milton, Davenant, Crashaw, and Shirley, and moreover as the ready purchaser of whatever copyrights were in the market of poems and plays by Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Ludwick Carlell, Shirley, Davenant, Killigrew, and other celebrities dead or living. To this group of Moseley's authors Cowley and Cartwright were soon added; and it was not long before he snapped out of the hands of duller men Denham's Poems, Carew's Poems, various things of Sir Kenelm Digby, and every obtainable copyright in any of the plays of Shakespeare, Massinger, Ford, Rowley, Middleton, Tourneur, or any other of the Elizabethan and Jacoban dramatists. For at least the ten years from 1644 onwards there was, I should say, no publisher in London comparable to Moseley for tact and enterprise in the finer literature.

Moseley was only on the way to make all this reputation for himself, and indeed Waller's volume of Poems, published in Dec. 1644, was yet the principal advertisement of his shop, when he and Milton came together. Pleased with the success of the Waller, it appears, Moseley thought of a collection of Mr. Milton's Poems as a likely second experiment of the same kind, and applied to Milton for the copy. The application was not disagreeable to Milton; and, accordingly, some time after the middle of 1645, or just while he was preparing to remove from Aldersgate Street to Barbican, and there came upon him the great surprise of his wife's re- appearance, Moseley and he were busy in arrangements for the new volume. Milton's acknowledged London publishers hitherto had been these three-- "Thomas Underhill, of the Bible in Wood Street" (_Of Reformation_, 1641, _Of Prelatical Episcopacy_, 1641, and _Animadversions on Remonstrant's Defence_, 1641), "John Rothwell, at the sign of the Sun in Paul's Churchyard" (_Reason of Church Government_, 1641, and _Apology for Smectymnuus, 1642), and "Matthew Symmons" (the _Bucer Tract_, 1644); and this last-mentioned Symmons, who does not give the locality of his shop, had been probably the printer also of those pamphlets of Milton which bore no publisher's name (_Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, 1643, 1644, and 1645, _Of Education_, 1644, _Areopagitica_, 1644, and _Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion_, 1645). Now, however, these were forsaken for the moment, and for bringing out the Volume of Poems the conjunction was Milton and Humphrey Moseley. The revisal of the proof- sheets may have been begun in Aldersgate Street, but it must mainly, as I have said, have been among Milton's first employments at the new house in Barbican. Here, at all events, is Moseley's entry of the new volume in the Stationers' Registers: "_Oct._ 6 [1645], _Mr. Moseley ent. for his copie, under the hand of Sir Nath. Brent and both the Wardens, a booke called Poems in English and Latyn by Mr. John Milton._" Usually the entry of a book in the Stationers' Registers was about simultaneous with its publication. In this case, however, there was a delay of nearly three months between the registration and the actual appearance. The precise day of the publication of the new volume was Jan. 2, 1645-6. [Footnote: This is ascertained by a MS. note of the collector Thomason's, or by his direction, on a copy among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum; Press-mark E. 1126. "Jan. 2" is inserted before the word "London" in the title-page.] Either, therefore, Moseley had registered the volume before the printing had proceeded far, or after the sheets were printed there was some little cause of delay.

The following is the title-page of this interesting and now very rare volume:--

"Poems of Mr. John Milton, both English and Latin, compos'd at several times. Printed by his true Copies. The Songs were set in Musick by Mr. Henry Lawes, Gentleman of the King's Chappel, and one of His Majestie's Private Musick.

'Baccare frontem Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro.' VIRGIL, _Eclog._ vii.

Printed and publish'd according to Order. London, Printed by Ruth Raworth, for Humphrey Moseley; and are to be sold at the signe of the Princes Arms in Paul's Churchyard. 1645."

The volume is a very tiny octavo, divided into two parts in the paging. First come the ENGLISH POEMS, occupying 120 pages, and arranged thus:-- _On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, compos'd_ 1629; _A Paraphrase on Psalm CXIV. _; _Psalm CXXXVI. _; _The Passion_; _On Time_; _Upon the Circumcision_; _At a Solemn Music_; _An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester_; _Song on May Morning_; _On Shakespear_, 1630; _On the University Carrier who, &c. _; _Another on the Same_; _L'Allegro_; _Il Penseroso_; _Sonnets_, English and Italian--ten in number (I. "O Nightingale;" II. "Donna leggiadra;" III. "Qual in colle," with the attached "Canzone;" IV. "Diodati e te'l;" V. "Per certo i bei;" VI. "Giovane piano;" VII. "How soon hath Time;" VIII. "Captain or Colonel;" IX. "Lady that in the prime;" X. "Daughter to that good Earl");-- _Arcades_; _Lycidas_; _Comus_. [Footnote: To this enumeration of the English pieces in the volume of 1645 I may append three bibliographical notes--(1) Of the 28 pieces the original drafts of 10 still exist in the volume of Milton MSS. in Trinity College, Cambridge--viz.: _On Time_, _Upon the Circumcision_, _At a Solemn Music_, Sonnets 7, 8, 9, and 10, _Arcades_, _Lycidas_, and _Comus_. All these drafts are in Milton's own hand, except that of Sonnet 8, only the heading of which is in his hand. Of the other 18 pieces, the most important of which are _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, the original MSS. have not come down to us. (2) It will be seen that two of the known early English Poems are omitted in the volume: viz. the piece _On the Death of a Fail Infant dying of a Cough_-- _i.e._ the poem on the death of his niece, the infant girl Phillips, written in 1626; and the College piece of 1628 entitled _At a Vacation Exercise_. These pieces first appeared in the Second Edition of the Poems in 1673. (3) It may also be noted that the latest written pieces which appear in the volume of 1645 are Sonnets 9 and 10--the one to the anonymous young lady, the other to the Lady Margaret Ley. We have assigned them to the year 1644, but they _may_ have been as late as 1645.] As if to call attention to _Comus_ as the longest and chief of the poems, it has a separate title-page, thus, "_A Mask of the same Author, presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, then President of Wales, Anno Dom. 1645;_" but, though there is this break of a new title-page, the paging runs on without interruption, _Lycidas_ ending p. 65, and _Comus_ taking up the rest to p. 120. Here, however, there is a _complete_ break, as if it were intended that the English Poems, there ending, might be bound by themselves. The LATIN POEMS follow as a separate collection, paged separately from p. 1 to p. 88, and with this new title-page prefixed to them: "_Joannis Miltoni Londinensis Poemata: quorum pleraque intra annum oetatis vigesimum conscripsit: nunc primum edita. Londini, Typis R.R., Prostant ad Insignia Principis, in Coemeterio D. Pauli, apud Humphredum Moseley, 1645._" There is, however, a double arrangement of the Latin Poems, or a distribution of them into two classes. First come those which constitute the so-called ELEGIARUM LIBER; viz., the "Elegies" proper, numbered from I. to VII., as they now stand in all editions of Milton, together with the eight little scraps in the same elegiac verse (five of them on the subject of the Gunpowder Plot, and three on the Italian singer Leonora) which some modern editors have preferred to detach from the Elegies, and put under the separate heading of "Epigrams." This is contrary to Milton's intention; for the phrase "Elegiarum Finis" _follows_ those scraps in the volume, showing that he meant them to go with the Elegies, and that, in fact, he thought it permissible to call anything an Elegy that was written in the ordinary elegiac verse of alternate Hexameter and Pentameter. Accordingly, all his Latin poems in that kind of verse having been included in the _Elegiarum Liber_, all his other Latin poems, not in that kind of verse, but either in Hexameter pure or in rarer metres, together with two fragments of Greek verse, are regarded as "Sylvæ," and constitute the distinct SYLVARUM LIBER which ends the volume. First among the "Sylvæ" come the six Latin poems of the Cambridge period--_In obitum Procancellarii Medici, In Quintum Novembris, In obitum Præsulis Eliensis, Naturam non pati Senium, De Ideâ Platonicâ quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit, and Ad Patrem_; then, by way of typographic interruption, come the two scraps of Greek verse--viz. _Psalm LXIV_. and the scrap entitled _Philosophus ad Regem Quendam_, &c.; after which are the two Latin pieces, _Ad Salsillum_ and _Mansus_, written in Italy, and the _Epitaphium Damonis_, written immediately after the return to England. This last stands a little apart from the body of the "Sylvæ," as if Milton attached a peculiar sacredness to it.

Such is a general description of the First or 1645 Edition of Milton's Miscellaneous Poems. The volume, however, presents some points of additional interest:----Has the reader noticed the motto on the title- page from Virgil's seventh Eclogue? It is peculiarly significant of the mood in which the volume was published. Milton, who had called himself Thyrsis in the _Epitaphium Damonis_, here adopts in the happiest manner the words of the young poet-shepherd Thyrsis in Virgil's pastoral. Thyrsis there, contending with Corydon for the prize in poetry, begs from his brother shepherds, if not the ivy of perfectly approved excellence, at least

"Some green thing round the brow, Lest ill tongues hurt the poet yet to be."

Could anything more gracefully express Milton's intention in the volume? This collection of his Poems, written between his sixteenth year and his thirty-eighth, was a smaller collection by much, he seems to own, than he had once hoped to have ready by that point in his manhood; but it might at least correct the impression of him common among those who knew him only as a prose pamphleteer. Something green round his brow for the present, were it only the sweet field-spikenard, would attest that he had given his youth to Poesy, and would re-announce, amid the clamour of evil tongues which his polemical writings had raised, that he meant to return to Poesy before all was done, and to die, when he did die, a great Poet of England.

This feeling, which is the motive of the publication, appears curiously in all the details of its arrangement. The order in which the poems are printed, within each division or class, is, as nearly as possible, the order in which they were written; the deviations being only such as proper editorial art required. To almost every juvenile piece, too, whether in English or in Latin, there is prefixed some indication of the exact date of its composition; and the title-page of the Latin Poems distinctly solicits attention to the fact that most of them were composed before the author was twenty. Even more remarkable than this care in the dating is the introduction into the volume of all the eulogiums which Milton had already received from private friends on account of the Poems, or of any portion of them. To the _Comus_ there is prefixed Henry Lawes's eulogistic Dedication of it, in the edition of 1637, to Viscount Brackley, and also Sir Henry Wotton's cordial letter to Milton, with its praise of the poem in that edition, when Milton was on the start for his continental tour in the spring of 1638. To the Latin Poems as a whole there is even a more formal vestibule of encomiums. First of all, there is a little preface by Milton in Latin apologizing to the reader for troubling him with them. "Though these following testimonies concerning the Author," he says, "were understood by himself to be pronounced not so much _about_ him as _over_ him, by way of subject or occasion-- it being the general habit of men of brilliant genius, if they are at the same time one's friends, to fashion their praises too eagerly rather by the standard of their own excellencies than by truth--yet he was unwilling that the singular goodwill of such persons towards him should remain unknown, and the rather because others advised him strongly to the step he is now taking. While therefore he puts from him with all his strength the imputation of desiring overpraise, and would rather not have attributed to him more than is due, he cannot deny but he considers the opinion of him meantime by wise and celebrated men a very high honour." Accordingly there here follow the encomiums of his various Italian friends, known to us long ago, and which had been carefully preserved by him till now among his papers--the Latin distich by the famous Marquis Manso of Naples; the outrageously complimentary Latin verses of the two Romans, Salzilli and Selvaggi; and the more interesting Italian ode of compliment and Latin Dedication by the two Florentines, Francini and Carlo Dati. (See Vol. I. pp. 732-4, 753-4, and 768.) One has to remember that the insertion of such commendatory verses in new volumes of poetry was a fashion of the day. But, besides, there was really the anxiety for "something green round the brow." In short, it is as if Milton said to his countrymen--"Here is plenty of greenery, and to spare, with florid stuff intermixed, of which I am rather ashamed: pick out as much or as little of it as you like; only, at this date in my life, to prevent mistake, let me have _some_ kind of garland."

The publisher, Humphrey Moseley, for one, was most willing to oblige Milton. Prefixed to the volume, on the blank space before the poems themselves begin, is this most interesting preface in Moseley's own name:--

"THE STATIONER TO THE READER.

"It is not any private respect of gain, gentle Reader--for the slightest Pamphlet is nowadays more vendible than the works of learnedest men--but it is the love I have to our own language, that hath made me diligent to collect and set forth such pieces, both in prose and verse, as may renew the wonted honour and esteem of our English tongue; and it's the worth of these both English and Latin Poems, not the flourish of any prefixed encomions, that can invite thee to buy them--though these are not without the highest commendations and applause of the learnedest Academicks, both domestick and foreign, and amongst those of our own country the unparalleled attestation of that renowned Provost of Eton, Sir Henry Wootton. I know not thy palate, how it relishes such dainties, nor how harmonious thy soul is: perhaps more trivial Airs may please thee better. But, howsoever thy opinion is spent upon these, that encouragement I have already received from the most ingenious men, in their clear and courteous entertainment of Mr. Waller's late choice pieces, hath once more made me adventure into the world, presenting it with these ever- green and not to be blasted laurels. The Author's more peculiar excellency in these studies was too well known to conceal his papers or to keep me from attempting to solicit them from him. Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing into the light as true a birth as the Muses have brought forth since our famous Spenser wrote; whose poems in these English ones are as rarely imitated as sweetly excelled. Reader, if thou art eagle-eyed to censure their worth, I am not fearful to expose them to thy exactest perusal.

"Thine to command, HUMPH. MOSELEY."

This is most creditable to Moseley, and confirms the impression of him which is to be derived from all the known facts of his publishing life. One notices, with real respect, his introductory statement about himself, that, in an age when only pamphlets were thought vendible, he was resolved, from his own liking for good literature, to keep to a finer line of business; one observes with interest the admission that it was Moseley who had solicited the copy from Milton, and not Milton who had offered the copy; and one is struck with the justness of taste shown in the hint that, however choice Mr. Waller's late Pieces might be, here was a poet of "more peculiar excellency." Above all, nothing could be critically truer than the assertion that since Spenser's death there had been no English poetry of Spenser's kind equal to that contained in this volume.

Another feature of the volume, for which Moseley, without doubt, is also responsible, is a prefixed portrait of the Author. There was then living in London a certain William Marshall, an engraver and sketcher of designs for books. He had been some fourteen or fifteen years in this employment; and among the many heads he had done, separately, or as frontispieces to books, ere those of Richard Brathwayte the Poet, Dr. Donne, Archbishop Abbot, Laud, and Dr. Daniel Featley. Very probably Moseley had already had dealings with Marshall, as he had certainly had with the more celebrated engraver Hollar, who had done a frontispiece for him for Howell's "Instructions for Foreign Travel." At all events, Hollar being now out of the way and in trouble (he and Inigo Jones were in the Marquis of Winchester's house at Basing when it was taken by Cromwell), it was Marshall that came in for most such pieces of engraving work as Moseley and other London publishers required. The connexion between him and Moseley became, indeed, a permanent one, so that Marshall is perhaps best remembered now by Horace Walpole's description of him as "the graver of heads for Moseley's books of poetry." If the first head he did for Moseley was this for the edition of Milton's Poems in 1645, it was an unlucky beginning of the connexion. It turned out, at all events, to be an unfortunate piece of work for Marshall's own memory with posterity:-- Moseley, we are to suppose, insisted on a portrait of Milton as a proper ornament to be prefixed to such a volume, chose Marshall to do it, and sent him to Milton. Now Milton, as we know, had some recollection of Marshall, and not a very respectful one. It was Marshall that had done not only Dr. Featley's portrait, but also the caricature of the different sorts of Anabaptists and Sectaries, including a river-scene with bathers of both sexes, which had been inserted in the Doctor's treatise entitled _The Dippers Dipt_. Milton, as we have seen (_antè_, p. 311), while administering punishment to Dr. Featley in his _Tetrachordon_ on account of a passage in this treatise, had not allowed the vulgarity of the engraving in Featley's book to escape. "For which I do not commend his _marshalling_" had been Milton's punning notice of it in a parenthesis of the punishment. When, therefore, Mr. Marshall came to Milton from Moseley, Milton must have remembered him as the caricaturist for Dr. Featley's book. Nevertheless, he seems to have given him every facility for the portrait wanted. Marshall's habit, in such cases, was to take a sketch from the life when he could get it, but to assist himself with whatever was at hand in the shape of a picture or former engraving. Milton, therefore, may have given him a sitting or two, but perhaps avoided unnecessary trouble by referring to that portrait of himself at the age of 21, now celebrated as "the Onslow Portrait," which then hung in some room in the house in Barbican. As the forthcoming volume consisted largely of Milton's juvenile Poems, an engraving from that portrait, touched up a little, would be the very thing. And so Marshall set to work. His dilatoriness over the plate may have been the cause of the unusual delay in the publication of the volume after it had been registered. In due time, however, the result was presented to Moseley and to Milton. And what a result! How they must have both stared! The general design of the plate was, indeed, pretty enough--an oval containing the portrait, with a background partly of curtain and low wall or window- sill, partly of an Arcadian scene of trees and meadow beyond, in which a shepherd is piping under one of the trees, and a shepherd and shepherdess are dancing; and then, outside the oval, in the four corners, the Muses Melpomene, Erato, Urania, and Clio, with their names. All this was passable; it was the portrait within the oval that gave the shock. The face is that of a grim, gaunt, stolid gentleman of middle age, looking like anybody or nobody, with long hair parted in the middle and falling down on both sides to the lace collar round the neck; one shoulder is cloaked, and the other shown tight in the buttoned tunic or coat; and the arms meet clumsily across the breast, the left arm uppermost. Round the oval was the legend, "_Joannis Miltoni Angli Effigies, anno ætatis vigess: pri. W. M. Sculp._"--i.e. "Portrait of John Milton, Englishman, in the 2lst year of his age: W. M. Sculp." The legend _said_ twenty-one years of age; the portrait _looked_ somewhere about fifty. What was to be done? What _ought_ to have been done was to cancel the plate and print the book without it. Perhaps not to vex Moseley, Milton did not insist on this, but allowed the engraving, just as it was, to be prefixed to the volume. But he took his revenge in one of the most malicious practical jokes ever perpetrated. "Mr. Marshall," he must have said to the unfortunate engraver, "here are a few lines of Greek which I should like to have carefully engraved on the plate under the portrait," at the same time handing him the following:--

[Greek: Amathei gegraphthai cheiri tænde men eikona Phaiæs tach an, pras eidos autophues blepon. Ton d'ektupoton ouk epignontes, philoi, Gelate phaulou dusmimæma xographou.]

Away went Mr. Marshall, and duly, and with some pains, engraved these letters on the plate, utterly ignorant of their meaning. Accordingly, when the volume appeared (Jan. 2, 1645-6), purchasers of it did indeed find Marshall's portrait of Milton in it, but those among them who knew Greek could read, underneath it, inscribed by Marshall's own graving tool, this damning criticism of his handiwork:--

"That an unskilful hand had carved this print You'd say at once, seeing the living face; But, finding here no jot of me, my friends, Laugh at the botching artist's mis-attempt."

[Footnote: This was very savage in Milton; but really, as it turned out, it was a prudent precaution. For, till 1670, Marshall's botch prefixed to the Poems was the only published portrait of Milton-the only guide to any idea of his personal appearance for those, whether friends or foes, whether in Britain or abroad, who were not acquainted with himself. Especially among enemies on the Continent, as we shall find, both Marshall's portrait and Milton's sarcastic disavowal of it were eagerly scanned and interpreted for the worst. As late as 1655, Milton, in his _Pro se Defendio contra Alexandrum Morion_, had to refer to both portrait and disavowal as follows:--"Now I am a Narcissus with you, because I would not be the Cyclops you paint me from your sight of the most unlike portrait of me prefixed to my Poems. Really, if, in consequence of the persuasion and importunity of my publisher, I allowed myself to be clumsily engraved by an unskilful engraver, because there was not another in the city in that time of war, this argued rather my entire indifference in the affair than the too great care with which you upbraid me." The passage quite confirms the view taken in the text of the way in which the portrait came to be published. In justice to Marshall, it is right to say that he had done much better things, and did better things afterwards for Moseley, than this head of Milton. "Marshall," says Bliss (Wood's Ath. III. 518, Note), "though in general a coarse and hasty performer, is not to be despised, since his heads, though often very rough sketches, bear evident marks of authenticity and resemblance to the originals. The best head he ever engraved, in my opinion, is one of Dr. Donne when young." I can confirm this by saying that his head of Featley really gives one an idea of that obstinate and consequential old divine. I only wish he had done Milton half as well. About Marshall's engraving of Milton see Mr. J. F. Marsh's tract on the _Engraved and Pretended Portraits of Milton_ (Liverpool, 1860). Mr. Marsh thinks, with me, that Marshall based his engraving partly on the Onslow picture, and that that picture suggested the date, _ætat_. 21, so absurdly given to the engraving.]

TWO DIVORCE SONNETS, AND SONNET TO HENRY LAWES.

Moseley's precious little volume, with the engraver Marshall thus grimly immortalized in it, brings Milton to the beginning of 1646, or twelve months beyond his _Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion_. His wife having been for some months back with him, for better or worse, in the house at Barbican, he had dropped the Divorce argument, or at least its public prosecution. That he did so with a certain reluctance, and in no spirit of recantation, appears from two of his Sonnets, which must have been written about the time of the publication of his volume of Poems (Oct. 1645--Jan. 1645-6), but which are not included in that volume, either because they were too late to come in their places after the Ten Sonnets contained in it, or because Milton thought it better not then to print them. "_On the Detraction which followed upon my writing certain Treatises_" is the title given by Milton himself in MS. to the two Sonnets together; but they may have been written separately.

I.

I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs, By the known rules of ancient liberty, When straight a barbarous noise environs me Of Owls and Cuckoos, Asses, Apes, and Dogs; As when those hinds that were transformed to frogs Railed at Latona's twin-born progeny, Which after held the sun and moon in fee. But this is got by casting pearl to hogs, That bawl for freedom in their senseless mood, And still revolt when Truth would set them free. Licence they mean when they cry Liberty; For who loves that must first be wise and good: But from that mark how far they rove we see, For all this waste of wealth and loss of blood.

II.

A book was writ of late called _Tetrachordon_, And woven close, both matter, form, and style; The subject new. It walked the town a while Numbering good intellects; now seldom pored on. Cries the stall-reader "Bless us! what a word on A title-page is this!" and some in file Stand spelling false while one might walk to Mile- End Green. Why is it harder, Sirs, than _Gordon_, _Colkitto_, or _Macdonnell_, or _Galasp_? Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek, That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp. Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John Cheke, Hated not learning worse than toad or asp, When thou taught'st Cambridge and King Edward Greek.

The second of these Sonnets is printed first in all the editions of Milton, but there is proof that it was written second. [Footnote: It stands first in the Second or 1673 Edition of Milton's Poems; but in the Cambridge MSS, it comes second in Milton's own hand.] And, while the two together form what may be called Milton's poetical farewell to the Divorce subject, the mood in the second, it may be noted, is more humorous than in the first. In the first Milton, still angry, clenches his fist in the face of his generation, as a generation of mere hogs and dogs, unable to appreciate any real form of the liberty for which they are howling and grunting; in the second the spleen is less, and he is content with a rigmarole of rhyme about the queer effects among the illiterate of the Greek title of his last Divorce Pamphlet. And here what is chiefly interesting in the rigmarole is the evidence that Milton had been recently attending to the news from Scotland. The "_Colkitto_, or _Macdonnell_, or _Galasp_" of the Sonnet is no other than our friend Alexander MacDonnell, _alias_ MacColkitto, _alias_ MacGillespie, Montrose's gigantic Major-general; and the "Gordon" is either Lord Aboyne, the eldest son of the Marquis of Huntly, who adhered to Montrose till Philiphaugh, or it is a general name for the many Gordons who were with him (see _antè_, pp. 348, 358, 367). The odd Scottish and Gaelic names had amused Milton's delicate ear; _Gordon_ rhymed aptly to _Tetrachordon_; and hence the notion of the Sonnet. [Footnote: Those annotators on Milton who have tried to identify _Galasp_ at all have supposed him to be the Mr. George Gillespie who was one of the Scottish Divines in the Westminster Assembly. There _may_ be a side-reference to him, for Milton must have heard much of him; but the primary reference is not to the Presbyterian minister, but to the huge Colonsay Highlander, recently heard of everywhere as Montrose's comrade in arms, and who was _Colkitto_, _MacDonnell_, and _Galasp_, all in one.]

A third Sonnet, written about the same time, shows even more distinctly the calming effect on Milton's mind produced by his changed mode of life in the house in Barbican, after his wife's return and the publication of his little Volume of Poems. It is the well-known Sonnet to his friend Henry Lawes, the musician.

So far as the two artists, William and Henry Lawes, concerned themselves in the politics of the time, they were, of course, Royalists. Officially attached to his Majesty's household and service, what else could they be? The elder of the two, indeed, William Lawes, had gone into the Royalist army, taken captain's rank there, and been slain quite recently at the siege of Chester (October 1645), much regretted by the King, who is said to have put on private mourning for him. Henry, the younger, and much the more celebrated as a composer, had remained in London, exercising his art as much as might be at such a time, and kept by it in acquaintance with many who, differing in other things, were at one in their love of music. Everybody liked and admired the gentle Harry Lawes, and he was welcome everywhere. But there was still no family with which he was on more intimate terms than with his old patrons of the accomplished Bridgewater group, and there can have been no house where his visits were more frequent than at their house in Barbican. True, the family was greatly reduced from what it had been in the old days of the _Arcades_ and _Comus_, when Lawes was teacher of music to its budding girls and boys, and the master and stage-director of their tasteful masques and private concerts. The Countess had been ten years dead; Lord Brackley, the heir of the house, and the elder of the boy-brothers in _Comus_, had wedded, in July 1642, when only nineteen years of age, the Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of the powerful Royalist Earl, afterwards Marquis and Duke, of Newcastle; and one or two of his sisters, unmarried in the _Comus_ year, had since found husbands. With the widower Earl, however, inhabiting now his town-house in Barbican, and visiting but seldom his country mansion at Ashridge, Herts, there still remained his youngest daughter, the Lady Alice of _Comus_, verging on her twenty-fifth year, and Mr. Thomas Egerton, the younger of the boy- brothers in _Comus_, now a youth of about twenty. Probably elder and married members of the family gave the Earl their occasional company; for he was now about sixty-five years of age, in an infirm state of health, sorely impoverished, and in the unfortunate condition of a Peer who would have been with the King if he could, and whom the King had expected to be with him, but who was obliged to plead his infirm health and his poverty for a kind of semi-submission to Parliament. He had reluctantly taken the Covenant (_antè_, pp. 39,40), and there are entries in the Lords Journals proving that his excuses for non-attendance in the House were barely allowed to pass. Music and books were among the invalid Earl's chief recreations; and some of his happiest moments in his old age may have been in listening to the Lady Alice, or another of his daughters, singing one of Lawes's songs, with Lawes, now the privileged artist- friend rather than the professional tutor, standing by or accompanying. What if it were the Lady Alice, and the song were that well-remembered one of _Comus_ which she had sung, when a young girl, eleven years before, in the Hall of Ludlow Castle, before the assembled guests of her father's Welsh Presidency, her proud mother then among the listeners,--

"Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph that liv'st unseen Within thy airy shell"?

If so, the sound of her voice might have almost reached Milton in _his_ house close by in the same street. At all events, here, in the street called Barbican, by a strange chance, were assembled, within a few yards of each other, at the very time when _Comus_ was first published by Milton himself, and acknowledged among his other poems, at least five of the persons chiefly concerned in the masque on its first production--the Earl in whose honour it had been composed; the Lady Alice, and Mr. Thomas Egerton, two of the chief actors: the musician Lawes, who had directed all, composed the music, and sustained the parts of Thyrsis and the Attendant Spirit in the, performance; and the poet who had written the words.

When Lawes was in Barbican of an evening, it was but a step for him from the Earl's house to Milton's. And then would there not be more music, mingled with talk perhaps about the Bridgewater family, while Mrs. Milton sat by and listened? And would not the old Scrivener come down from his room to see Mr. Lawes, and bring out his choicest old music-books, and almost set aside his son in managing the visit for musical delight? So one fancies, and therefore keeps to the interrogative form as the safest; but the fancy here is really the most exact possible apprehension of the facts as they are on record. Lawes's friendship with Milton had been uninterrupted since 1634; but it so chances that the third point in Milton's life at which his intimacy with Lawes emerges into positive record is precisely the winter of 1645-6, when Milton was the Earl of Bridgewater's neighbour in Barbican, and his Volume of Poems was going through the press. Not only was there reprinted in this volume Lawes's Dedication of the _Comus_ in 1637, "To the Right Honourable John, Lord Brackley, son and heir-apparent to the Earl of Bridgewater;" but in the very title-page of the volume, as arranged by Moseley, Lawes's name is associated with Milton's. "_The Songs were set in musick by Mr. Henry Lawes, &c._," says the title-page; and this may mean that not only the songs in _Arcades_ and _Comus_, but other lyrical pieces in the volume, had been set to music by Lawes. If so, a good deal more of Lawes's music to Milton's words may have been in existence about 1645 than his settings of the five songs in _Comus_, which are all that have come down to us in his own hand. Songs of Milton set by Lawes may have been in circulation in MS. copies, and may have been as well known in musical families as the numerous songs by Carew, Herrick, Waller and others, which had been set by the same composer; and it may be to this that Moseley alludes by the prominent mention of Lawes in the title-page of the collected Poems. And, if Lawes had done so much for Milton's verse, it was fitting that Milton should make some return in kind. He had indeed introduced skilful compliments to Lawes personally in his _Comus_; but something more express might be now appropriate. Accordingly, on the 9th of February, 1645-6, or five weeks after the publication of the Poems, Milton wrote the following:--

"TO MY FRIEND MR. HENRY LAWES.

"Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song First taught our English music how to span Words with just note and accent, not to scan With Midas ears, committing short and long, Thy worth and skill exempts thee from the throng, With praise enough for Envy to look wan: To after-age thou shalt be writ the man That with smooth air could humour best our tongue. Thou honour'st Verse, and Verse must lend her wing To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire, That tun'st their happiest lines in hymn or story. Dante shall give Fame leave to set thee higher Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing, Met in the milder shades of Purgatory."

The original draft of this Sonnet, entitled as above, and with the date "Feb. 9, 1645," attached, and a corrected transcript underneath, both in Milton's own hand, are in the Cambridge volume of Milton MSS. The Sonnet was prefixed by Lawes, with the same title, in 1648 to a publication of some of his own and his deceased brother's compositions, entitled _Choice Psalmes put into Musick for Three Voices_; but in the Second or 1673 Edition of Milton's Poems it reappeared with the title which it has retained in all subsequent editions: viz. "To Mr. Henry Lawes on his Airs." For biographical purposes it is well to remember the first title and the dating. The Sonnet is, in fact, a memorial of a time when Milton and Lawes must have been much together. [Footnote: The details about the state of the Bridge water family in the text are partly from Todd's Note prefixed to _Comus_ (Todd's Milton, ed. 1852, IV 38-44), partly from entries in the _Lords Journals_ already referred to in this volume. Todd has also (_ibid._ 45-54) an elaborate, though ill-digested, note on Lawes, with particulars of his continued connexion, to 1653 and beyond, with various members of the Bridgewater family. In the Stationers' Registers there is this entry:--"Nov. 16, 1647, Rich. Woodnoth entered for his copy under the hands of Mr. Downham and Mr. Bellamy, warden, a book called 'Compositions of Three Parts,' by Henry and William Lawes, servants to his Majesty." I suppose this was the book published in 1648 with the title "_Choice Psalmes_," &c.]

CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS ANTI-PRESBYTERIAN SONNET OF REPLY.

Altogether it was beginning to be a more placid time with Milton. With his book out, his wife restored to him, the Divorce argument dropped, and his pupils to teach, he might look about him quietly on the state of public affairs, and expect what should be the next call on him. There did not seem to be any immediate call. In the month when his volume of Poems appeared Presbyterianism was at its fullest tide in Parliament; but in the succeeding months, what with the increase of Recruiters in the Commons, what with the tramp of Independency in the field growing louder and nearer as the New Model ended its work, he could see the political power of the Presbyterians gradually waning, until, in April 1646, when Cromwell reappeared in London, Anti-Toleration was abashed and the Westminster Assembly itself under control. The spectacle must have been quite to Milton's mind; but, as he had already expressed himself sufficiently on the main question between the Independents and the Presbyterians, and as nobody doubted on which side he was to be ranked, he was disposed to take his ease on this subject too, and to leave the issue to the Parliament and the Army. He was too marked a man, however, to be quite let alone. The Presbyterian writers, true to their policy of publicly naming all prominent heretics and sectaries, and painting their opinions in the most glaring colours, with a view to disgust people with the idea of a Toleration, could not part with Milton and his Divorce Doctrine. After he and his wife were in the Barbican house together, he was still pursued by the hue and cry. Here are two specimens:--

_Mr. Baillie on Milton._--"Mr. Milton permits any man to put away his wife upon his mere pleasure without any fault, and without the cognisance of any judge," writes Baillie in the Table of Contents to the First Part of his _Dissuasive_, published in November 1645; and in the text of the work (p. 116) the statement is amplified as follows:--"Concerning Divorces, some of them [the Independents] go far beyond any of the Brownists; not to speak of Mr. Milton, who in a large treatise hath pleaded for a full liberty for any man to put away his wife, whenever he pleaseth, without any fault in her at all, but for any dislike or dyssympathy of humour. For I do not certainly know whether this man professeth Independency, albeit all the heretics here whereof ever I heard avow themselves Independents. Whatever therefore may be said of Mr. Milton, yet Mr. Gorting and his company were men of renown among the New English Independents before Mistress Hutchinson's disgrace; and all of them do maintain that it is lawful for every woman to desert her husband when he is not willing to follow her in her church-way." In other words, Baillie is not sure that it is fair to charge Milton's extreme opinion upon Independency as such, inasmuch as it may be the crotchet of a solitary heretic; but he is inclined to think that Milton _is_ an Independent, and he knows at least that Mr. Gorting and other Independents have broached a milder form of the same heresy. In his Notes (pp. 144,145) he quotes sentences to the amount of a page from Milton's _Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_ to prove that he does not misrepresent him.--The "Gorting" here mentioned by Baillie is the "Samuel Gorton" who had been such a sore trouble to the New Englanders, and even to Roger Williams at Providence, by his anarchical opinions and conduct (Vol. II. 601). He had returned or been ejected from America, and was making himself notorious in London. "This I am assured of from various hands," wrote Edwards (_Gangr._ Part II. p. 144), "that Gorton is here in London, and hath been for the space of some months; and I am told also that he vents his opinions, and exercises in some of the meetings of the sectaries, as that he hath exercised lately at Lamb's Church, and is very great at one Sister Stagg's, exercising there too sometimes." This will explain Baillie's allusion to Gorton in connexion with Milton's Divorce Doctrine. Strange that Gorton should be cited as holding a _milder_ form of the heresy than Milton's!

_Mr. Edwards on Milton._--Of course, Milton got into the _Gangræna._ Everybody that deviated in anything, to the right or left, from the path of Presbyterian orthodoxy, got into that register of scandals; and we have already availed ourselves of information incidentally supplied in the Second and Third Parts of it as to the horror caused by Milton's Divorce Doctrine among the Presbyterians (_antè_, pp. 189-192). We have still to present, however, Edwards's direct notice of Milton in the First Part of his scandalous medley. It was published in January or February 1645-6; so that, at the very time when Milton's volume of Poems was out, and he was writing his Sonnet to Lawes, he found himself pilloried again in the new book which all London was reading greedily. A leading portion of the book, as we know (_antè_, pp. 143-5), consisted of a catalogue of 176 "Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies" that had been vented by divers Sectaries and were then distracting and corrupting the soul of England. Well, the 154th Error, Heresy, and Blasphemy in this catalogue is this:-- "That 'tis lawful for a man to put away his wife upon indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, arising from a cause in nature unchangeable; and for disproportion and deadness of spirit, or something distasteful and averse in the immutable bent of nature; and man, in regard of the freedom and eminency of his creation, is a law to himself in this matter, being head of the other sex, which was made for him; neither need he hear any judge therein above himself." To this summary by Edwards of Milton's Doctrine, partly in Milton's own words, the reference is appended in the margin: "_Vide Milton's Doctrine of Divorce._" (_Gangræna_, Part I. p. 29.) And so for the moment Edwards dismisses Milton, very much as Baillie had done, to return to him again in the Second and Third Parts of his _Gangræna_, as Baillie was to do in the Second Part of his _Dissuasive_.

Milton was provoked. It was not in his nature to let any attack upon him, from whatever quarter, pass without notice; and attacks by persons of such popular celebrity as Baillie and Edwards could hardly be ignored. But, as he had given up the public prosecution of the Divorce argument, his punishment for Edwards and Baillie came in a different form from that which he had administered in the _Tetrachordon_ and _Colasterion_ to Herbert Palmer, Dr. Featley, Mr. Caryl, Mr. Prynne, and the anonymous attorney. It came in verse, thus--

"ON THE FORCERS OF CONSCIENCE.

"Because you have thrown off your Prelate lord, And with stiff vows renounced his Liturgy, To seize the widowed whore Plurality From them whose sin ye envied, not abhorred, Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword To force our consciences that Christ set free, And ride us with a Classic Hierarchy, Taught ye by mere _A. S._ and _Rutherford?_ Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure intent Would have been held in high esteem with Paul, Must now be named and printed heretics By _shallow Edwards_ and _Scotch What d'ye call._ But we do hope to find out all your tricks, Your plots and packing, worse than those of Trent, That so the Parliament May, with their wholesome and preventive shears, Clip your phylacteries, though baulk your ears, And succour our just fears, When they shall read this clearly in your charge-- New PRESBYTER is but old PRIEST writ large."

Milton, we are to suppose, having already written two Divorce Sonnets, did not care to write a third, but preferred to punish Edwards and Baillie in a general Anti-Presbyterian Sonnet. It turned out, however, not a Sonnet proper, but a _Sonetto con coda_, as the Italians call it, or "Sonnet with a tail"--the Anti-Presbyterian rhythm prolonging itself beyond the fourteen lines that would have completed the normal Sonnet, and demanding the scorpion addition of six lines more. Into this peculiar "tailed Sonnet" Milton condenses metrically all the rage against Presbytery, the Westminster Assembly, and the Anti-Tolerationists, which had already broken forth at large in his later prose pamphlets. The piece is unusually full of historical allusions. It breathes throughout his acquired hatred of the Presbyterians for their opposition to Liberty of Conscience, and their determination that the "Classic Hierarchy," or system of Presbyterian _classes_ which they were establishing in England, should be as compulsory on all as the Prelacy they had thrown off; and there is a palpable side-hit at the recent acquisition by some of the leading Presbyterian Divines in the Assembly of University posts and the like in addition to their previous livings, notwithstanding their outcries against Pluralities in the time of Episcopacy. In this side-hit not a few known Divines are slashed; and among them, I fear, Milton's old tutor Thomas Young, now Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, as well as Vicar of Stowmarket. But the open personal references are four. The "A. S." selected as one prominent expounder of Presbytery is the Scotchman, Dr. Adam Steuart, who, under his initials "A. S.," had been one of the first to rush into print in behalf of strict Presbytery and Anti- Toleration against the _Apologetical Narrative_ of the Independents of the Assembly, and who had been replied to by John Good win, but had since gone into Holland (_antè_, p. 25). The "Rutherford" coupled with him is the celebrated Scottish divine, and Commissioner to the Assembly, Samuel Rutherford, who had set forth several expositions of strict Scottish Presbytery for the enlightenment of the English. "Shallow Edwards" is obvious enough: he is Mr. Edwards of the _Gangræna_, once far from a nobody in London, but who will now, through Milton's mention of him, be "Shallow Edwards" to the world's end. In Milton's draft of the Sonnet he was "hair-brained Edwards;" but "hair-brained" was erased, and "shallow" substituted. The "Scotch What d'ye call" has cost the commentators more trouble. Most of them have identified him with George Gillespie, whom they also, though erroneously, suppose to be the "Galasp" of one of the Divorce Sonnets. There can be little doubt now, I think, that I have detected the real "What d'ye call" in Gillespie's fellow- Commissioner from Scotland, our good friend Baillie, whose _Dissuasive_, with its reference to Milton as one of the heretics of the time, had just preceded Edwards's _Gangræna_. I am sorry for this, but it cannot be helped. There was, I ought to add, in the original draft of the Sonnet, a fifth personal allusion, which Milton saw fit, on second thoughts, to omit. Line 17, which now stands "_Clip your phylacteries, though baulk your ears_" (_i.e._" though pass over your ears and leave them undipped"), was originally "_Crop ye as close as marginal P--'s ears_." As Milton had already, in his _Colasterion_, said enough about Prynne and the heavy margins of his many pamphlets, and as the circumstances in which Prynne had lost his ears made the subject hardly a proper one for a public joke, it was but good taste in Milton to make the change.

It is from internal evidence that I assign this famous Anti-Presbyterian outburst of Milton to some early month of the year 1646. [Footnote: The lines were first published in the Second or 1673 Edition of Milton's Poems, and not there among the Sonnets, but as a piece apart, with the title, since always given to it, _On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament_. The draft of it among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge has the simpler title _On the Forcers of Conscience_. This draft, however, is not in Milton's own hand, but is a transcript by an amanuensis. Hence we have not the means of determining the date so exactly as if Milton's own draft had been preserved. I am pretty confident that the date cannot be later than 1646, and I fancy copies may have been in private circulation in that year.] It fits in exactly with the state of public affairs and of Milton himself at that time; all the motives to it, public and private, were in existence by the March of that year; and it is difficult to suppose that the composition was of much later date. Or, if it was a little later, the lines fairly represent Milton's feeling at the time to which I assign them. In March, April, and May, 1646, Milton was one of those Englishmen who had done for ever with Presbyterianism, who rejoiced over the curb imposed at length upon the Westminster Assembly by the Independents and Erastians of the Parliament, and who longed to see that conclave dismissed, and the Scots sent packing home.

SURRENDER OF OXFORD: CONDITION OF THE POWELL FAMILY.

That the Scots should be sent packing home, but that they should leave the King behind them in English custody, was the result for which all the Independents were anxious. Through May and June 1646, it was for Milton, among the rest, to watch the progress of the negotiations with the Scots at Newcastle round the person of the King, and at the same time to observe the surrender of one after another of the few remaining Royalist garrisons, including the great Royalist capital of Oxford. The siege of this city by Fairfax, begun May 1, a week after the King had left it, and continued for seven or eight weeks with the help of Cromwell and Skippon, must have been a matter of considerable personal interest to Milton, and of more interest to his wife. She was now in a state of health requiring as much freedom from anxiety as possible; but, while the siege was going on, there was good reason for anxiety in the fact that her father and mother, with the rest of her family, or some of them, were in the besieged city and undergoing its dangers. They had taken refuge there on the approach of the Parliamentarian troops into Oxfordshire, leaving their house at Forest-hill to take its chance. What might that chance be, and what worse chances might come of the siege itself? It was a relief when the news came of the actual surrender of the city (June 24), on terms exceedingly liberal to the garrison, the citizens, and all the resident Royalists. The terms, indeed, were thought far too liberal by the Presbyterians. "The scurvy base propositions which Cromwell has given to the Malignants at Oxford has offended many," writes Baillie, June 26; [Footnote: Baillie, II. 376] the reason for the offence being that it was but too clear that the Independents had been in haste to obtain Oxford on any terms whatever, in order that the army might be free to act, if necessary, against the Scots in the north. Anyhow the surrender had taken place. The Princes Rupert and Maurice had left the city with a retinue and promise of liberty to go abroad; the garrison, to the number of 7,000 men, had marched out honourably, with arms and baggage; security for the property of the citizens and the colleges had been guaranteed; and all the miscellaneous crowd of Royalists of various ranks that had been cooped up so long in Oxford were at liberty to disperse themselves on certain stipulated conditions. To one of the Articles of the Treaty of Surrender I must ask special attention, as it came to be of much domestic consequence to Milton in future years:--

"XI. That all lords, gentlemen, clergymen, officers, soldiers, and all other persons in Oxford, or comprised in this capitulation, who have estates real or personal under or liable to sequestrations according to the Ordinance of Parliament, and shall desire to compound for them (except persons by name excepted by Ordinance of Parliament from pardon), shall at any time within six months after the rendering of the garrison of Oxford be admitted to compound for their estates; which composition shall not exceed two years' revenue for estates of inheritance, and for estates for lives, years, and other real and personal estates, shall not exceed the proportion aforesaid for inheritances, according to the value of them: And that all persons aforesaid whose dwelling-houses are sequestered (except before-excepted) may after the rendering of the garrison repair to them, and there abide, convenient time being allowed to such as are placed there under the sequestrations for their removal. And it is agreed that all the profits and revenues arising out of their estates after the day of entering their names as Compounders shall remain in the hands of the tenants or occupiers, to be answered to the Compounders when they have perfected their agreements for their compositions; And that they shall have liberty, and the General's pass and protection, for their peaceable repair to and abode at their several houses or friends, and to go to London to attend their compositions, or elsewhere upon their necessary occasions, with freedom of their persons from oaths, engagements, and molestations during the space of six months, and after so long as they prosecute their compositions without wilful default or neglect on their part, except an engagement by promise not to bear arms against the Parliament, nor wilfully to do any act prejudicial to their [Parliament's] affairs so long as they remain in their quarters. And it is further agreed that, from and after their compositions made, they shall be forthwith restored to and enjoy their estates, and all other immunities, as other subjects, together with the rents and profits, from the time of entering their names, discharged from sequestrations, and from fifths and twentieth parts, and other payments and impositions, except such as shall be general and common to them with others." [Footnote: Whitlocke (ed. 1853), II. 38; also in Rushworth, VI. 282, 283.]

Some hundreds of persons in Oxford at the time of its surrender must have had their movements for the next few months determined by this article. Among these was Milton's father-in-law, Mr. Richard Powell.

The view we arrived at as to the condition of the Powell family before the Civil War was (Vol. II. p. 499) that they were then "an Oxfordshire family of good standing, keeping up appearances with the neighbour- gentry, and probably more than solvent if all their property had been put against their debts, but still rather deeply in debt, and their property heavily mortgaged." During the war, we have now to record, on the faith of a statement afterwards made by Mr. Powell himself, the losses of the family in one way or another had amounted to at least 3,000_l_. Remembering this heavy item, I will try to present in figures the state of Mr. Powell's affairs while he was shut up in Oxford:--

I. PROPERTY.

1. Lease, till 1672, of the Forest-hill mansion and £ estate, worth about . . . . . . . . 270 a year. 2. Furniture, household-stuff, and corn in the Forest- hill mansion and appurtenances, valued at . 500 3. Wood and timber stacked about the Forest-hill premises, worth . . . . . . . . . 400 4. Property in land and cottages at Wheatley, valued at . . . . . . . . . . . 40 a year. 5. Debts owing to Mr. Powell . . . . . . . . 100

II. DEBTS AND OBLIGATIONS.

1. Due to Mr. John Milton, by recognisance since 1627, as unpaid part of an original debt of £500 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 2. Promised to the said Mr. Milton, when he married Mr. Powell's eldest daughter, a marriage portion of. . . . . . . . . 1,000 3. Due to Mr. Edward Ashworth, or his representatives, in redemption of a mortgage on the Wheatley property since 1631, a capital sum (besides arrears of interest) of . . . . 400 4. Due to Sir Robert Pye, in redemption of a mortgage on the Forest-hill mansion and property since 1640, a capital sum (besides arrears of interest) of . . . . . . . . . . . 1,400 5. Other debts, as estimated by Mr. Powell . . . 1,200

It is difficult to square this ragged account (which, however, is the best one can produce); [Footnote: My authorities for it are--(1) My own previous accounts of the state of Mr. Powell's affairs before the ware, Vol. II. pp. 492-9, based on authorities there cited. (2) "A Particular of the Real and Personal Estate of Richard Powell of Forest-hill," after the surrender of Oxford, attested by himself Nov. 21, 1646, and given in the Appendix to Hamilton's _Milton's Papers_. (3) Other papers in the same Appendix, especially an attestation of Milton himself at p. 95. (4) The documents relative to Milton's Nuncupative Will printed by Todd and others.] but the general effect is that Mr. Powell's affairs were in a woful condition. It was almost mockery now to style him Mr. Powell of Forest-hill and Wheatley; for, before he could call these Oxfordshire properties his own, with their joint revenue of 310_l._ a year, he had to clear off a debt of 1,400_l._ to Sir Robert Pye, and another of 400_l._ to one Ashworth, each with heavy arrears of interest. Actually, in furniture, goods, corn, and timber in the house at Forest-hill and its premises, and in debts owing to him, he fancied himself worth 1,000_l._; but his debts, apart from those to Pye and Ashworth, and apart also from the 300_l_. legally owing to his son-in-law Milton (which, with the promised marriage-portion of 1,000_l._, might stand over to a convenient time), amounted to 1,200_l._ Nay, this is too favourable a view; for, while the siege of Oxford had been going on, incidents had happened which much increased Mr. Powell's difficulties:--(l) The terms of the mortgage of the Forest-hill mansion and estate to Sir Robert Pye had been that the mortgage was to be void if Mr. Powell should pay Sir Robert a sum of 1,510_l._ by the 1st of July, 1641. This not having been done, Sir Robert had had, ever since that date, a legal right to eject Mr. Powell from the mansion and lands and take possession of them for his debt. A friendly compromise appears to have been arranged on the subject in May, 1642, by the payment to Sir Robert of l10_l._, being the difference between the original debt and the higher sum which was to void the mortgage. Nevertheless the right to take possession remained with Sir Robert; and that he had not exercised it may have been as much owing to the fact that Oxford was difficult of access to a Parliamentarian creditor during the war as to neighbourly forbearance. But, now that Parliament was at the gates of Oxford, and its troops quartered in and about Forest-hill, it was but common prudence in Sir Robert to use the only method left of saving himself from the loss of his 1,400_l._ with the unpaid interest. Some time in May, accordingly, or early in June, while the siege of Oxford was in progress, he caused his servant, or agent, Laurence Farre, to take formal possession of the Forest-hill premises. At the date of the surrender of Oxford, therefore, Mr. Powell was no longer owner of the Forest-hill manor and mansion; they belonged to his neighbour, Sir Robert Pye. There was, perhaps, a temporary convenience in this for Mr. Powell. If he had lost the property, his debt to Sir Robert was cancelled by the loss in the meantime; and, if at any future time he or his heirs should be in a position to re-acknowledge the debt with arrears, arrangements for the redemption of the property would be easier with the Pye family than with strangers. Besides, Sir Robert had taken possession of the property just in time to anticipate its sequestration by Parliament as part of the estate of a Delinquent; and in this too there may have been some intention of neighbourly service, or saving of future trouble, to Mr. Powell. Still it was a hard thing for the Powells to know that their lease of their family residence and estate was gone, and they were no longer the Powells of Forest-hill. [Footnote: The vouchers for the statements in the text about the transfer of Forest-hill to Sir Robert Pye in May or June, 1646, are in various documents printed in Mr. Hamilton's _Milton Papers_. See especially p. 56 and Documents xxii., xli., xlii., and xlv. in the Appendix. The Forest-hill property, we shall find, did eventually come back to the Powell family; but it is worthy of remark that in Mr. Powell's own "Particular" of the state of his property in 1646 the Forest-hill lease is not mentioned, but only the goods and household stuff on the premises. On the other hand, of course, the 1,400_l_. and arrears of interest due to Sir Robert Pye are omitted from the list of debts, as cancelled by the loss of the property.] (2). But not only was the lease of the family house and lands gone. There had come a sequestration, and worse than a sequestration, upon the goods, household stuff, and timber on the Forest-hill premises, which formed now the best part of Mr. Powell's worldly all. The order for the sequestration was issued by the Committee of Parliamentary Sequestrations for the County of Oxford just after Sir Robert Pye had possessed himself of the premises; and, on the 16th of June, while Mr. Powell and his family were in Oxford with the rest of the besieged, three of the sequestrators, John Webb, Richard Vivers, and John King, with assistants and spectators, were rummaging the rooms and offices at Forest-hill, and taking an inventory and valuation of all the furniture, goods, and stock of every kind contained in them. The inventory still exists, and has been used in our description of the house when Milton went to fetch his bride from it (Vol. II. pp. 500, 501). Now, however, it comes in more sadly. _A copy of the Inventory, with the prices of the goods as they were appraysed the 16th of June 1646_, is the title of the document; and, as we read it, we see the sequestrators, with their pens behind their ears, going round the house, and through the house, and in among the wood- yards, attended by gaping country-people, and jotting down particulars. A trunk of linen first attracts them, and they set down its contents, including "1 pair of sheets, 3 napkins, 6 yards of broad tiffany," at 16_s._ Next is a heavier entry--to wit, "240 pieces of tymber, 200 loades of firewood, 4 carts, 1 wain, 2 old coaches, 1 mare colt, 3 sows, 1 boar, 2 ewes, 3 parcels of boards," valued in the aggregate at 156_l_. l2_s_. And so on they go, pell-mell, putting down "hops in the wool-house" at 2_l_., "a bull" at 1_l._ 10_s._, "14 quarters of mastline" at l4_l._, "5 quarters of malt" at 5_l._, "6 bushels of wheat" at 1_l._ 2_s._, two more parcels of wood at 100_l._ and 60_l._ respectively, a piece of growing corn at 42_l._, a piece of growing wheat at 6_l._ l3_s._ 4_d._, and even two fields of meadow, which they leave unappraised for the good reason that they had been "eaten up by the souldiers." At this point also are mentioned, as also unappraised, some bit of land at Forest-hill, apparently not included in the lease that had gone to Sir Robert Pye, and also Mr. Powell's property at Wheatley. Then, having concluded the outer survey, and brought the total, so far as appraised, up to 400_l._ or a little more, the sequestrators proceed to a separate and special inventory of the household goods. "In the hall" they find furniture which they value at 1_l._ 4_s._; "in the great parlour" 7_l._; "in the little parlour" 3_l._; "in the study or boys' chamber" 2_l._ l3_s._; and so on through the other rooms--"Mrs. Powell's chamber," as the best furnished of all, counting for 8_l._ 4_s._, while "Mr. Powell's study" goes for only 1_l._ l4_s._ Altogether the household stuff amounts in their estimate to a little over 70_l._ It was a monstrously good bargain to any one who would give that sum for it. Nor, in fact, had the sequestrators been taking all the trouble of the inventory without inducement. Going about with them all the while, and possibly haggling with them over the values, was an intending purchaser in the person of a certain Matthew Appletree from London--one of those dealers who followed in the wake of the Parliamentary forces as they advanced into Royalist districts, with a view to pick up good bargains for ready money in the confiscated property of Delinquents. To this Appletree the aforesaid sequestrators, Webb, Vivers, and King, did sell all the household stuff they had inventoried, together with the best part of the out-of-door-stock, including the carts, wain, and old coaches, the mare, the bull, and other animals, and all of the timber except 100%, worth in keeping of a Mr. Eldridge. The sum which Appletree was to give for the whole was 335_l._, whereas the real value may have been about 800_l._ or 900_l._; and no sooner had he concluded his bargain than he began to cart some of the lighter things away. We can tell what went off in the first cart. They were: "1 arras work chayre, 6 thrum chayres, 6 wrought stooles, 2 old greene carpetts, 1 tapestry carpett, 1 wrought carpett, 1 carpett greene with fringe, 3 window curtaines." [Footnote: Document xxvi. in Appendix to Hamilton's _Milton Papers_, with references to other Documents in same Appendix.] All this took place on the 16th of June, 1646, eight days before the surrender of Oxford. On the preceding day, June 15, Cromwell had been at Halton, close to Forest-hill, seeing his daughter Bridget married to Ireton.

The reader now understands the state of Mr. Powell's affairs, when he was released from Oxford, as well as he did himself, if not better. It was all very well that the Articles of Capitulation had provided for the liberty of all persons among the besieged to return to their several places of abode and resume their estates and callings, subject only to composition with Parliament within six months according to the fixed rates of fine for Delinquency. This may have been a privilege for many; but it was poor comfort for the Powells. In the first place, they had now no home of their own to go to. Forest-hill was in possession of their old friend, Sir Robert Pye, who was preparing to fit up the mansion afresh for himself or some of his family, its redemption by Mr. Powell being now out of the question. But what remained was worse. Though the house and manor of Forest-hill were gone, Mr. Powell, by the terms of the Treaty, might still hope to compound for the wreck of his other property which lay under sequestration--viz. the small Wheatley estate; the goods, furniture, timber, &c., which he had left on the Forest-hill premises; and also, it appears, some odd bits of land about Forest-hill not included in the mortgage to Sir Robert Pye. With what grief and anger, then, must the family, on the surrender of Oxford, have learnt that even this poor remainder of their property was for the most part irrecoverable--that not only had it been sequestrated by the County Commissioners, but most of it sold and some actually dispersed. There appears, indeed, to have been some very harsh, if not unfair and underhand, dealing on the part of the sequestrating Commissioners in this matter of the hurried sale of Mr. Powell's goods to Matthew Appletree. It became afterwards, as we shall find, the subject of legal complaint by the Powells, and of a long and tedious litigation on their behalf. Only two facts need at present be noted. One is the significant fact that among the members of the County Committee who issued the order for the sequestration was a "Thomas Appletree," clearly a relative of the "Matthew Appletree" who purchased the goods, while a third Appletree, named Richard, was also concerned somehow in the transaction. [Footnote: Hamilton's _Milton Papers_: Appendix, Documents xlv. and xlvii.] One suspects some collusion between the public sequestrators and the private purchaser. Then again, when the transaction came to be litigated, one observes a discrepancy between the two parties as to its alleged date. The preserved copy of the inventory and valuation, signed by the sequestrators, Webb, Vivers, and King, is distinctly dated "the 16 of June 1646," and as distinctly declares that day to have been the date of the sale to Appletree. [Footnote: _Ibid._ Document xxvi.] If this is correct, the sale had occurred while the Treaty for the surrender of Oxford was in progress, but exactly four days before it was completed and the Articles of Surrender signed (June 20). On the other hand, the Powells afterwards invariably represented the sale as a violation of the Articles; they quoted June 17, and not June 16, as the date of the order for sequestration issued by "the Committee for the County of Oxford sitting at Woodstock;" and they laid stress on the fact that the sequestrators Webb, Vivers, and King had sold the goods to Appletree "within few days after the granting of the said Articles." [Footnote: Hamilton's Milton Papers: Appendix, Documents xxviii. and xiv.] How the discrepancy is to be accounted for one does not very well see; but one again suspects over-eagerness to injure Powell by obliging Appletree. Can the sequestrators possibly have inventoried and sold the goods, as they themselves declared, on the 16th, though the sequestrating Order was not formally issued till the 17th? If so, they were evidently in a hurry to push through the business before the Treaty for the Surrender of Oxford was signed, so as to deprive Mr. Powell, if possible, of any advantage from it. Or, after all, can there have been any contrivance of ante- dating, to disguise the fact that the sale, though intended on the 16th, was really pushed through between Saturday the 20th of June, when the Articles were signed, and Wednesday the 24th, when the surrender took place? In either case it must have been a sore sight to Mr. Powell, when, on this latter day, or the day after, he was free to walk over to Forest- hill, to find some of his goods already gone and Mr. Matthew Appletree superintending the carting away of the rest-all except the timber, which remained upon the premises till its removal should be convenient. [Footnote: This appears from an extract from "the Certificate of the Solicitor for Sequestration in the County of Oxford," not given in Mr. Hamilton's Milton Papers, but in Hunter's Milton Gleanings, pp. 31, 32.]

THE POWELLS IN LONDON: MORE FAMILY PERPLEXITIES: BIRTH OF MILTON'S FIRST CHILD.

What was to be done? Only one thing was possible. Mr. Powell must go to London to compound for what shreds of his sequestrated property survived the sale to Appletree, and at the same time to see whether he could have any redress at head-quarters against the Oxfordshire Committee of Sequestrations. On other grounds, too, a removal to London was advisable or necessary. There, in Mr. Milton's house, the family would have a roof over their heads until some new arrangement could be made and while Mr. Powell prosecuted the composition business. Accordingly, on the 27th of June, or three days after the surrender of Oxford, Mr. Powell obtained Fairfax's pass, as follows:-"Suffer the bearer hereof, Mr. Richard Powell, of Forest-hill in the county Oxon., who was in the city and garrison of Oxford at the surrender thereof, and is to have the full benefit of the Articles agreed unto upon the surrender, quietly and without let or interruption to pass your guards, with his servants, horses, arms, goods, and all other necessaries, and to repair unto London or elsewhere upon his necessary occasions: And in all places where he shall reside, or whereto he shall remove, to be protected from any violence to his person, goods, or estate, according to the said Articles, and to have full liberty, at any time within six months, to go to any convenient port and to transport himself, with his servants, goods, and necessaries, beyond the seas: And in all other things to enjoy the benefit of the said Articles. Hereunto due obedience is to be given by all persons whom it may concern, as they will answer the contrary. Given under my hand and seal the 27th day of June, 1646. (Signed) T. FAIRFAX." [Footnote: From the Composition Papers: Document i. in Hamilton's Appendix VOL. III.] Provided with this pass, Mr. Powell and Mrs. Powell, with some of their sons and daughters, arrived in London some time early in July, and took up their abode for the while at their son-in-law Milton's in the Barbican. That they were there, and a pretty large party of them too, we learn from Phillips. "In no very long time after her [the wife's] coming [back to Milton] she had a great resort of her kindred with her in the house: viz. her father and mother and several of her brothers and sisters, which were in all pretty numerous." The surrender of Oxford and the loss of Forest-hill were the immediate causes of this crowding of the Barbican house with the Powell kindred, unless we are to suppose that some of them had preceded Mr. Powell thither.

Poor Mr. Powell's perplexities were never to have an end. He cannot have been more than a fortnight in London when he became aware not only that he had small chance of redress at head-quarters against the injury already done him by the Oxfordshire sequestrators, but that Parliamentarian public opinion in Oxfordshire was pursuing him to London with fell intent of farther damage. July 15, 1646, we read in the _Lords Journals_, "A Petition of the inhabitants of Banbury was read, complaining that the one half of the town is burnt down, and part of the church and steeple pulled down; and, there being some timber and boards at one Mr. Powell's house, a Malignant, near Oxford, they desire they may have these materials assigned them for the repair of their church and town. It is Ordered, that this House thinks fit to grant this Petition, and to desire the concurrence of the House of Commons therein, and that an Ordinance may be drawn up to that purpose." The Commons concurred readily; for, in the _Commons Journals_ of the very next day, July 16, we read, "The humble Petition of the inhabitants of Banbury was read; and it is thereupon Ordered: That the Timber and Boards cut down by one Mr. Powell, a Malignant, out of Forest Wood near Oxford, and sequestered, being not above the value of 300%., be bestowed upon the inhabitants of the town of Banbury, to be employed for the repair of the Church and Steeple, and rebuilding of the Vicarage House and Common Gaol there; and that such of the said Timber and Boards as shall remain of the uses aforesaid shall be disposed, by the members of both Houses which are of the Committee for Oxfordshire, to such of the well-affected persons of the said town, for the rebuilding of their houses, as to the said members, or major part of them, shall seem meet." Here was a confiscation by Parliament itself of every moveable thing belonging to Mr. Powell that had been left at Forest-hill after the sale to Appletree. All the precious timber, including that bought by the harpy Appletree, but not yet removed by him, was voted to these cormorants of the town of Banbury: Mr. Powell's condition was to be that of Job at his worst. He had come to London to plead the benefit of the Articles of Surrender; and behold, enemies in Oxfordshire and Parliament in London had conspired to strip him totally bare!

One sees the poor gentleman in his son-in-law's house utterly broken down with the accumulation of his misfortunes, hanging his head in a corner of the room where they all met, letting his wife and daughters come round him and talk to him, but refusing to be comforted. What mattered it to him to be told of better times that might be coming, or even of the new little creature of his own blood that was then daily expected into the world? To Mrs. Powell, however, this expected event was of more consequence. She was a person of some temper and spirit; and, even in her troubles, there was some spur upon her in her present motherly duty. And so, when, on the 29th of July, 1646, being Wednesday, and the day of the monthly Fast, Milton's first-born child saw the light, at about half-past six in the morning, and was reported to be a daughter, what could they do but agree to name the little thing ANNE in honour of her grandmother? [Footnote: Pedigree of the Milton Family by Sir Charles Young, Garter King at Arms, prefixed to Pickering's edition of Milton's Works, 1851. But the original authority was an inscription in Milton's own hand on a blank leaf of his wife's Bible:--"Anne, my daughter, was born July the 29th, the day of the monthly Fast, between six and seven, or about half an hour after six in the morning, 1646." This, with subsequent entries on the same leaf, was copied by Birch, Jan. 6, 1749-50, when the Bible was shown him by Mrs. Foster, granddaughter to Milton (daughter to his youngest daughter Deborah), then keeping a chandler's shop in Cock Lane, near Shoreditch Church. It was the Bible in which Milton had written the dates of his children's births. It was, however, his wife's book: "I am the book of Mary Milton" was written on it in her hand.--The fact that the 29th of July, 1846, on which Milton's first child was born, was Wednesday and a day of public Fast, is verified by a reference to the _Commons Journals_. The Commons had but a brief sitting that day after hearing Fast-day sermons by Mr. Caryl and Mr. Whittaker; and their chief business was to pass thanks to these two preachers for the same.] It was the name also of Milton's sister, once Mrs. Phillips, now Mrs. Agar; but there is little doubt that this can have been thought of only incidentally, and that the real compliment was to Mrs. Powell. The babe was, of course, shown to Mr. Powell in his sadness, and also to its other grandfather, then in the house, who could be cheerier over it, as having less reason for melancholy. "A brave girl," is Phillips's description of the new-born infant; "though, whether by ill constitution, or want of care, she grew up more and more decrepit." The poor girl, in fact, turned out a kind of cripple. This, however, was not foreseen, and for the present there was nothing but the misfortunes of the Powells to mar the joy in the Barbican household over the appearance of this little pledge of the reconciliation of Milton and his wife about a year before.

After the little girl was born, they did rouse Mr. Powell to take the necessary steps for the recovery of what could be recovered of his property, if that should prove to be anything whatsoever. The first of these steps consisted in appearing personally, or by petition, before a certain Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall, in Foster-lane, Cheapside, to whom had been entrusted by Parliament the whole business of arranging the compositions with Delinquents whose estates had been sequestrated. To this Committee, which must have had a very busy time of it at the end of the war, when would-be compounders were flocking in from north, south, and west, Mr. Powell, among others, addressed his petition on the 6th of August, 1646, in these terms: "To the Honourable the Committee sitting at Goldsmiths' Hall for Compositions, the humble Petition of Richard Powell, of Forest-hill, in the County of Oxon., Esq., sheweth--That your Petitioner's estate for the most part lying in the King's quarters, he did adhere to his Majesty's party against the forces raised by Parliament in this unnatural war; for which his Delinquency his estate lieth under sequestration. He is comprised within those Articles at the surrender of Oxford; and humbly prays to be admitted to his composition according to the said Articles. And he shall pray, &c.--RICHARD POWELL." [Footnote: Hamilton's Milton Papers Appendix, Document ii.] This was all he could do in the meantime. As soon as the Committee should have leisure to attend to his case, he could take the other necessary steps. Among these would be the preparation of the most perfect schedule of his estate, real and personal, which he could draw up, the verification of every item of the same, and (which would be the most difficult part of the business) his argument with the Committee that, by the Articles of Oxford, he ought to be reinstated both in the goods and furniture which had been sold, at an under value, by the Oxford sequestrators to Appletree, and in the 300_l._, worth of his timber which had been hastily bestowed by Parliament on the people of Banbury. To these matters it would be time enough to attend when the Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall had returned their answer to his Petition. Not till then either need he go through the formality of subscribing the Covenant in the presence of a parish- minister or other authorized person. That was, indeed, an indispensable formality for any Delinquent who would sue out his composition, or otherwise signify his submission to Parliament. But it was a formality which a Delinquent in Mr. Powell's circumstances would willingly put off to the last moment.

Milton's father-in-law was not the only one of his relatives who were engaged about this time in the disagreeable business of compounding for their Delinquency. His younger brother, Christopher Milton, was in the same predicament. Our last glimpse of this gentleman was after the surrender of Reading to the Parliamentarian Army under Essex, in April 1643. He was then, we found (Vol. II. pp. 488-490), a householder in Reading, and decidedly a Royalist; and, after the siege, when his father came from Reading to London, to reside with his Parliamentarian brother, he himself remained at Reading, a Royalist still. In the interim he had even been rather active as a Royalist, having been "a Commissioner for the King, under the great seal of Oxford, for sequestering the Parliament's friends of three Counties." Latterly, in some such capacity, he had gone to Exeter; and he had been residing in that city, if not in 1644, when Queen Henrietta Maria was there, at least some time before its siege by the New Model Army. On the surrender of Exeter (April 10, 1646), on Articles similar to those afterwards given to Oxford, he had come to London on very much the same errand as that on which Mr. Powell came three months later. More forward in one respect than Mr. Powell, he had at once begun his submission to Parliament by taking the Covenant. He did so before William Barton, minister of John Zachary, in Alders-gate Ward, on the 20th of April, or almost immediately on his arrival in London. That preliminary over, he had been residing, most probably, in the house of his mother-in-law. Widow Webber, in St. Clement's Churchyard, Strand, where Milton had boarded his wife while the house in Barbican was getting ready. Not till August 7, the day after Mr. Powell had sent in his Petition for compounding to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, did Christopher Milton send in _his_ petition to the same body. Then, still styling himself "Christopher Milton, of Reading, in the county of Berks, Esq., a Councillor at Law," he acknowledged his Delinquency in having served as a Commissioner of Sequestrations for the King, but prayed that he might have the benefit of the Exeter Articles of Surrender, so as to be allowed to compound for his little property now sequestered in turn. "I am seized in fee, to me and to my heirs," he said in his accompanying statement, "in possession of and in a certain messuage or tenement situate, standing, and being within St. Martin's parish, Ludgate, called the sign of the Cross Keys, and was of the yearly value, before these troubles, 40_l._ Personal estate I have none but what hath been seized and taken from me and converted to the use of the State. This is a true particular of all my estate, real and personal, for which I only desire to compound to free it out of sequestration, and do submit unto and undertake to satisfy and pay such fine as by this Committee for Compositions with Delinquents shall be imposed and set to pay for the same in order to the freedom and discharge of my person and estate." Two years' value of an estate was about the ordinary fine for Delinquency; but different grades of Delinquency were recognised, and the fines for very pronounced Delinquency were heavier. [Footnote: Particulars about Christopher Milton and his Delinquency are from Hamilton's _Milton Papers_, pp. 62-64, and from Documents lxii. and lxiii. in Appendix.]

We have arrived, biographically as well as historically, at August 1646. In this month, while Mr. Powell and Christopher Milton had begun severally to sue out their compositions for Delinquency, it is on a rather crowded domestic tableau round Milton in Barbican that the curtain drops. On one side of him was his own old father, on the other was his father-in-law; the mother-in-law, Mrs. Powell, was there, with her married daughter Mrs. Milton, and the little baby Anne; how many of Mrs. Milton's brothers and sisters were in the group can hardly be guessed; the two boys Phillips, and one knows not how many other pupils, fill up the interstices between the larger people in front; and one sees Christopher Milton, his wife Thomasine, their children, and perhaps the Widow Webber, as visitors in the background. Of the whole company, I should say, the mother-in law, Mrs. Powell, was, for the time being, and whether to Milton's private satisfaction or not, the chief in command.