CHAPTER II.

TROUBLES IN THE BARBICAN HOUSEHOLD: CHRISTOPHER MILTON'S COMPOSITION SUIT: MR. POWELL'S COMPOSITION SUIT: DEATH OF MR. POWELL: HIS WILL: DEATH OF MILTON'S FATHER--SONNET XIV. AND ODE TO JOHN ROUS-ITALIAN REMINISCENCES: LOST LETTERS FROM CARLO DATI OF FLORENCE: MILTON'S REPLY TO THE LAST OF THEM--PEDAGOGY IN THE BARBICAN: LIST OF MILTON'S KNOWN PUPILS: LADY RANELAGH--EDUCATIONAL REFORM STILL A QUESTION: HARTLIB AGAIN: THE INVISIBLE COLLEGE: YOUNG ROBERT BOYLE AND WILLIAM PETTY-- REMOVAL FROM BARBICAN TO HIGH HOLBORN--MEDITATIONS AND OCCUPATIONS IN THE HOUSE IN HIGH HOLBORN: MILTON'S SYMPATHIES WITH THE ARMY CHIEFS AND THE EXPECTANT REPUBLICANS--STILL UNDER THE BAN OF THE PRESBYTERIANS: TESTIMONY OF THE LONDON MINISTERS AGAINST HERESIES AND BLASPHEMIES: MILTON IN THE BLACK LIST--ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI: TRANSLATION OF NINE PSALMS FROM THE HEBREW--MILTON THROUGH THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: HIS PERSONAL INTEREST IN IT, AND DELIGHT IN THE ARMY'S TRIUMPH: HIS SONNET TO FAIRFAX--BIRTH OF MILTON'S SECOND CHILD: ANOTHER LETTER FROM CARLO DATI.

The two years and four months of English History traversed in the last chapter were of momentous interest to Milton at the time, were preparing an official career of eleven years for him at the very centre of affairs, and were to furnish him with matter for comment, and indeed with risk and responsibility, to the end of his days. While they were actually passing, however, his life was rather private in its tenor, and we have to seek him not so much in public manifestations as in his household and among his books.

PROBLEMS IN THE BARBICAN HOUSEHOLD: CHRISTOPHER MILTON'S COMPOSITION SUIT: MR. POWELL'S COMPOSITION SUIT: DEATH OF MR. POWELL: HIS WILL: DEATH OF MILTON'S FATHER

We left the household in Barbican a rather overcrowded one, consisting not merely of Milton, his wife, their newly-born little girl, his father, and his two nephews, but also of his Royalist father-in-law Mr. Powell, with Mrs. Powell, and several of their children, driven to London by the wreck of the family fortunes at Oxford. For some months, we now find, the state of poor Mr. Powell's affairs continued to be a matter of anxiety to all concerned.

On the 6th of August, 1646, or as soon as possible after Mr. Powell's arrival in London, he had applied, as we saw, to the Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall for liberty to compound for that portion of his sequestered Oxfordshire estates which was yet recoverable. Milton's younger brother, Christopher, we saw, was at the same time engaged in a similar troublesome business. Ho too was suing out pardon for his delinquency on condition of the customary fine on his property; and, according to his own representation to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, the sole property he had consisted of a single house in the city of London, worth 40_l._ a year.

The Goldsmiths' Hall Committee being then overburdened with similar applications of Delinquents from all parts of England, the cases of Mr. Powell and Christopher Milton had waited their turn.

The case of Christopher Milton came on first. His delinquency had been very grave. He had actually served as one of the King's Commissioners for sequestrating the estates of Parliamentarians in three English counties. There seems, therefore, to have been a disposition at head-quarters to be severe with him. On the 24th of September the Committee at Goldsmiths' Hall did fix his fine for his London property at 80_l._ (_i.e._ a tenth of its whole value calculated at twenty years' purchase), receiving the first moiety of 40_l._ down, and accepting "William Keech, of Fleet Street, London, goldbeater," as Christopher's co-surety for the payment of the second moiety within three months. But they do not seem to have been satisfied that the young barrister had given a correct account of his whole estate; and it was intimated to him that, while the 80_l_. would restore to him his London property, the House of Commons would look farther into his case, and he might have more to pay on other grounds. In fact, his case was protracted not only through the rest of 1646, but for five years longer, the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee never letting him completely off all that while, but instituting inquiries repeatedly in Berks and Suffolk, with a view to ascertain whether he had not concealed properties in those counties in addition to the small London property for which he had compounded. [Footnote: It is rather difficult to follow Christopher Milton's case through the Composition Records and other notices respecting it; but here is the substance of the first of them:-- _Aug._ 7, 1646, Delinquent's Application to Compound, with statement of his property, referred to Sub-Committee (Hamilton's Milton Papers, 128, 129); _Aug. and Sept._ 1646, Various proposals of the Committee as to the amount of his fine--at 80_l._ or "a tenth," at 200_l._ or "a third"-- ending, ending Sept. 24, in the imposition of a fine of 80_l._ for his London property, with a hint that there might be farther demand (Hamilton, 62 and 129-30, and Todd. I. 162-3); _Undated, but seemingly after Dec._ 1646, Note of Christopher Milton as a defaulter for the latter moiety of his fine (Hamilton, 62). The case runs on through subsequent years to 1652; nay, as late as Feb. 1657-8 there is trace of it (Hamilton, 130, Document lxvi.).]

Mr. Powell's case, for different reasons, was more complex. On the 2lst of Nov. 1646, or somewhat more than three months after he had petitioned the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee for leave to compound, he sent in the necessary "Particular of Real and Personal Estate" by which his composition was to be rated. He had been living all the while in his son- in-law's house in Barbican; and the delay may have arisen from those circumstances of perplexity, already known to the reader (_antè_, pp. 473-483), which rendered it difficult for him to estimate what the amount of his remaining property might really be. In the "Particular" now sent in, though he still designates himself "Richard Powell of Forest-hill," the Forest-hill mansion and lands are totally omitted, as no longer his property in any practical sense, but transferred by legal surrender to his creditor Sir Robert Pye. All that he can put on paper as his own is now (1) his small Wheatley property of 40_l._ a year; (2) his "personal estate in corn and household stuff," left at Forest-hill before the siege of Oxford, and estimated at 500_l._ if it could be properly recovered and sold; (3) his much more doubtful stock of "timber and wood," also left at Forest-hill, and worth 400_l._ on a similar supposition; and (4) debts owing to him to the amount of 100_l._ Against these calculated assets, of about 1,800_l._ altogether, he pleads, however, a burden of 400_l._, with arrears of interest, due to Mr. Ashworth by mortgage of the Wheatley property, and also 1,200_l._ of debts to various people, and a special debt of 300_l._ "owing upon a statute" to his son-in-law Mr. John Milton. As a reason for leniency, the fact is moreover stated that he had lost 3,000_l._ by the Civil War. Actually, if his account is correct, he was insolvent; or, if his debt to his son-in-law were regarded as cancelled, he had but about 200_l._ left in the world. In criticising his account, however, the Committee would be sharp-sighted. They would remember that it was his interest, on the one hand, to rate his debts and losses at the highest figure, and, on the other hand, to represent at the lowest figure all his remaining property, except those items of "corn and household stuff," and "timber and wood," which he held to have been illegally disposed of by Parliamentary officials, and for the recovery of which he might bring forward a claim against Parliament. How the Committee, or the sub-Committee to whom the case was referred Nov. 26, did proceed in their calculations can only be conjectured; but the result was that they charged Mr. Powell on his whole returned property, without any allowance whatever for his debts. This appears from three documents in the State Paper Office, all of date Dec. 1646. On the 4th of that month Mr. Powell went through the two formalities required by law of every Delinquent before composition. He subscribed the National Covenant in the presence of "William Barton, minister of John Zachary" (the same clergyman who had administered the Covenant to Christopher Milton seven months before); and he took the so-called "Negative Oath" in presence of another witness. On the same day, before a third witness, he took another and more special oath, to the effect that the debts mentioned in his return to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee were genuine debts, "truly and really owing by him," and that the estimate of his losses by the Civil War there set down was also just. Nevertheless, in the paper drawn up on the 8th of December by two of the Goldsmiths' Hall officials, containing an abstract of Mr. Powell's case, in which his own statements are accepted, and notice is taken of a request he had made for an allowance of 400_l._ off the value of the Wheatley property on account of the mortgage to that amount with which it was burdened, the fine is fixed by these ominous words at the close: "Fine at 2 yeeres value, 180_l._" The officials had been strict as Shylock. Taking the Wheatley property at Mr. Powell's own valuation of 40_l._ a year, without allowing his claim of a half off for the Ashworth mortgage, they had added 50_l._ a year as the worth of the remaining 1,000_l._ made up by the three other capital items in his return, and thus appraised him as worth 90_l._ a year in all. At the customary rate of two years' value, his fine therefore was to be 180_l._ The debts of the Delinquent might amount to more than his estimated property, as he said they did; but that was a matter between himself and the world at large, and not between him and the Commissioners for Compositions. [Footnote: The documents the substance of which is here given will be found in the Appendix to Hamilton's Milton Papers (pp. 76-78).--The Rev. William Barton seems to be the person of that name already known to us as author of that Metrical Version of the Psalms which the Lords favoured against Rous's (_antè_, pp. 425 and 512). He may have been an acquaintance of Milton's; at all events, as minister of a church in Aldergate Ward, he was conveniently near to Barbican.]

Either the decision of the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee broke Mr. Powell down unexpectedly, or he had been ailing before it came. It is possible, indeed, that he had been confined to Milton's house during the negotiation, signing the Covenant and other necessary documents there, and unable to walk even the little distance between Barbican and Goldsmiths' Hall. Certain it is that he died there on or about the 1st of January, 1646-7, leaving the following will, executed but a day or two before:--

"In the name of God, Amen!--I, Richard Powell, of Forresthill, _alias_ Forsthill, in the countie of Oxon, Esquire, being sick and weak of bodie, but of perfect minde and memorie, I praise God therefore, this thirtieth daie of December in the yeare of our Lord God one thousand six hundred fortie and six, doe make and declare this my will and testament in manner and forme following:--First and principallie, I comend my soule to the hands of Almighty God my Maker, trusting by the meritts, death, and passion of his sonn Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, to have life everlasting; and my bodie I comitt to the earth from whence it came, to be decentlie interred according to the discretion of my Executor hereafter named.--And, for my worldlie estate which God hath blessed rue withall, I will and dispose as followeth:--_Imprimis_, I give and bequeathe unto Richard Powell, my eldest son, my house at Forresthill, _alias_ Forsthill, in the countie of Oxford, with all the household stuffe and goods there now remaining, and compounded for by me since at Goldsmiths' Hall, together with the woods and timber there remaining; and all the landes to my said house of Forresthill belonging and heretofore therewith used, together with the fines and profitts of the said landes and tenements, to the said Richard Powell and his heires and assignes for ever: to this intent and purpose, and it is the true meaning of this my last will, that my landes and goods shalbe first employed for the satisfieing of my debts and funerall expenses, and afterwards for the raiseing of portions for his brothers and sisters soe far as the estate will reach, allowing as much out of the estate abovementioned unto my said sonn Richard Powell as shall equal the whole to be devided amongst his brothers and sisters, that is to saie the one halfe of the estate to himselfe and the other halfe to be devided amongst his brothers and sisters that are not alredie provided for; in which devision my will is that his sisters have a third parte more than his brothers.--My will and desire is that my said sonn Richard doe, out of my said landes and personall estate herein mentioned, satisfy his mother, my dearely-beloved wife Ann Powell, that bond I have entered into for the makeing her a joynture, which my estate is not in a condition now to dischardge.--And, lastlie, I doe by this my last will and testament make and ordaine my sonn Richard Powell my sole executor of this my last will, and I doe hereby revoke all former wills by me made whatsoever. And my will farther is that, in case my sonn Richard Powell shall not accept the executorshipp, then I doe hereby constitute and appointe, and doe earnestly desire, my dearely beloved wife Ann Powell to be my sole executrix, and to take upon her the mannageing of my estate abovementioned to the uses and purposes herein expressed. And, in case she doe refuse the same, then I desire my loveing friend Master John Ellston of Forresthill to take the executorshipp uppon him and to performe this my will as is herebefore expressed; to whom I give twentie shillings, to buy him a ring. And my earnest desire is that my wife and my sonn have no difference concerning this my will and estate.-- _Item_, I give and bequeathe to my sonn Richard Powell all my houses and landes at Whately in the countie of Oxford, and all other my estate reall and personall in the kingdom of England and dominion of Wales, to the use, intent, and purpose above herein expressed: And my desire is that my daughter Milton be had a reguard to in the satisfieing of her portion, and adding thereto in case my estate will beare it. And, for this estate last bequeathed, in case my sonn take not upon him the executorshipp, then my will is my beloved wife shall be sole executrix, unto whom I give the landes and goods last abovementioned, to the uses and purposes herein mentioned. In case she refuses, then I appoint Master John Ellstone my executor, to the uses and purposes above-mentioned.--In witness hereof I have hereto put my hand and seale the daie and yeare first above-written.--For the further strengthening of this my last will, I doe constitute and appoint my loveing friends, Sir John Curson and Sir Robert Pye the elder, Knights, to be overseers of this my last will, desireing them to be aiding and assisting to my executor to see my last will performed, according to my true meaning herein expressed, for the good and benefitt of my wife and children; and I give them, as a token of my love, twentie shillings apiece, to buy them each a ring, for their paines taken to advise and further my executor to performe this my will. "RICHARD POWELL.

"Subscribed, sealed, and acknowledged to be his last will, in the presence of

"JAMES LLOYD, JOHN MILTON, HENRY DELAHAY." [Footnote: Found by me at Doctors' Commons.--The date assigned for Mr. Powell's death depends on his widow's statement on oath, four years afterwards (Feb. 27, 1650-1), that "said Richard Powell, her late husband, died near the first day of January, in the year of our Lord 1646, at the house of Mr. John Milton situate in Barbican, London." (Todd, I. 57.)]

While this is clearly the will of a dying man whose property is in such a state of wreck and confusion that he knows not whether any provision whatever will arise out of it for his wife and family, there are certain suggestions in it of a contrary tenor. It is evident, for example, that Mr. Powell had not given up all hope that his main property, the mansion and lands of Forest-hill, might ultimately be recovered. Though these are entirely omitted in the Particular of his Estate given in a month before to the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee for Compositions, they figure in his will so expressly that one sees the testator did not consider them quite lost. This, followed by the kindly mention of Sir Robert Pye in the end of the will, and the appointment of that knight as one of the overseers to assist the executor in carrying out the will, confirms a guess which we have already hazarded (_antè_, pp. 475-6): viz. that the entry of Sir Robert Pye into possession of the Forest-hill estate during the siege of Oxford was not the harsh exercise of his legal right to do so, nor even only the natural act of a prudent creditor seeing no other way of recovering a large sum lent to a neighbour, but in part also a friendly precaution in the interests of that neighbour himself and his family. That Forest-hill, if it were to be alienated from the Powells, should pass into the possession of Sir Robert Pye, an old friend of the family, might be for their advantage in the end. Though nominally proprietor, he would regard himself as interim possessor for the Powells; and, should they ever be able to reclaim their property, and to pay the 1,400_l._ and arrears of interest for which it had been pledged, they would find Sir Robert or his family more accommodating than strangers would have been. Something of this kind must have been in Mr. Powell's mind when he made his will. He clung to the Forest-hill property; it was worth much more really than the sum for which it had been alienated; he looked forward to some arrangement in that matter between his heir and Sir Robert Pye, in which Sir Robert himself would advise and assist. Then, as the smaller Wheatley property was also really worth more than the 40_l._ a year at which it was rated, and as, besides other chances only vaguely hinted, the family had immediate claims for 500_l._ on account of goods left at Forest-hill, 400_l._ on account of timber, and l00_l._ in miscellaneous debts, why, on the whole, with patience and good management, should there not be enough to discharge all obligations, and still leave something over for the heir, the widow, and the other eight or nine children, in the proportions indicated? Alas! if this were the possibility, it had to be arrived at, the testator foresaw, through a dense medium of present difficulties. The very items of most importance in the meantime, if his widow and children were to be saved from actual straits, were the items of greatest uncertainty. The household goods, the timber, and the debts due, were estimated together at 1,000_l._ of cash; but it was cash which had to be rescued from the four winds. Nay, most of it had to be rescued from worse than the four winds--from the Parliamentary Government itself, and from its agents in Oxfordshire. The household stuff and goods at Forest-hill! Had they not been sold in June last by the Oxfordshire sequestrators to Matthew Appletree of London, carted off by that dealer, and dispersed no one knew whither? The timber at Forest-hill! Had not that also vanished, most of it voted in July last by the two Houses of Parliament themselves to the people of Banbury for repairs of their church and other buildings? To be sure, the Goldsmiths' Hall Committee, by accepting these portions of Mr. Powell's property at his own valuation and including them in their calculation of his fine for Delinquency, had virtually pledged Government that they should be restored. But then the fine had not been paid. Notwithstanding the statement in Mr. Powell's will that he had compounded for his property, the case was not really so. The Committee had fixed his composition at 180_l.,_ and so had admitted him to compound; but, as he had not yet paid the usual first moiety, the transaction was really incomplete at his death. Who was to pursue the matter to completeness, undertaking on the one hand to pay the composition to Government, and on the other obliging Government to reproduce the value of the goods and timber that had been made away with by itself or by its Oxfordshire agents? All this too was in the testator's mind, and hence his difficulty in fixing on an executor. His eldest son and heir, Richard, then a youth of five-and-twenty, was to have the first option of this office; if he shrank from it, then the widow was to be the sole executrix; but, if she also shrank from it, a certain "Master John Ellston of Forest-hill," in whom Mr. Powell had confidence, was entreated to take it up. This Ellston, it is implied, understood the business, and, as acting for the family, might expect the advice of Sir Robert Pye and Sir John Curzon. [Footnote: The "Ellston" of the will may be the "Eldridge" mentioned in a previously quoted document (_antè_, p. 478) as having 100_l._ worth of Mr. Powell's timber on his premises. If so, Mr. Hamilton (92) has miscopied "Eldridge" for "Ellston" or "Ellstone" in that document.]

The eldest son did shrink from the hard post of executor under the will; but the widow did not. This appears from the probate of the will, dated March 26, 1647, when she appeared as executrix before Sir Nathaniel Brent of the Prerogative Court, took the oath, and had the administration committed to her. [Footnote: Probate attached to the will in Doctors' Commons. There is a _second_ Probate in the margin, dated May 10, 1662, showing that then the eldest son, Richard Powell, at the age of forty-one, reclaimed the executorship, and was admitted to it, the former Probate being set aside. This fact does not concern us at present.] It was, as we shall find, a legacy of trouble and vexation to her, and collaterally to Milton as her son-in-law, for many years; and, as we shall also find, she fought in it perseveringly and bravely. The trouble and vexation, however, so far as records revive it, do not begin within our limits in this volume. For the present it is enough to add that, some time after Mr. Powell's death and burial, his widow and children removed from Milton's house in the Barbican, and quartered themselves elsewhere. They can hardly have gone back to Oxfordshire. Not only was Forest-hill no home for them now, but the smaller tenement and grounds at Wheatley in the same county seem to have been equally unavailable. There is documentary proof, at least, that immediately after Mr. Powell's death, in the same month of January 1646-7, his relative Sir Edward Powell, Bart., took formal possession of that property in consequence of his legal title to it from non-payment of the sum of £300 which he had advanced to Mr. Powell, on that security, five years before (see Vol. II. p. 497). [Footnote: Document, dated Aug. 28, 1650, among the Composition Papers given by Hamilton (86, 87).] This transaction, by a relative, may, like the similar transaction by Sir Robert Pye, have had some meaning in favour of the Powells; but, on the whole, though Mrs. Powell may have managed to dispose of some of her children, especially the elder boys, by appeal to relatives, the probability is that she remained in London and kept most of them with her. There is evidence that she had to live on in most straitened circumstances. Relatives probably did something for her; and Milton, as we shall find, performed his part.

Little more than two months after the burial of Mr. Powell, and possibly before the removal of his widow and children from the house in Barbican, there was another funeral from that house. It was that of Milton's own father. Father-in-law and father had gone almost together, and the house was in double mourning.

Who can part with this father of one of the greatest of Englishmen without a last look of admiration and regret? Nearly fifty years ago, in the last years of Elizabeth's reign, we saw him, an "ingeniose man" from Oxfordshire, detached from his Roman Catholic kindred there, and setting up in London in the business of scrivenership, with music for his private taste, and a name of some distinction already among the musicians and composers of the time. Then came the happy days of his married life in Bread Street, all through James's reign, his business prospering and music still his delight, but his three surviving children growing up about him, and his heart full of generous resolves for their education, and especially of pride in that one of them on whose high promise teachers and neighbours were always dilating. Then to Cambridge University went this elder son, followed in time by the younger, the father consenting to miss their presence, and instructing them to spare no use of his worldly substance for their help in the paths they might choose. It had been somewhat of a disappointment to him when, after seven years, the elder had returned from the University with his original destination for the Church utterly forsworn, and with such avowed loathings of the whole condition of things in Church and State as seemed to bar the prospect of any other definite profession. There had been the recompense, indeed, of that son's graceful and perfected youth, of the haughty nobleness of soul that blazed through his loathings, and of his acquired reputation for scholarship and poetry. And so, in the country retreat at Horton, as age was beginning to come upon the good father, and he was releasing himself from the cares of business, how pleasant it had been for him, and for the placid and invalid mother, to have their elder son wholly to themselves, their one daughter continuing meanwhile in London after her first husband's decease, and then younger son also mainly residing there for his law-studies. What though the son so domiciled with them was plowing up to manhood, still without a profession, still absorbed in books and poetry, doing exactly as he liked, and in fact more the ruler of them than they were of him? Who could interfere with such a son, and why had God given them abundance but that such a son might have the leisure he desired? All in all, one cannot doubt that those years of retirement at Horton had been the most peaceful on which the old man could look back. But those years had come to an end. The sad spring of 1637 had come; the invalid wife had died; and he had been left in widowhood. Little in the ten years of his life since then but a succession of shiftings and troubles! For a while still at Horton, sauntering about the church and in daily communion with the grave it contained, his younger son and that son's newly-wedded wife coming to keep him company while the elder was on his travels. Then, after the elder son's return, the outbreak of the political tumults, and the sad convulsion of everything. In this convulsion his two sons had taken opposite sides, the elder even treasuring up wrath against himself by his vehement writings for the Parliamentarians. How should an old man judge in such a case? The Horton household now broken up, he had gone for a time with Christopher and his wife to Reading, but only to be tossed back to London and the safer protection of John. We have seen him under that protection in Aldersgate Street, all through the time of Milton's marriage--misfortune and the Divorce pamphlets. There was some comfort, on the old man's account, in the picture given of him by his grandson Phillips, then in the same house, as living through all that distraction "wholly retired to his rest and devotion, without the least trouble imaginable." All the same one fancies him having his own thoughts in his solitary upper room, contrasting the now with the then, and feeling that he had become feeble and superfluous. A cheerful change for him may have been the larger house in Barbican, with his son's forgiven wife in her proper place in it and more numerous pupils going in and out, and at last the birth of the infant-girl that made his grandfatherhood complete in all its three branches. He had been about eighteen months in this house. The Civil War had come to an end, and the King had been surrendered by the Scots at Newcastle and shifted to the second stage of his captivity at Holmby House, and Christopher Milton had returned ruefully to London from Exeter to sue out pardon for his delinquency, and the impoverished Powells also had come to the house from Oxford. Old Mr. Powell and old Mr. Milton had been a good deal together, and at length, when Mr. Powell was dying, old Mr. Milton may have assisted, scrivener-like, in the framing of his will. Only two months afterwards his own turn came. No will of his has been found, and probably he had made a will unnecessary by previous arrangements. His Bible and music-books left in his room may have been the mementoes of his last occupations. He was buried, March 15, 1646-7, in the chancel of the Church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, not far from Barbican; and the entry "John Milton, Gentleman, 15" among the "Burialls in March 1646" may be still looked at with interest in the Registers of that parish. [Footnote: To the courtesy of the Rev. P. P. Gilbert, M.A., Vicar of the parish, I owe a certified copy of the burial- entry.]

Nothing came from Milton's pen on the occasion; but one remembers his Latin poem "_Ad Patrem,_" written fifteen years before, and the lines with which that poem closes may stand fitly here as the epitaph for the dead:--

"At tibi, care Pater, postquam non aqua merenti Posse referre datur, nec dona rependere factis, Sit memorasse satis, repetitaque munera grato Percensere animo, fidæque reponere menti. Et vos, O nostri, juvenilia carmina, lusus, Si modo perpetuos sperare audebitis annos, Nec spisso rapient oblivia nigra sub Orco, Forsitan has laudes decantatumque parentis Nomen, ad exmplum, sero servabitis ævo." [Footnote: It seems to me not improbable that the poem, as originally written, ended at the word "menti." and that the last six lines, beginning "Et vos," were an addition when Milton published his Poems in 1645 his father then residing with him.]

SONNET XIV, AND ODE TO JOHN ROUS.

Since the removal from the Aldersgate Street house to that in Barbican, Milton, as we know, had ceased from prose pamphleteering; and all that he had done of a literary kind, besides publishing his volume of collected Poems, had been his two Divorce Sonnets, his Sonnet to Henry Lawes, and his Sonnet with the scorpion tail, entitled _On the Forcers of Conscience_. To these have now to be added, as written since Aug. 1646, two other scraps--viz.: the Sonnet marked XIV. in most of our modern editions of his Poems, and the Latin Ode to John Rous which generally appears at or near the end of the Latin portion of these editions.

Sonnet XIV., though printed without a heading by Milton himself in the Second or 1673 edition of his Poems, and often so printed still, exists fortunately in two drafts in his own hand (one of them erased) among the Milton MSS. at Cambridge, and bears there this heading, also in his own hand: "_On the Religious memory of Mrs. Catherine Thomson, my Christian friend, deceased 16 Decemb._ 1646." We have no other information about this Mrs. Catherine Thomson than is conveyed by these words and the Sonnet itself; and the fact that we know of her existence only by chance suggests to us how many friends and acquaintances of Milton there may have been in London whose very names have perished. One may suppose her to have been a neighbour of Milton's, and rather elderly. That he had no ordinary respect for her appears from the fact that he felt moved to write something in her memory. If written exactly at the time of her death, it was while his house was full of the Powells, and Mr. Powell was grieving over the state of his affairs and perhaps known to be dying. There is a suggestion, however, in the wording, that it may have been written later.

"When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never, Had ripened thy just soul to dwell with God, Meekly thou didst resign this earthy load Of death, called life, which us from Life doth sever. Thy works, and alms, and all thy good endeavour, Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod; But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod, Followed thee up to joy and bliss for ever. Love led them on; and Faith, who knew them best Thy handmaids, clad them o'er with purple beams And azure wings, that up they flew so drest, And speak the truth of thee on glorious themes Before the Judge, who thenceforth bid thee rest And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams."

Certainly written in Barbican between the death of Mr. Powell and that of Milton's father, but in a very different strain from the foregoing, is the Latin Ode to Rous, the Oxford Librarian. The circumstances were these:--

Milton, we have had proof already, cared enough both about his opinions and about his literary reputation to adopt the common practice of sending presentation-copies of his books to persons likely to be interested in them. He had sent out, we have seen, such presentation-copies of Lawes's 1637 edition of his "Comus," and of some of his pamphlets individually. We find, however, that in 1645 or 1646, when he had published no fewer than eleven pamphlets in all, and when moreover his English and Latin Poems had been issued by Moseley, he must have taken some pains to secure that copies of the entire set of his writings, as then extant, should be in the hands of eminent book-collectors and scholars. Thus, in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, there is a small quarto volume containing ten of the pamphlets bound together in this order--"Of Reformation," "Of Prelatical Episcopacy," "The Reason of Church- government," "Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence," "An Apology against a modest Confutation," "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," "The Judgment of Martin Bucer," "Colasterion," "Tetrachordon," "Areopagitica;" and the volume exhibits (in a slightly mutilated form, owing to clipping in the re-binding) this inscription in Milton's autograph: "_Ad doctissimum virum, Patricium Junium, Joannes Miltonius hæc sua, unum in fasciculum conjecta, mittit, paucis hujusmodi lectoribus contentes_" ("To the most learned man, Patrick Young, John Milton sends these things of his, thrown together into one volume, content with few readers were they but of his sort") The volume, therefore, though it has found its way to Dublin, originally belonged to the Scotchman Patrick Young, better known by his Latinized name of Patricius Junius, one of the most celebrated scholars of his time, especially in Greek, and for more than forty years (1605?-1649) keeper of the King's Library in St. James's, London. Milton, it is clear, did not intend the gift for the Royal Library, unless Young chose to put it there. He meant it for Young himself, with whom he had probably some personal acquaintance, and who was of Presbyterian sympathies, and in fact then under the orders of Parliament. [Footnote: There is a facsimile of the inscription to Young in Sotheby's Milton Ramblings, p. 121; but I am indebted for a more particular account of the volume, with a tracing of the inscription, to the Rev. Andrew Campbell of Dublin. There is a memoir of Young in Wood's Fasti, I. 308-9]

About the time when Milton sent this collection of his pamphlets to Patrick Young, or perhaps a little later, he sent a similar gift to another librarian, expressly in his official capacity. This was John Rous, M.A., chief Librarian of the Bodleian at Oxford from 1620 to 1652, Milton, there is reason to believe, had known Rous since the year 1635 (see Vol. I. p. 590); at all events an acquaintance had sprung up between them, as could hardly fail to be the case between a reader like Milton and the keeper of the great Oxford Library; and, as Rous's political leanings, Oxonian though he was, were distinctly Parliamentarian, there was no reason for coolness on that ground. Accordingly, Rous, it appears, had asked Milton for a complete copy of his writings for the Bodleian, and had even been pressing in the request. Milton at length had despatched the required donation in the form of a parcel containing two volumes--the Prose Pamphlets bound together in one volume, and the Poems by themselves in the tinier volume as published by Moseley. On a blank leaf at the beginning of the larger volume he had written very carefully with his own hand a long Latin inscription, "_Doctissimo viro, proloque librorum æstimatori, Joanni Rousio_" &c.; which may be given in translation as follows: "To the most learned man, and excellent judge of books, John Rous, Librarian of the University of Oxford, on his testifying that this would be agreeable to him, John Milton gladly forwards these small works of his, with a view to their reception into the University's most ancient and celebrated Library, as into a temple of perpetual memory, and so, as he hopes, into a merited freedom from ill- will and calumny, if satisfaction enough has been given at once to Truth and to Good Fortune. They are--'Of Reformation in England,' 2 Books; 'Of Prelatical Episcopacy,' 1 Book; 'Of the Reason of Church-government,' 2 Books; 'Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence,' 1 Book; 'Apology against the same,' 1 Book; 'The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' 2 Books; 'The Judgment of Bucer on Divorce,' 1 Book; 'Colasterion,' 1 Book; 'Tetrachordon: An Exposition of some chief places of Scripture concerning Divorce,' 4 Books; 'Areopagitica, or a Speech for the Freedom of the Press;' 'An Epistle on Liberal Education;' and 'Poems, Latin and English,' separately." Here, it will be seen, Milton sends to Rous the same pamphlets he had sent to Patrick Young, and in the same order, only adding the Letter on Education to Hartlib, and the Moseley volume of Poems. Now, all the pieces so enumerated, with the inscription, had duly reached Rous in the Bodleian, with one exception. In the carriage of the parcel to Oxford the tiny volume of Poetry had somehow dropped out or been abstracted; so that Rous, counting over the pieces by the inventory, found himself in possession only of the eleven prose-pamphlets. He had intimated this to Milton, and petitioned for another copy of the Poems to make good the loss of the first. Milton complied; but, as the loss of the first copy had amused him, he took the trouble of writing a mock-heroic Latin ode on the subject to Rous, and causing this ode, transcribed on a sheet of paper in a secretary hand of elaborate elegance, to be inserted by the binder in the new copy, between the English and the Latin portions of the contents. This is the _Ode to Rous_ of which we have spoken as, with the exception of _Sonnet XIV.,_ the sole known production of Milton's muse during those eight months of his Barbican life which have brought us to our present point. When he printed it in the second or 1673 edition of his Poems, he prefixed the exact date, "Jan. 23, 1646" (_i.e._ 1646-7). It was written, therefore, in the interval between Mr. Powell's death and his father's--three weeks after the one, and six or seven weeks before the other. The manuscript copy sent to Rous still exists in the Bodleian in the volume into which it was inserted; and in the same library they show also the volume of the eleven collected prose pamphlets, with the previous inscription to Rous in Milton's autograph. [Footnote: Warton's Note on the Ode to Rous (Todd's Milton, IV. 507-9); Milton's Poems ed. 1678, Latin portion, p. 90; Sotheby's Milton Ramblings, pp. 113-121, where there is a fac-simile of the inscription in the Bodleian volume of the prose pamphlets, and also a fac-simile of a considerable portion of the Latin Ode to Rous from the MS. copy in the other Bodleian volume. The "inscription" is indubitably Milton's autograph; Mr. Sotheby thinks the "ode" also to be in his penmanship, though not in his usual hand, but in a "beautiful secretary hand" which he assumed for the special purpose. Judging from the fac-simile, I doubt this, and think the transcript may have been by some professional scribe.--According to Warton's account, it is by accident that these two precious volumes have been preserved in the Bodleian. In 1720 a number of books, whether as being duplicates or as being thought useless, were weeded out of the Library and thrown aside, and a Mr. Nathaniel Crynes, one of the Esquire Bidels and a book collector, was permitted to have the pick of these for himself on the understanding that he was to leave the Library a valuable bequest. Fortunately Mr. Crynes did not care for the Milton volumes, and so they went back to the shelves.]

The ode is headed "_Ad Joannem Rousium, Oxoniensis Academiæ Bibliothecarium: de Libro Poematum amisso, quem ille sibi denuo mitti postulabat, ut cum aliis nostris in Bibliothecâ publicâ reponeret, Ode_" ("To John Rous, Librarian of the University of Oxford: An Ode on a lost Book of Poems, of which he asked a fresh copy to be sent him, that he might replace it beside our other books in the Public Library").

What strikes one first in reading the Ode is the strange metrical structure. Evidently in a whim, and to suit his mock-heroic purpose, Milton chose a peculiar form of mixed verse, distantly suggested by the choruses of the Greek dramatists, and more closely by some precedents in Latin poetry. There are three Strophes, each followed by an Antistrophe, and the whole is wound up by a closing Epodos. In an appended prose note Milton calls attention to this novelty, and explains moreover that he had taken considerable liberties with the verse throughout, pleasing his own ear, and regarding rather the convenience of modern reading than ancient prosodic rules. Altogether, in this respect, the poem was a bold experiment, for which Milton has been taken to task by purists among his commentators down to our own time.

It is the _matter_, however, that interests us most here. The ode opens half-humorously with an address to the little book he was sending to Rous. It is described as a pretty little book enough, with two sets of contents and a double arrangement of paging to match, neatly but simply bound (_fronde licet geminâ, munditieque nitens non operosâ_), and containing the juvenile productions of a certain Poet of no superlative merit (_haud nimii poetæ_), written partly in Britain and partly in Italy, partly in English and partly in Latin. [Footnote: Critics have objected to Milton's volume, phrase "_fronde licet geminâ_," on the ground that "_fronte_" would be the better Latin word for "title- page." But Milton did not mean only that there were two title pages in the volume, one to the English and one to the Latin poems; he meant also that these two sets of poems were paged separately throughout. His phrase "_fronde geminâ_," ("with double leafing") was therefore perfectly exact.] Then the Antistrophe asks what had become of the former copy of the same, on its way to the sources of the Thames and the great seat of learning there established. The second Strophe and Antistrophe continue the strain, with a hope that now at length the wretched civil tumults may cease in England and Peace and Literature come back, but still with a return of the query what could possibly have become of the missing volume between London and Oxford, and into what clownish hands it might have fallen. In the third Strophe and Antistrophe there is a compliment to Rous as the faithful keeper of one of the most splendid libraries in the world, with acknowledgment of his kindness in seeking to have the missing volume replaced, so that it might have a chance of readers in such glorious company and in all-famous Oxford. The closing Epode may be given in the skilful, though rather lax, rendering of Cowper:--

"Ye, then, my Works, no longer vain And worthless deemed by me, Whate'er this sterile genius has produced, Expect at last, the rage of envy spent, An unmolested happy home, Gift of kind Hermes and my watchful friend, Where never flippant tongue profane Shall entrance find, And whence the coarse unlettered multitude Shall babble far remote. Perhaps some future distant age, Less tinged with prejudice, and better taught, Shall furnish minds of power To judge more equally. Then, malice silenced in the tomb, Cooler heads and sounder hearts, Thanks to Rous, if aught of praise I merit, shall with candour weigh the claim."

ITALIAN REMINISCENCES: LOST LETTERS FROM CARLO DATI OF FLORENCE: MILTON'S REPLY TO THE LAST OF THEM.

Our next trace of Milton, through anything written by himself in his Barbican abode, belongs to April 1647, the month after his father's death. We owe it also perhaps to the fact that the publication of his Poems by Moseley had given him an opportunity of distributing presentation-copies of some of his former writings.

A feature in that volume, it may be remembered, was its richness in Italian reminiscences. Not only were there included among the English Poems the five Italian Sonnets and the Italian Canzone which Milton is believed to have written in Italy; not only were the encomiums of his Italian friends, Manso of Naples, Salzilli and Selvaggi of Rome, and Francini and Dati of Florence, prefixed to the Latin Poems, with a note of explanation; not only among these Latin poems did he print the three pieces to the singer Leonora, the Scazontes to Salzilli, and the fine farewell to Manso; but in the _Epitaphium Damonis_, or pastoral on Charles Diodati's death, which ended the volume, and which had been written immediately after his return to England, there were references throughout to his Italian experiences, and passages of express mention of Dati, Francini, the Florentine group generally, and the venerable Manso. What more natural than to have sent copies of such a volume to the various Italian friends named in it, to remind them of the Englishman to whom they had been so kind. The venerable Manso, indeed, was by this time dead; Salzilli seems to have been dead; the great Galileo, whom Milton had at least once visited near Florence, had died in 1642; but most of the Florentine group were still alive. To these last, all of them poets themselves more or less, Milton might have been expected to send copies of his volume. Or, if he did not trouble them with the English part, which they could not read, he might have sent them at least the Latin part, which had been separately paged, and provided with a separate title and imprint, precisely in order that it might be so detached. For a reason which will appear Milton did not even do this. He seems, however, to have procured from the printer some copies of the last eleven pages of the Latin part, which contained the _Epitaphium Damonis_ by itself, and to have sent these to Florence. Either so, or by some prior transmission of this particular poem to his Florentine friends, unaccompanied by any letter, copies of it _had_ reached them. This we learn from the sequel.

Of all Milton's Florentine friends none had remembered him more faithfully than young Carlo Dati (see Vol. I. pp. 724-5). Only nineteen years of age when Milton had visited Florence in 1638-9, but then a leading spirit in the literary Academies of the city, and especially enthusiastic in his attentions to strangers, he had outgone all the others, except Francini, in his admiration of the Englishman who had come among them, and in the extravagance of his parting adieu. The admiration was real; and, after Milton had gone, young Dati had often thought of him, often talked of him among his companions of the Delia Crusca and of Gaddi's more private Academy of the Svogliati, often wondered what he was doing in his native land. Three times at intervals he had written to Milton; but all the letters had miscarried. Conceive, then, Dati's pleasure, when, some time in 1646 (if that is the correct supposition), a copy of the _Epitaphium Damonis_ reached him from London, and he read the passage there in which Milton had made such affectionate mention of his Florentine friends of 1638-9, and of himself and Francini in particular. Immediately he wrote to Milton a fourth time; and this letter, more fortunate than its predecessors, did arrive at its destination. Milton, on his part, though the letter must have reached him about the time of his father's death, had peculiar pleasure in receiving it and returning an answer. The answer was in Latin, and may be translated as follows:--

"To CHARLES DATI, Nobleman of Florence.

"With how great and what new pleasure I was filled, my Charles, on the unexpected arrival of your letter, since it is impossible for me to describe it adequately, I wish you may in some degree understand from the very pain with which it was dashed, such pain as is almost the invariable accompaniment of any great delight yielded to men. For, on running over that first portion of your letter, in which elegance contends so finely with friendship, I should have called my feeling one of unmixed joy, and the rather because I see your labour to make friendship the winner. Immediately, however, when I came upon that passage where you write that you had sent me three letters before, which I now know to have been lost, then, in the first place, that sincere gladness of mine at the receipt of this one began to be infected and troubled with a sad regret, and presently a something heavier creeps in upon me, to which I am accustomed in very frequent grievings over my own lot: the sense, namely, that those whom the mere necessity of neighbourhood, or something else of a useless kind, has closely conjoined with me, whether by accident or by the tie of law (_sive casu, sive lege, conglutinavit_), _they_ are the persons, though in no other respect commendable, who sit daily in my company, weary me, nay, by heaven, all but plague me to death whenever they are jointly in the humour for it, whereas those whom habits, disposition, studies, had so handsomely made my friends, are now almost all denied me, either by death or by most unjust separation of place, and are so for the most part snatched from my sight that I have to live well nigh in a perpetual solitude. As to what you say, that from the time of my departure from Florence you have been anxious about my health and always mindful of me. I truly congratulate myself that a feeling has been equal and mutual in both of us, the existence of which on my side only I was perhaps claiming to my credit. Very sad to me also, I will not conceal from you, was that departure, and it planted stings in my heart which now rankle there deeper, as often as I think with myself of my reluctant parting, my separation as by a wrench, from so many companions at once, such good friends as they were, and living so pleasantly with each other in one city, far off indeed, but to me most dear. I call to witness that tomb of Damon, ever to be sacred and solemn to me, whose adornment with every tribute of grief was my weary task, till I betook myself at length to what comforts I could, and desired again to breathe a little--I call that sacred grave to witness that I have had no greater delight all this while than in recalling to my mind the most pleasant memory of all of you, and of yourself especially. This you must have read for yourself long ere now, if that poem reached you, as now first I hear from you it