A History of English Literature
A History of English Literature
A History of English Literature
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the <strong>English</strong> Church might not have been wrought into so fine a harmony with<br />
the pastoral form.<br />
Milton's first period ends with an experience designed to complete his<br />
preparation for his career, a fifteen months' tour in France and Italy,<br />
where the highest literary circles received him cordially. From this trip<br />
he returned in 1639, sooner than he had planned, because, he said, the<br />
public troubles at home, foreshadowing the approaching war, seemed to him a<br />
call to service; though in fact some time intervened before his entrance on<br />
public life.<br />
The twenty years which follow, the second period <strong>of</strong> Milton's career,<br />
developed and modified his nature and ideas in an unusual degree and<br />
fashion. Outwardly the occupations which they brought him appear chiefly as<br />
an unfortunate waste <strong>of</strong> his great poetic powers. The sixteen sonnets which<br />
belong here show how nobly this form could be adapted to the varied<br />
expression <strong>of</strong> the most serious thought, but otherwise Milton abandoned<br />
poetry, at least the publication <strong>of</strong> it, for prose, and for prose which was<br />
mostly ephemeral. Taking up his residence in London, for some time he<br />
carried on a small private school in his own house, where he much<br />
overworked his boys in the mistaken effort to raise their intellectual<br />
ambitions to the level <strong>of</strong> his own. Naturally unwilling to confine himself<br />
to a private sphere, he soon engaged in a prose controversy supporting the<br />
Puritan view against the Episcopal form <strong>of</strong> church government, that is<br />
against the <strong>of</strong>fice <strong>of</strong> bishops. There shortly followed the most regrettable<br />
incident in his whole career, which pathetically illustrates also the lack<br />
<strong>of</strong> a sense <strong>of</strong> humor which was perhaps his greatest defect. At the age <strong>of</strong><br />
thirty-four, and apparently at first sight, he suddenly married Mary<br />
Powell, the seventeen-year-old daughter <strong>of</strong> a royalist country gentleman<br />
with whom his family had long maintained some business and social<br />
relations. Evidently this daughter <strong>of</strong> the Cavaliers met a rude<br />
disillusionment in Milton's Puritan household and in his Old Testament<br />
theory <strong>of</strong> woman's inferiority and <strong>of</strong> a wife's duty <strong>of</strong> strict subjection to<br />
her husband; a few weeks after the marriage she fled to her family and<br />
refused to return. Thereupon, with characteristic egoism, Milton put forth<br />
a series <strong>of</strong> pamphlets on divorce, arguing, contrary to <strong>English</strong> law, and<br />
with great scandal to the public, that mere incompatibility <strong>of</strong> temper was<br />
adequate ground for separation. He even proceeded so far as to make<br />
proposals <strong>of</strong> marriage to another woman. But after two years and the ruin <strong>of</strong><br />
the royalist cause his wife made unconditional submission, which Milton<br />
accepted, and he also received and supported her whole family in his house.<br />
Meanwhile his divorce pamphlets had led to the best <strong>of</strong> his prose writings.<br />
He had published the pamphlets without the license <strong>of</strong> Parliament, then<br />
required for all books, and a suit was begun against him. He replied with<br />
'Areopagitica,' an, eloquent and noble argument against the licensing<br />
system and in favor <strong>of</strong> freedom <strong>of</strong> publication within the widest possible<br />
limits. (The name is an allusion to the condemnation <strong>of</strong> the works <strong>of</strong><br />
Protagoras by the Athenian Areopagus.) In the stress <strong>of</strong> public affairs the<br />
attack on him was dropped, but the book remains, a deathless plea for<br />
individual liberty.<br />
Now at last Milton was drawn into active public life. The execution <strong>of</strong> the<br />
King by the extreme Puritan minority excited an outburst <strong>of</strong> indignation not<br />
only in England but throughout Europe. Milton, rising to the occasion,<br />
defended the act in a pamphlet, thereby beginning a paper controversy,<br />
chiefly with the Dutch scholar Salmasius, which lasted for several years.<br />
By 1652 it had resulted in the loss <strong>of</strong> Milton's eyesight, previously<br />
over-strained by his studies--a sacrifice in which he gloried but which<br />
lovers <strong>of</strong> poetry must always regret, especially since the controversy