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THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON.

conceived that I was acting wisely when I thus brought my better and most valuable faculties—those which constituted my principal strength and consequence—to the assistance of my country and her most honourable cause."¹ No course that Milton might have taken could have exposed him to greater calumny than he braved; and as to its danger, that his head did not fall on the scaffold, as the price of his temerity, was to become a matter of wonder to himself and to all men.

Milton lodged himself and his books in St. Bride's Churchyard in the autumn of 1639. He removed from St. Bride's to Aldersgate Street in 1640, and he sent out his first blast on the side of the Parliament and ecclesiastical reform in 1641. During eleven years Charles I. had been endeavouring to govern England without the aid of a Parliament. His Majesty had deliberately suspended the laws which he had bound himself by oath at his coronation, and by solemn pledges since, to uphold. The end of Government is to give security to person and property, but that security had passed away. The king taxed the subject as he pleased; sold monopolies in all branches of trade as he pleased; and arrested, fined, and imprisoned real or supposed malcontents as he pleased. No one could be safe, except under the conditions of being submissive and silent; and no man knew his own even on those terms. In ecclesiastical affairs, the Romanising system sustained by Laud was ascendant, and the great aim of its adherents was to suppress all Nonconformity, and all free thought; to perpetuate a hierarchy charged high with priestly elements; to impose the English Prayer Book, not only on the English, but also on the Scots, and to assimilate the Anglican ritual to the Roman to such an extent, that scarcely any difference could be seen between them. This was the policy in relation to the Church which Laud regarded as best in itself, and as most in accordance with the new policy of the sovereign.

But in 1639 Scotland rebelled, and as a nation, denounced and cast off this whole order of things. The king appealed to his English subjects to aid him in suppressing this revolt. The answer given was—to obtain our assistance, you must give us back our laws, and allow us the freedom which those laws were designed to secure to us for the correction of abuses, and the development of our interests as a nation. In 1641 Charles had resorted to every available expedient, in the hope of avoiding compliance with these terms—but in vain. He had called an assembly of peers at York. He had dissolved the Short Parliament summoned in the spring of 1640; and he had been obliged to consent to the meeting of the memorable Long Parliament, in the November of that year. But, though the sword had been drawn against the rule of the king in Scotland, hitherto no weapon had been unsheathed against him in England. Had Milton been never so much disposed, therefore, to fly to arms in this controversy, the only way in which he could have done so within the first three years after his return from Italy, would have been by migrating to Scotland, and joining the ranks of the insurgents in that kingdom. In England, during those years, the points at issue were calmly submitted to discussion, and both parties protested against the thought of attempting a settlement by any other means. So much for the justice of the sneer in which Johnson found it so pleasant to indulge.

While these preliminaries were in process, Milton had ample opportunity of seeing the extent to which the Royalists were influenced by prejudice and misconception, and the importance of attempting to lead the mind of the Parliamentarians themselves more thoroughly to the root of the quarrel. He might have done this in Parliament had his countrymen given him a place there. As circumstances were, the only channel through which he could do the State some service

¹ Defensio Secunda.

THE LIFE OF JOHN MILTON.

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was that of the press; and very glad at any time would his enemies have been if he could have been induced to forego such means of assault, and to have taken to the coarser weapons which multitudes could wield as well or better than himself.

The work issued by Milton in 1641 was intitled, Of Reformation in England, and the Causes that hitherto have Hindered it. Written to a Friend. The writer has shown in his Lycidas, that the condition of the Anglican Church was far from being satisfactory to him. It is in the following eloquent words that he describes the dawn and promise of the Reformation in the sixteenth century:—"But to dwell no longer in characterising the depravities of the church, and how they sprang, and how they took increase; when I recall to mind at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the Church; how the bright and blissful Reformation (by Divine power) strook through the black and settled night of ignorance and anti-Christian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears, and the sweet odour of the returning Gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusky corners where profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it; the schools opened, divine and human learning raked out the embers of forgotten tongues, the princes and cities trooping apace to the new erected banner of salvation; the martyrs, with the irresistible might of weakness, shaking the powers of darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon." From this language the reader will judge of the fervent and earnest style in which this treatise is written. The onward course to have been expected from such a change had been checked. The causes had been many, and among them a bad precedence is given to the bishops, whose love of pomp and power, a natural result of the false position assigned them, is said to have made them the grand corrupters, in place of being, according to their title, spiritual fathers of the Church.

This publication must have appeared early in 1641. It was soon followed by the Humble Remonstrance in Favour of Episcopacy, from the pen of Hall, Bishop of Norwich, who was urged to take the field on this question by Archbishop Laud. In answer to the Bishop, a work was speedily issued bearing the title of Smectymnuus, a name formed from the initials of the five Puritan divines who were concerned in producing it. This rejoinder brought Archbishop Usher into the conflict. Milton replied to his lordship's Apostolical Institution of Episcopacy in two treatises, intitled, Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and Reasons of Church Government. Bishop Hall now published a defence of his Remonstrance, which was quickly followed by Animadversions from Milton. All these publications made their appearance before the close of 1641.

Deep, manifestly, was the impression made by Milton's writings. In 1642, a volume came forth intitled, A Modest Confutation against a Scandalous and Scurrilous Libel. This was generally regarded as coming from the pen of Bishop Hall's son. To the unprincipled attacks made upon Milton's private character in this work, he replied triumphantly in his Apology for Smectymnuus.

The issue of the passionate controversy on this subject was to be seen, first in the removal of the Bishops from the House of Lords, and finally in the suppression of the order. To show how far the writings of Milton contributed to this result, it would be necessary to analyze them, and the design of this brief memoir precludes us from dwelling on such questions.

The stormy 1641 and 1642 having passed, we find Milton left in comparative quiet to his pupils, or to meditate on his great intended poem, of which he had spoken, in anticipation, in lofty terms, in his Apology for Smectymnuus. Remembering the pains Milton had taken to set forth his views on education, we are naturally curious to see him at work in that direction. Unfortunately, the result is far from realising our high expectations. Under the tutoring of the