well dipped in debt, and expecting a large property with his wife, and not immediately getting it, but, on the contrary, all his creditors on his back in the expectation of it, he might have been quite as mad as he was. Like Lord Byron, however, he had not nine executions in his house in one week—enough to craze the sanest creature; and so Milton went on for a good while, calmly and manfully laboring at his Areopagitica, or Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, one of the noblest works in our language. His wife had gone home, at the invitation of her friends, to spend the remaining part of the summer with them: we have seen why they invited her. The good, easy man gave her leave to stay till Michaelmas. Michaelmas came, but no wife; the visit had only been a pretense for desertion. He sent for her, and she refused to come. He sent letter after letter; these remained unanswered. He dispatched a messenger to bring her home; the messenger was dismissed from her father's house with contempt. This very properly moved his spirit, and he resolved to repudiate her. To justify this bold step, he published four treatises on divorce: The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce; The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce; his famous Tetrachordon, or Expositions upon the four chief places of Scripture which treat of Marriage, or Nullities of Marriage; and Colasterion. It is probable that the lady and her friends would have thanked him for the divorce, had the world gone well with them; and that, like the great poet of our time, he might have lived and died without further sight of his pretty runaway; but the political scene was now fast changing. The royal power was rapidly waning; the Powells were getting into trouble, or foresaw it fast approaching, from their active participation in the royal cause. Milton, on the other hand, was fast rising into popular note. He was the very man that they were likely to need in the coming storm; and, with true worldly policy, they forgot all their pride and insults—were willing to forget the offended husband's public exposure of his wife's conduct, and his active measures for repudiation; and a plan was laid for retaking him. The plot was thus laid: Milton was accustomed to visit a relative in St. Martin's-le-Grand; and here, as it had been concerted on her part, he was astonished to see his wife come from another apartment, and, falling on her knees before him, beg forgiveness for her conduct. After some natural astonishment, and some reluctance on his part to a reconciliation, after what had passed, he at length gave way to her tears, and forgave and embraced her.
"Soon his heart relented
Toward her, his life so late, and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress."
It has been supposed that the impression made upon his imagination and his feelings, on this occasion, contributed no little to his description of the scene in Paradise Lost, in which Eve addresses herself to Adam for pardon and peace.
And certainly Milton, on this occasion, displayed no little magnanimity and nobility of character. His domestic peace and reputation had been most remorselessly attacked, yet, says Fenton, "after this reunion, so far was he from retaining an unkind memory of the provocations which he had received from her ill conduct, that when the king's cause was entirely oppressed, and her father, who had been active in his loyalty, was exposed to sequestration, Milton received both him and his family to protection and free entertainment in his own house, till his affairs were accommodated by his interest with the victorious faction." The old father-in-law had to smart for his attachment to the royal cause. He was publicly announced as a delinquent, and fined £576, 12s., 3d.; besides that his house was seized by the Parliamentary party.
It would be agreeable if from this time we could find data for believing that the returned wife and her friends showed a generous sense of the kindness of the poet. But we can not. It appears from Milton's nuncupative will, that the old man never paid him a penny of the promised marriage portion of £1000; and that the three daughters, too true daughters of such a mother, had behaved to him very undutifully. The whole of the view that we obtain of the Powell family is of a piece. After the royal power was restored, and Milton was in danger and disgrace, we hear of no protection afforded by them to him; no protecting roof extended, no countenance even to the daughters, their mother now being dead; but the father being poor, and out of favor, the daughters were suffered to take their fate. One died early, having married a master-builder; one died single; and the third married a weaver in Spitalfields. It should be recollected that all three daughters survived their father as well as mother, yet it does not appear that they received the slightest notice or assistance from their rich relations of Shotover. Yet his third daughter, Deborah, had great need of it, and, in many respects, well deserved it. She lived to the age of seventy-six. This is the daughter that used to read to her father, and was well known to Richardson and Professor Ward: a woman of a very cultivated understanding, and not inelegant of manners. She was generously patronized by Addison, and by Queen Caroline, who sent her a present of fifty guineas. She had seven sons and three daughters, of whom Caleb and Elizabeth are remembered. Caleb emigrated to Fort Saint George, where, perhaps, he died. Elizabeth, the youngest daughter, married Thomas Foster, a weaver in Spitalfields, as her mother had done before her, and had seven children, who all died. She is said to have been a plain, sensible woman, and kept a petty grocer's or chandler's shop, first at Lower Holloway, and afterward at Cock-lane, near Shoreditch Church. In April, 1750, Comus was acted for her benefit: Doctor Johnson, who wrote the prologue, says, "She had so little acquaintance with diversion or gayety, that she did not know what was intended when a benefit was offered her." The profits of the performance were only £67, the expenses being deducted, although Dr. Newton contributed largely, and Jacob Tonson gave £20. On this trifling augmentation to their small stock, she and her husband removed to Islington, where they both soon died.
Such is the history of Milton's posterity; that of Shakspeare was sooner terminated, though the descendants of his sister Joan still exist, in a poverty disgraceful to the nation.
With his two succeeding wives, Milton appears to have lived in great harmony and affection. His second wife, a daughter of Captain Woodcock, of Hackney, died in child-birth within a year of their marriage; and his sonnet to her memory bears testimony to his tender regard for her. His third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, of Cheshire, survived him, and went to reside in her native county, among her own relatives.
From this melancholy review of Milton's domestic history, let us now return to his homes in London after his return from Italy. He came back with great intentions, but to the humble occupation of a schoolmaster; and here we encounter one of the most disgraceful pieces of chuckling over his lowly fate, to be found in that most disgraceful life of our great poet and patriot, by Dr. Johnson. The Lives of the Poets, by Johnson, in the aggregate, do him no credit. In point of research, even, they are extremely deficient; but the warped and prejudiced spirit in which they are written destroy them as authority. On Milton's head, however, Johnson poured all the volume of his collected bile. Such a piece of writing upon the greatest epic poet, as well as one of the most illustrious patriots of the nation, is a national insult of the grossest kind. Take this one passage as a specimen of the whole. "Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree of merriment on great promises and small performances; on the man who hastens home because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapors away his patriotism in a private boarding-school." The passage is as false as it is malicious. Milton did not promise to come home and put himself at the head of armies or of senates. He knew where his strength lay, and he came to use it, and did use it most effectually. He did not say, "I will be another Cromwell," but he became the Cromwell of the pen. It was precisely because he was poor—that he had no interest or connections to place him in the front ranks of action, that he showed the greatness of his resolve, in hastening to the scene of contest, and standing ready to seize such opportunity as should offer, to strike for his country and for liberty. He desired to do his duty in the great strife, whatever might be the part he could gain to play; and had he only sincerely desired to do that, and had yet not done it for want of opportunity, he would still have been worthy of praise for his laudable desire.
But every thing that Milton promised he performed: who performed so much? He did not make great promises, and show small performances; he did not vapor away his patriotism in a private boarding-school. He took
