objects of our care, would exert a salutary influence on the manners and constitution of the republic. And as I had from my youth studied the distinctions between religious and civil rights, I perceived that, if ever I wished to be of use, I ought at least not to be wanting to my country, to the Church, and to so many of my fellow-Christians, in a crisis of so much danger. I therefore determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which I was engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to this one important object. I accordingly wrote two books to a friend concerning the Reformation of the Church of England. Afterwards when two bishops of superior distinction vindicated their privileges against some principal ministers, I thought that on those topics, to the consideration of which I was led solely by my love of truth and my reverence for Christianity, I should not probably write worse than those who were contending only for their own emoluments and usurpations. I therefore answered the one in two books, of which the first is inscribed 'Concerning Prelatical Episcopacy,' and the other 'Concerning the Mode of Ecclesiastical Government'; and I replied to the other in some animadversions, and soon after in an apology. On this occasion it was supposed that I brought a timely succour to the ministers, who were hardly a match for the eloquence of their opponents, and from that time I was actively employed in refuting any answers that appeared. When the bishops could no longer resist the multitude of their assailants, I had leisure to turn my thoughts to other subjects; to the promotion of real and substantial liberty, which is rather to be sought from within than from without; and whose existence depends, not so much on the terror of the sword as on sobriety of conduct and integrity of life. When, therefore, I perceived that there were three species of liberty which are essential to the happiness of social life-religious, domestic, and civil; and as I had already written concerning the first, and the magistrates were strenuously active in obtaining the third, I determined to turn my attention to the second, or the domestic species. As they seemed to involve three material questions— the conditions of the conjugal tie, the education of children, and the free publications of the thoughts-I made them objects of distinct consideration. I explained my sentiments, not only concerning the solemnization of matrimony, but the dissolution, if circumstances rendered it necessary, and I drew my arguments from the divine law, which Christ did not abolish, or publish another more grievous than that of Moses. I stated my own opinions, and those of others, concerning the exclusive exception of fornication, which our illustrious Selden has since,

in his "Hebrew Wife," more copiously discussed; for he, in vain, makes a vaunt of liberty in the senate, or in the forum, who languishes under the vilest servitude to an inferior at home. On this subject, therefore, I published some books, which were more particularly necessary at that time, when man and wife were often the most inveterate foes; when the man often staid to take care of his children at home, while the mother of the family was seen in the camp of the enemy, threatening death and destruction to her husband. I then discussed the principles of education in a summary manner, but sufficiently copious for those who attend seriously to the subject, than which nothing can be more necessary to principle the minds of men in virtue, the only genuine source of political and individual liberty, the only true safeguard of states, the bulwark of their prosperity and renown. Lastly, I wrote my "Areopagitica" after the true Attic style, in order to deliver the press from the restraints with which it was encumbered; that the power of determining what was true and what was false, what ought to be published and what to be suppressed, might no longer be entrusted to a few illiterate and illiberal individuals, who refused their sanction to any work which contained views or sentiments at all above the level of the vulgar superstition. On the last species of civil liberty I said nothing, because I saw that sufficient attention was paid to it by the magistrates; nor did I write anything on the prerogative of the Crown till the King, voted an enemy by the parliament, and vanquished in the field, was summoned before the tribunal which condemned him to lose his head1.'

Such is the account Milton himself gives of his writings just before the outbreak of the Civil War and during the continuance of it. The order of them is not indeed minutely accurate; for the 'some books' on the subject of divorce were not all published before he proceeded to the questions of Education and Unlicensed Printing; but it probably represents precisely enough the succession in which the various subjects discussed engaged his attention. The year of his life that especially concerns us here is 1644. It was in the November of that year that the Areopagitica was published. Besides this masterpiece, there appeared also these other works :-In February, a second edition of his first Divorce treatise (The Doctrine and 1 See Milton's Prose Works, the one-volume edition, pp. 934 935. For the original Latin, see ibid. pp. 719, 720.

Discipline of Divorce restored to the good of both sexes from the bondage of Canon Law and other Mistakes to the true meaning of Scripture in the Law and Gospel compared, wherein also are set down the bad consequences of abolishing or condemning as sin that which the law of God allows and Christ abolished not); in June, his tractate Of Education to Master Samuel Hartlib; in July, his Second Divorce Book (The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce, written to Edward the Sixth in his second book of the Kingdom of Christ, and now Englished; wherein a late book restoring the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce is here confirmed and justified by the authority of Martin Bucer). So that the year 1644 was one of memorable activity in Milton's life.

This activity, it will have been noticed, was all in the direction of certain social and other reforms. It was all, as Milton himself puts it, in behalf of ‘liberty'—of the 'domestic species' of 'liberty.' 'Liberty's defence' was always his 'noble task'; and there was never a time in his career when he strove with more fervent hope, or more brilliant skill, to secure for his age the freedom without which, as it seemed to him, life was cramped and starved, and the world a mere prison. In the interest of this great cause he had abandoned for a while those high studies to which his previous years had been devoted. Of his poetical writings only a few sonnets belong to this period of his life. 'God, by His secretary Conscience,' enjoined a far different service,' and 'it were sad for me if I should draw back.'

This particular year formed a crisis in Milton's life. It witnessed the culmination of his hopefulness. There is especially noticeable in the Areopagitica a certain sanguineness and anticipation, which subsequent events were bitterly to reprove. In fact Milton was yet but faintly conscious of the immense discrepancies between his age and himself. To him, when the Long Parliament met in the autumn of 1640, it had seemed that a new day was dawning for England and for mankind.

The world's great age begins anew,

The golden years return.'

And he had hailed with a profound exultation the opening acts

of that great assembly. When the Star Chamber and its kindred iniquities were suppressed, it seemed once more possible to breathe, and hopes sprang up in him of a new and perfecter reformation. This confidence appeared justified by the fall of the bishops, who had identified themselves with what was held to be the cause of tyranny. Surely there was now at hand a splendid regeneration. As one thinks of Milton in those hours of elation, there rises before the mind the image of another poet, whose experience was strangely similar. Wordsworth, on the tiptoe of expectation at the beginning of the French Revolution, reminds one sadly of Milton just a century and a half before.

'Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy,

For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven! Oh! times
In which the meagre, stale, forbidden ways

Of custom, law, and statute took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!

When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself

A prime Enchantress-to assist the work

. Which then was going forward in her name.'

The Areopagitica reflects Milton still sanguine and confident. It is true that, as we shall see, the work in fact originated from what might well have taught the writer that his dreams of a complete emancipation were not to be realised; but Milton could not recognise this conclusion, so 'lame and impotent.' He could not yet bring himself to believe that the dawn, whose rising he had greeted with such joy, was presently to be overcast-that the sun was not to rise higher, but to be stayed in its bright course, as by some malignant Joshua, and presently blurred and obscured with mist and fog. As we see him in this Speech to the Parliament of England he is filled with pride and with hope. No nobler panegyric has been pronounced on our country than that he here pronounces with his richest eloquence :

'Lords and Commons of England, consider what Nation it is wherof ye are the governours: a Nation not slow and dull, but

of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discours, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to. Therefore the studies of learning, in her deepest sciences, have bin so ancient and so eminent among us that writers of good antiquity and ablest judgement have bin perswaded that ev'n the school of Pythagoras, and the Persian wisdom, took beginning from the old Philosophy of this Iland. And that wise and civill Roman Julius Agricola, who govern'd once here for Cæsar, preferr'd the naturall wits of Britain before the labour'd studies of the French. Nor is for nothing that the grave and frugal Transilvanian sends out yearly from as farre as the mountanous borders of Russia, and beyond the Hercynian wildernes, not their youth, but their stay❜d men, to learn our language and our theologic arts. Yet that which is above all this, the favour and the love of heav'n, we have great argument to think in a peculiar manner propitious and propending towards us. Why else was this Nation chos'n before any other that out of her, as out of Sion, should be proclaim'd and sounded forth the first tidings and trumpet of Reformation to all Europ? Behold now this vast city; a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompast and surrounded with his protection; the shop of warre hath not there more anvils and hammers making, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed Justice, in defence of beleaguer'd Truth, than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious camps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and idea's wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching Reformation; others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a Nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a towardly and pregnant soile, but wise and faithfull labourers, to make a knowing people-a Nation of Prophets, of Sages, and of Worthies?'

It must be remembered that in this year, 1644, the Parliamentary cause had achieved triumphs that left little room for doubt as to what would be the issue of the war. The Scots had entered England in January. In the summer the Earl of Essex had advanced westward into Cornwall. July had brought the utter defeat of Prince Rupert at Marston Moor. A gleam of light was, it is true, thrown on the Royal banner by the rising of Montrose, in the autumn; and in England the King's side had not been without its successes, of which the most important was