FOOTNOTES:

"Fame if not double-faced is double-mouthed,And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds;On both his wings, one black, the other white,Bears greatest names in his wild aery flights.My name perhaps among the circumcised,In Dan, in Judah, and the bordering tribes,To all posterity may stand defamed,With malediction mentioned, and the blotOf falsehood most unconjugal traduced.But in my country where I most desire,In Ecron, Gaza, Asdod, and in Gath,I shall be named among the famousestOf women, sung at solemn festivals,Living and dead recorded, who to saveHer country from a fierce destroyer, choseAbove the faith of wedlock-bands; my tombWith odours visited and annual flowers."

The scheme of "Samson Agonistes" is that of theGreek drama, the only one appropriate to an action of such extreme simplicity, admitting so few personages, and these only as foils to the hero. It is, but for its Miltonisms of style and autobiographic and political allusion, just such a drama as Sophocles or Euripides would have written on the subject, and has all that depth of patriotic and religious sentiment which made the Greek drama so inexpressibly significant to Greeks. Consummate art is shown in the invention of the Philistine giant, Harapha, who not only enriches the meagre action, and brings out strong features in the character of Samson, but also prepares the reader for the catastrophe. We must say reader, for though the drama might conceivably be acted with effect on a Court or University stage, the real living theatre has been no place for it since the days of Greece. Milton confesses as much when in his preface he assails "the poet's error of intermixing comic stuff with tragic sadness and gravity; or introducing trivial and vulgar persons, which by all judicious hath been counted absurd; and brought in without discretion, corruptly to gratify the people." In his view tragedy should be eclectic; in Shakespeare's it should be all embracing. Shelley, perhaps, judged more rightly than either when he said: "The modern practice of blending comedy with tragedy is undoubtedly an extension of the dramatic circle; but the comedy should be as in 'King Lear,' universal, ideal, and sublime." On the whole, "Samson Agonistes" is a noble example of a style which we may hope will in no generation be entirely lacking to our literature, but which must always be exotic, from its want of harmony with the moreessential characteristics of our tumultous, undisciplined, irrepressible national life.

In one point of view, however, "Samson Agonistes" deserves to be esteemed a national poem, pregnant with a deeper allusiveness than has always been recognized. Samson's impersonation of the author himself can escape no one. Old, blind, captive, helpless, mocked, decried, miserable in the failure of all his ideals, upheld only by faith and his own unconquerable spirit, Milton is the counterpart of his hero. Particular references to the circumstances of his life are not wanting: his bitter self-condemnation for having chosen his first wife in the camp of the enemy, and his surprise that near the close of an austere life he should be afflicted by the malady appointed to chastise intemperance. But, as in the Hebrew prophets Israel sometimes denotes a person, sometimes a nation, Samson seems no less the representative of the English people in the age of Charles the Second. His heaviest burden is his remorse, a remorse which could not weigh onMilton:—

"I do acknowledge and confessThat I this honour, I this pomp have broughtTo Dagon, and advanced his praises highAmong the heathen round; to God have broughtDishonour, obloquy, and oped the mouthsOf idolists and atheists; have brought scandalTo Israel, diffidence of God, and doubtIn feeble hearts, propense enough beforeTo waver, to fall off, and join with idols;Which is my chief affliction, shame, and sorrow,The anguish of my soul, that suffers notMy eye to harbour sleep, or thoughts to rest."

Milton might reproach himself for having taken a Philistine wife, but not with having suffered her to shear him. But the same could not be said of the English nation, which had in his view most foully apostatized from its pure creed, and most perfidiously betrayed the high commission it had received from Heaven. "This extolled and magnified nation, regardless both of honour won, or deliverances vouchsafed, to fall back, or rather to creep back, so poorly as it seems the multitude would, to their once abjured and detested thraldom of kingship! To be ourselves the slanderers of our own just and religious deeds! To verify all the bitter predictions of our triumphing enemies, who will now think they wisely discerned and justly censured us and all our actions as rash, rebellious, hypocritical, and impious!" These things, which Milton refused to contemplate as possible when he wrote his "Ready Way to establish a Free Commonwealth," had actually come to pass. The English nation is to him the enslaved and erring Samson—a Samson, however, yet to burst his bonds, and bring down ruin upon Philistia. "Samson Agonistes" is thus a prophetic drama, the English counterpart of the world-drama of "Prometheus Bound."

Goethe says that our final impression of any one is derived from the last circumstances in which we have beheld him. Let us, therefore, endeavour to behold Milton as he appeared about the time of the publication of his last poems, to which period of his life the descriptions we possess seem to apply. Richardson heard of his sitting habitually "in a grey coarse cloth coat at the door of his house near Bunhill Fields,in warm sunny weather to enjoy the fresh air"—a suggestive picture. What thoughts must have been travelling through his mind, undisturbed by external things! How many of the passers knew that they flitted past the greatest glory of the age of Newton, Locke, and Wren? For one who would reverence the author of "Paradise Lost," there were probably twenty who would have been ready with a curse for the apologist of the killing of the King. In-doors he was seen by Dr. Wright, in Richardson's time an aged clergyman in Dorsetshire, who found him up one pair of stairs, in a room hung with rusty green "sitting in an elbow chair, black clothes, and neat enough, pale but not cadaverous; his hands and fingers gouty and with chalk-stones." Gout was the enemy of Milton's latter days; we have seen that he had begun to suffer from it before he wrote "Samson Agonistes." Without it, he said, he could find blindness tolerable. Yet even in the fit he would be cheerful, and would sing. It is grievous to write that, about 1670, the departure of his daughters promoted the comfort of his household. They were sent out to learn embroidery as a means of future support—a proper step in itself, and one which would appear to have entailed considerable expense upon Milton. But they might perfectly well have remained inmates of the family, and the inference is that domestic discord had at length grown unbearable to all. Friends, or at least visitors, were, on the other hand, more numerous than of late years. The most interesting were the "subtle, cunning, and reserved" Earl of Anglesey, who must have "coveted Milton's society and converse" very much if, as Phillipsreports, he often came all the way to Bunhill Fields to enjoy it; and Dryden, whose generous admiration does not seem to have been affected by Milton's over-hasty sentence upon him as "a good rhymester, but no poet." One of Dryden's visits is famous in literary history, when he came with the modest request that Milton would let him turn his epic into an opera. "Aye," responded Milton, equal to the occasion, "tag my verses if you will"—to tag being to put a shining metal point—compared in Milton's fancy to a rhyme—at the end of a lace or cord. Dryden took him at his word, and in due time "Paradise Lost" had become an opera under the title of "The State of Innocence and Fall of Man," which may also be interpreted as referring to the condition of the poem before Dryden laid hands upon it and afterwards. It is a puzzling performance altogether; one sees not any more than Sir Walter Scott could see how a drama requiring paradisiacal costume could have been acted even in the age of Nell Gwyn; and yet it is even more unlikely that Dryden should have written a play not intended for the stage. The same contradiction prevails in the piece itself; it would not be unfair to call it the most absurd burlesque ever written without burlesque intention; and yet it displays such intellectual resources, such vigour, bustle, adroitness, and bright impudence, that admiration almost counterweighs derision. Dryden could not have made such an exhibition of Milton and himself twenty years afterwards, when he said that, much as he had always admired Milton, he felt that he had not admired him half enough. The reverencewhich he felt even in 1674 for "one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced," contrasts finely with the ordinary Restoration estimate of Milton conveyed in the complimentary verses by Lee, prefixed to "The State ofInnocence":—

"To the dead bard your fame a little owes,For Milton did the wealthy mine disclose,And rudely cast what you could well dispose.He roughly drew, on an old-fashioned ground,A chaos, for no perfect world was found,Till through the heap your mighty genius shined;He was the golden ore, which you refined."

These later years also produced several little publications of Milton's own, mostly of manuscripts long lying by him, now slightly revised and fitted for the press. Such were his miniature Latin grammar, published in 1669; and his "Artis Logicae Plenior Institutio; or The Method of Ramus," 1672. The first is insignificant; and the second even Professor Masson pronounces, "as a digest of logic, disorderly and unedifying." Both apparently belong to his school-keeping days: the little tract, "Of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration," (1673) is, on the other hand, contemporary with a period of great public excitement, when Parliament (March, 1673) compelled the king to revoke his edict of toleration autocratically promulgated in the preceding year, and to assent to a severe Test Act against Roman Catholics. The good sense and good nature which inclined Charles to toleration were unfortunately alloyed with less creditable motives. Protestants justly suspected him of insidiously aiming at the re-establishment of Roman Catholicism, and even the persecuted Nonconformists patriotically joined with High Churchmen to adjourn their own deliverance until the country should be safe from the common enemy. The wisdom and necessity of this course were abundantly evinced under the next reign, and while we must regret that Milton contributed his superfluous aid to restrictions only defensible on the ground of expediency, we must admit that he could not well avoid making Roman Catholics an exception to the broad tolerance he claims for all denominations of Protestants. And, after all, has not the Roman Catholic Church's notion of tolerance always been that which Macaulay imputes to Southey, that everybody should tolerate her, and that she should tolerate nobody?

A more important work, though scarcely worthy of Milton's industry, was his "History of Britain" (1670). This was a comparatively early labour, four of the six books having been written before he entered upon the Latin Secretaryship, and two under the Commonwealth. From its own point of view, this is a meritorious performance, making no pretensions to the character of a philosophical history, but a clear, easy narrative, sometimes interrupted by sententious disquisition, of transactions down to the Conquest. Like Grote, though not precisely for the same reason, Milton hands down picturesque legendary matter as he finds it, and it is to those who would see English history in its romantic aspect that, in these days of exact research, his work is chiefly to be recommended. It is also memorable for what he never saw himself, the engraved portrait, after Faithorne's crayon sketch.

"No one," says Professor Masson, "can desire a more impressive and authentic portrait of Milton in his later life. The face is such as has been given to no other human being; it was and is uniquely Milton's. Underneath the broad forehead and arched temples there are the great rings of eye-socket, with the blind, unblemished eyes in them, drawn straight upon you by your voice, and speculating who and what you are; there is a severe composure in the beautiful oval of the whole countenance, disturbed only by the singular pouting of the rich mouth; and the entire expression is that of English intrepidity mixed with unutterable sorrow."

Milton's care to set his house in order extended to his poetical writings. In 1673 the poems published in 1645, both English and Latin, appeared in a second edition, disclosingnovas frondesin one or two of Milton's earliest unprinted poems, and such of the sonnets as political considerations did not exclude; andnon sua pomain the Tractate of Education, curiously grafted on at the end. An even more important publication was the second edition of "Paradise Lost" (1674) with the original ten books for the first time divided into twelve as we now have them. Nor did this exhaust the list of Milton's literary undertakings. He was desirous of giving to the world his correspondence when Latin Secretary, and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" which had employed so much of his thoughts at various periods of his life. The Government, though allowing the publication of his familiar Latin correspondence (1674), would not tolerate the letters he had written as secretary to the Commonwealth, and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" was still less likely to propitiate the licenser. Holland was in that day the one secure asylum of free thought, and thither, in 1675, the year following Milton's death, themanuscripts were taken or sent by Daniel Skinner, a nephew of Cyriack's, to Daniel Elzevir, who agreed to publish them. Before publication could take place, however, a clandestine but correct edition of the State letters appeared in London, probably by the agency of Edward Phillips. Skinner, in his vexation, appealed to the authorities to suppress this edition: they took the hint, and suppressed his instead. Elzevir delivered up the manuscripts, which the Secretary of State pigeon-holed until their existence was forgotten. At last, in 1823, Mr. Robert Lemon, rummaging in the State Paper Office, came upon the identical parcel addressed by Elzevir to Daniel Skinner's father which contained his son's transcript of the State Letters and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine." Times had changed, and the heretical work was edited and translated by George the Fourth's favourite chaplain, and published at his Majesty's expense.

The "Treatise on Christian Doctrine" is by far the most remarkable of all Milton's later prose publications, and would have exerted a great influence on opinion if it had appeared when the author designed. Milton's name would have been a tower of strength to the liberal eighteenth-century clergy inside and outside the Establishment. It should indeed have been sufficiently manifest that "Paradise Lost" could not have been written by a Trinitarian or a Calvinist; but theological partisanship is even slower than secular partisanship to see what it does not choose to see; and Milton's Arianism was not generally admitted until it was here avouched under his own hand. The general principle of the book is undoubting reliance on the authority of Scripture, with which such an acquaintance is manifested as could only have been gained by years of intense study. It is true that the doctrine of the inward light as the interpreter of Scripture is asserted with equal conviction; but practically this illumination seems seldom to have guided Milton to any sense but the most obvious. Hence, with the intrepid consistency that belongs to him, he is not only an Arian, but a tolerator of polygamy, finding that practice nowhere condemned in Scripture, but even recommended by respectable examples; an Anthropomorphist, who takes the ascription of human passion to the Deity in the sense certainly intended by those who made it; a believer in the materiality and natural mortality of the soul, and in the suspension of consciousness between death and the resurrection. Where less fettered by the literal Word he thinks boldly; unable to conceive creation out of nothing, he regards all existence as an emanation from the Deity, thus entitling himself to the designation of Pantheist. He reiterates his doctrine of divorce; and is as strong an Anti-Sabbatarian as Luther himself. On the Atonement and Original Sin, however, he is entirely Evangelical; and he commends public worship so long as it is not made a substitute for spiritual religion. Liturgies are evil, and tithes abominable. His exposition of social duty tempers Puritan strictness with Cavalier high-breeding, and the urbanity of a man of the world. Of his motives for publication and method of composition hesays:—

"It is with a friendly and benignant feeling towards mankind that I give as wide a circulation as possible to what I esteem my bestand richest possession.... And whereas the greater part of those who have written most largely on these subjects have been wont to fill whole pages with explanations of their own opinions, thrusting into the margin the texts in support of their doctrines, I have chosen, on the contrary, to fill my pages even to redundance with quotations from Scripture, so that as little space as possible might be left for my own words, even when they arise from the context of revelation itself."

There is consequently little scope for eloquence in a treatise consisting to so large an extent of quotations; but it is pervaded by a moral sublimity, more easily felt than expressed. Particular opinions will be diversely judged; but if anything could increase our reverence for Milton it would be that his last years should have been devoted to a labour so manifestly inspired by disinterested benevolence and hazardous love of truth.

His life's work was now finished, and finished with entire success as far as depended upon his own will and power. He had left nothing unwritten, nothing undone, nor was he ignorant what manner of monument he had raised for himself, It was only the condition of the State that afflicted him, and this, looking forward, he saw in more gloomy colours than it appears to us who look back. Had he attained his father's age his apprehensions would have been dispelled by the Revolution: but he had evidently for some time past been older in constitution than in years. In July, 1674, he was anticipating death; but about the middle of October, "he was very merry and seemed to be in good health of body." Early in November "the gout struck in," and he died on November 8th, late at night, "with so little pain that the time of his expiring was not perceived by those in theroom." On November 12th, "all his learned and great friends in London, not without a concourse of the vulgar, accompanied his body to the church of St. Giles, near Cripplegate, where he was buried in the chancel." In 1864, the church was restored in honour of the great enemy of religious establishments. "The animosities die, but the humanities live for ever."

Milton's resources had been greatly impaired in his latter years by losses, and the expense of providing for his daughters. He nevertheless left, exclusive of household goods, about £900, which, by a nuncupative will made in July, 1674, he had wholly bequeathed to his wife. His daughters, he told his brother Christopher (now a Roman Catholic, and on the road to become one of James the Second's judges, but always on friendly terms with John), had been undutiful, and he thought that he had done enough for them. They naturally thought otherwise, and threatened litigation. The interrogatories administered on this occasion afford the best clue to the condition of Milton's affairs and household. At length the dispute was compromised, the nuncupative will, a kind of document always regarded with suspicion, was given up, and the widow received two-thirds of the estate instead of the whole, probably the fairest settlement that could have been arrived at. After residing some years in London she retired to Nantwich in her native county, where divers glimpses reveal her as leading the decent existence of a poor but comfortable gentlewoman as late as August or September, 1727. The inventory of her effects, amounting to £38 8s. 4d., is preserved, and includes:"Mr. Milton's pictures and coat of arms, valued at ten guineas;" and "two Books of Paradise," valued at ten shillings. Of the daughters, Anne married "a master-builder," and died in childbirth some time before 1678; Mary was dead when Phillips wrote in 1694; and Deborah survived until August 24, 1727, dying within a few days of her stepmother. She had married Abraham Clarke, a weaver and mercer in Dublin, who took refuge in England during the Irish troubles under James the Second, and carried on his business in Spitalfields. She had several children by him, one of whom lived to receive, in 1750, the proceeds of a theatrical benefit promoted by Bishop Newton and Samuel Johnson. Deborah herself was brought into notice by Addison, and was visited by Professor Ward of Gresham College, who found her "bearing the inconveniences of a low fortune with decency and prudence." Her last days were made comfortable by the generosity of Princess Caroline and others: it is more pleasant still to know that her affection for her father had revived. When shown Faithorne's crayon portrait (not the one engraved in Milton's lifetime, but one exceedingly like it) she exclaimed, "in a transport, ''Tis my dear father, I see him, 'tis him!' and then she put her hands to several parts of her face, ''Tis the very man, here! here!'"

Milton's character is one of the things which "securus judicat orbis terrarum." On one point only there seems to us, as we have frequently implied, to be room for modification. In the popular conception of Milton thepoet and the man are imperfectly combined. We allow his greatness as a poet, but deny him the poetical temperament which alone could have enabled him to attain it. He is looked upon as a great, good, reverend, austere, not very amiable, and not very sensitive man. The author and the book are thus set at variance, and the attempt to conceive the character as a whole results in confusion and inconsistency. To us, on the contrary, Milton, with all his strength of will and regularity of life, seems as perfect a representative as any of his compeers of the sensitiveness and impulsive passion of the poetical temperament. We appeal to his remarkable dependence upon external prompting for his compositions; to the rapidity of his work under excitement, and his long intervals of unproductiveness; to the heat and fury of his polemics; to the simplicity with which, fortunately for us, he inscribes small particulars of his own life side by side with weightiest utterances on Church and State; to the amazing precipitancy of his marriage and its rupture; to his sudden pliability upon appeal to his generosity; to his romantic self-sacrifice when his country demanded his eyes from him; above all, to his splendid ideals of regenerated human life, such as poets alone either conceive or realize. To overlook all this is to affirm that Milton wrote great poetry without being truly a poet. One more remark may be added, though not required by thinking readers. We must beware of confounding the essential with the accidental Milton—the pure vital spirit with the casual vesture of the creeds and circumstances of the era in which it became clothed withmortality:—

"They are still immortalWho, through birth's orient portalAnd death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,Clothe their unceasing flightIn the brief dust and lightGathered around their chariots as they go.New shapes they still may weave,New gods, new laws, receive."

If we knew for certain which of the many causes that have enlisted noble minds in our age would array Milton's spirit "in brief dust and light," supposing it returned to earth in this nineteenth century, we should know which was the noblest of them all, but we should be as far as ever from knowing a final and stereotyped Milton.

THE END.

[1]A famous Presbyterian tract of the day, so called from the combined initials of the authors, one of whom was Milton's old instructor, Thomas Young. The "Remonstrant" to whom Milton replied was Bishop Hall.

[2]This principle admitted of general application. For example, astrological books were to be licensed by John Booker, who could by no means see his way to pass the prognostications of his rival Lilly without "many impertinent obliterations," which made Lilly exceeding wroth.

[3]Two persons of this uncommon name are mentioned in the State Papers of Milton's time—one a merchant who imported a cargo of timber; the other a leatherseller. The name also occurs once in Pepys.

[4]Rossetti's sonnet, "On the Refusal of Aid between Nations," is an almost equally remarkable instance.

[5]The same is recorded of Friedrich Hebbel, the most original of modern German dramatists.

[6]In his "Urim of Conscience," 1695. This curious book contains one of the first English accounts of Buddha, whom the author calls Chacabout (Sakhya Buddha, apparently), and of the "Christians of St. John" at Bassora.

[7]Ariosto and Marcellus Palingenius. Both these wrote before Ronsard, to whom the thought is traced by Pattison, and Valvasone, to whom Hayley deems Milton indebted for it.

[8]We cannot agree with Mr. Edmundson that Milton was in any respect indebted to Vondel's "Adam's Banishment," published in 1664.

[9]Theocritus, Idyll I.; Lang's translation.

A.Adam, not the hero of "Paradise Lost,"155Adonais compared with Lycidas,51Aldersgate Street, Milton's home in,67,83"Allegro, L.,"49-50Andreini, his "Adamo" supposed to have suggested "Paradise Lost,"169Anglesey, Earl of, visits Milton,186"Animadversions upon the Remonstrant,"72"Apology for Smectymnuus,"72"Arcades,"44"Areopagitica, the,"78;argument of,79-82Arian opinions of Milton,159,191Ariosto, Milton borrows from,164Artillery Walk, Milton's last house,144"At a Solemn Music,"33Aubrey's biographical notices of Milton,14,15,19,24,129,144,145B.Ball's Life of Preston,23Barbican, Milton's house in the,96Baroni, Leonora, admired by Milton,62Beddoes, T.L., on Milton and Vondel,170Benrath on Ochino's "Divine Tragedy,"171Blake on Milton,179Bradshaw, Milton's praise of,120Bread Street, Milton born in,16Bridgewater, Lord, "Comus" written in his honour,45Bright, John, his admiration for Milton,164.British Museum, copy of Milton's poems in,97;proclamation against Milton's books preserved in the,139Buckhurst, Lord, his admiration of "Paradise Lost,"177C.Caedmon, question of Milton's indebtedness to,169Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso" compared with "Comus,"54;with "Paradise Lost,"163Cambridge in Milton's time,22Cardinal Barberini receives Milton,62Caroline, Princess, her kindness to Milton's daughter,195Chalfont St. Giles, Milton's residence at,173Chappell, W., Milton's college tutor,24Charles I., illegal government of,30;expedition against the Scots,67;execution of,100;alleged authorship of "Eikon Basilike,"105-107;a bad king, but not a bad man,110Charles II., restoration of,138;favour to Roman Catholics,188Christ's College, Milton at,22"Christian Doctrine," Milton's treatise on,99,190-193"Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes,"132Clarke, Deborah, Milton's youngest daughter;her reminiscences of her father,195Clarke, Mr. Hyde, his discoveries respecting Milton's ancestry,14,15Clarke, Sir T., Milton's MSS. preserved by,129on Milton's taste for music,63;on "Paradise Regained,"178Comenius, educational method of,76Commonwealth, Milton's views of a free,136"Comus," production of,38,44,46;criticism on,53-55"Considerations on the likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the Church,"133Copernican theory only partly adopted in "Paradise Lost,"158Cosmogony of Milton,157Cromwell, Milton's character of,121;Milton's advice to,122D.Dante and Milton compared,160Daughters, character of Milton's,142Davis, Miss, Milton's suit to,94Deity, imperfect conception of, in "Paradise Lost,"154Denham, Sir J., his admiration of "Paradise Lost,"177Diodati, Milton's friendship with,21;verses to,25;letters to,39,41,55;death of,65;Milton's elegy on,43,67"Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,"79,87-91Dryden, on "Paradise Lost,"177;visits Milton,187;dramatizes "Paradise Lost,"187Du Moulin, Peter, author of "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cœlum,"118E.Edmundson, Mr. G., on Milton and Vondel,170Education, Milton's tract on,75-77"Eikon Basilike," authorship of,105-107"Eikonoklastes," Milton's reply to "Eikon Basilike,"108Ellwood, Thomas, the Quaker, reads to Milton,145;suggests "Paradise Regained,"175Elzevir, Daniel, receives and gives up the MS. of "State Letters" and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine,"191F.Fairfax, Milton's character of,120Faithorne's portrait of Milton,189G.Galileo, Milton's visit to,61Gauden, Bishop, author of "Eikon Basilike,"106Gentleman's Magazine, account of Horton in,36Goethe on "Samson Agonistes,"181Gill, Mr., Milton's master at St. Paul's school,20Gosse, Mr., on Milton and Vondel,170Greek, influence of, on Milton,33,39Grotius, Hugo, Milton introduced to,59;Milton's study of,169H.Hartlib, S., Milton's tract on Education inspired by,75"History of Britain" by Milton,99,189Holstenius, Lucas, librarian of the Vatican,63Homer and Shakespeare compared,2;and compared with Milton,160,165,167Horton, Milton retires to,33;poems written at,44Hunter, Rev. Joseph, on Milton's ancestors,14"Hymn on the Nativity,"32I.Italian sonnets by Milton,64Italy, Milton's journey to,56-65J.Jansen, Cornelius, paints Milton's portrait,19Jeffrey, Sarah, Milton's mother,16Jewin Street, Milton's house in,144Johnson, Dr., on "Lycidas,"51;benefits Milton's granddaughter,195K.Keats, Milton contrasted with,41King, Edward, "Lycidas," an elegy on his death,48L.Landor, his Latin verse compared with Milton's,43Latin grammar by Milton,188Latin Secretaryship to the Commonwealth, Milton's appointment to,102Laud, Archbishop, Church government of,30;Milton's veiled attack on,49Lawes, Henry, writes music to "Comus" and "Arcades,"44;edits "Comus,"47Lee, Nathaniel, his verses on Milton,188Lemon, Mr. Robert, discovers MS. of "State Letters" and the "Treatise on Christian Doctrine,"191Letters, Milton's official,123Logic, Milton's tract on,188Long Parliament, meeting of the,68;licensing of books by,78Lucifer, Vondel's,170Ludlow Castle, "Comus" first performed at,46"Lycidas," origin of,40,48;analysis of, criticism on,50,52M.Manso, Marquis, poem on,64Marshall, Milton's portrait engraved by,97Marriage, Milton's views on,94Martineau, Harriet, reads "Paradise Lost" at seven years of age,176Mason, C., Milton's MSS. preserved by,129Masson, Prof. David, his monumental biography of Milton,14;on Milton's ancestors,ib.;on Milton's college career,23,25;on the scenery of Horton,35;on date of Divorce pamphlet,87;on date of "Paradise Lost,"147;on money received for "Paradise Lost,"150;on Milton's cosmogony,156;his description of Chalfont,173;on Milton's portrait,189Milton, Christopher, John Milton's younger brother, birth of,16;a Royalist,91;a Roman Catholic, and one of James the Second's judges,194Milton, John, the elder, birth,15;a scrivener by profession,ib.;musical compositions of,18;retirement to Horton,33;his noble confidence in his son,37,45;comes to live with his son,91;dies,98Milton, John, birth,11;genealogy of,14;birthplace,16;his father,17;his education,18-27;knowledge of Italian,21;at Cambridge,22-28;rusticated,25;his degree, 1629;25;will not enter the church,29;early poems,32;writes "Comus,"38;required incitement to write,40,48;correctness of his early poems,42;his life at Horton,44-55;his "Comus" and "Arcades,"44-48;his "Lycidas,"48;his mother's death,55;goes to Italy,56;his Italian friends,59;visits Galileo,61;Italian sonnets,64;educates his nephews,65;elegy to Diodati,67;eighteen years' poetic silence,68;takes part with the Commonwealth,68;pamphlets on Church government,72;tract on Education,75;"Areopagitica,"79;Italian sonnet,85;his first marriage,86;deserted by his wife, his treatise on Divorce,87;his pupils,91;return of his wife,96;his daughter born,98;becomes Secretary for Foreign Tongues,102;his State papers,104;licenses pamphlets,105;answers "Eikon Basilike,"108;answers Salmasius,111;loses his sight,114;death of his wife,116;reply to Morus,119;his official duties122;his retirement and second marriage,125;projected ninety-nine themes preparatory to "Paradise Lost,"129;wrote chiefly from autumn to spring,132;his views of a republic,136;escapes proscription at Restoration,139;unhappy relations with his daughters,141;third marriage,143;writing "Paradise Lost,"147-150;analysis of his work,152-172;compared with modern poets,166;his indebtedness to earlier poets,169;retires to Chalfont to escape the plague,173;he suffers from the Great Fire,175;his "Paradise Regained,"177;his "Samson Agonistes,"180-85;his later life,186;his later tracts,188,190;his "History of Britain,"189;his Arian opinions,192;his death,193;his will,194;his widow and daughters,195;estimate of his character,196Milton, Richard, Milton's grandfather,14,15Minshull, Elizabeth, Milton's third wife,143;Milton's will in favour of,194;death,ib.Monk, General, character of,135Morland, Sir Samuel, on "Paradise Lost,"163Morus, A., his controversy with Milton,118-119Myers, Mr. E., on Milton's views of marriage,91N.Newton, Bishop, benefits Milton's granddaughter,195O.Ochino, B., Milton's indebtedness to,171"On a fair Infant,"33P.Paget, Dr., Milton's physician,143,145Palingenius, Marcellus, Milton borrows from,164Pamphlets, Milton's,72,75,78,79,87,99,100,108,113,132,133,136-8"Paradise Lost,"128;four schemes for,129;first conceived as drama,130;manner of composition,147;dates of,147-150;critique of,152-172;successive publications of,176"Paradise Regained,"177;criticism on,178-180"Passion of Christ,"32Pattison, Mark, on "Lycidas,"51;on Milton's political career,68;on fanaticism of Commonwealth,133;on "Paradise Lost,"159;on Milton's diction,165"Penseroso, Il,"40,49Pepys, S., on Restoration,135,138Petty France, Westminster, Milton's home in,117Philaras, Milton's Greek friend,114Phillips, E., Milton's brother-in-law,22,65Phillips, Edward, Milton's nephew, on Milton's ancestry,14;educated by his uncle,65;his account of Milton's separation from his first wife,87;of their reconciliation,96;becomes a Royalist,129;his attention to his uncle,145;on "Paradise Lost,"176;on "Paradise Regained,"177"Pilot of the Galilean Lake,"49"Plymouth Brethren," resemblance of Milton's views to,133Powell, Mary, Milton marries,86;she leaves him,87;returns to him,95;her family live with Milton,98;her death,116;probable bad influence on her daughters,163"Prelatical Episcopacy" pamphlet,72"Pro Populo" pamphlet,113Ptolemaic system followed by Milton in "Paradise Lost,"157Puckering, Sir H., gave Milton's MSS. to the University of Cambridge,129R.Reading, surrender of to Parliamentary army,91"Ready way to establish a Commonwealth,"136"Reason of Church Government" pamphlet,72"Reformation touching Church Discipline" pamphlet,72Restoration, consequences to Milton of the,138-141Richardson, J., on Milton's later life,186Rome, Milton in,62Rump, burning of the,136S.St. Bride's Churchyard, Milton lodges in,65St. Giles's Cripplegate, Milton's grave in,194St. Paul's school, Milton at,19Salmasius, Claudius, his character,109;author of "Defensio Regia,"111;Milton's controversy with,112,114Samson, Vondel's,170"Samson Agonistes,"141,178;criticism on,180-185Satan, the hero of "Paradise Lost,"155Shakespeare,2;Milton's panegyric on,33,38;his view of tragedy compared with Milton's,183Shelley, on poetical inspiration,41;his estimate of Milton,156;on tragedy and comedy,183;quoted,17,197Skinner, Cyriack, his loan to Milton,138Skinner, David, endeavours to publish "State Letters" and"Treatise on Christian Doctrine,"191Sonnet, "When the assault was intended to the City,"84;from the Italian,85;on Vaudois Protestants,124;to his second wife,125;to Henry Lawrence,126;inscribed on a window-pane,175"State Letters,"191Stationers' Company and Milton,92Symmons, S., publisher of "Paradise Lost,"149,175Symonds, Mr. J.A., on metre of "Paradise Lost,"166T.Tennyson, on Milton's Eden,162"Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,"100"Tina," by Antonio Malatesti,68Tomkyns, Thomas, licenses "Paradise Lost,"151;and the poems,178Tovey, Nathaniel, Milton's college tutor,25Treatise on Christian Doctrine,190U.Ulster Protestants, Milton's subscription for,83V.Vernon Lee,57Vondel, Milton's indebtedness to,170W.Wakefield, E.G., on the champions of great causes,135Wood, Anthony, on Restoration,133Woodcock, Katherine, Milton's second wife, her marriage and death,125Wootton, Sir H., on "Comus,"47Wordsworth, quoted,27,65;Milton contrasted with,41;on "Paradise Regained,"178Wright, Dr., reminiscence of his visit to Milton,186Y.Young, Thomas, Milton's private tutor,19

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