sidue of his long life in the filial piety and tender protection of the poet.

At the time appointed, Milton solicited the return of his wife; she did not condescend even to answer his letter: he repeated his request by a messenger, who, to the best of my remembrance (says Philips) reported, that he was dismissed with some sort of contempt. This proceeding, in all probability (continues the biographer, whose situation made him the best judge of occurrences so extraordinary) was grounded "upon no other cause but this, namely, that the family, being generally addicted to the cavalier party, as they called it, and some of them possibly engaged in the king's service, who by this time had his head-quarters at Oxford, and was in some prospect of success, they began to repent them of having matched the eldest daughter of the family to a person so contrary to them in opinion, and thought it would be a blot in their escutcheon when that court came to flourish again; however, it so incensed our author, that he thought it would be dis-.

honorable ever to receive her again after

such a repulse.

Milton had too tender and too elevated a spirit not to feel this affront with double poignancy, as it affected both his happiness and his dignity; but it was one of his noble characteristics to find his mental powers rather invigorated than enfeebled by injury and affliction; he thought it the prerogative of wisdom to find remedies against every evil, however unexpected, by which vice or infirmity can embitter life. In reflecting on his immediate domestic trouble, he conceived the generous design of making it subservient to the public. He found that in discordant marriage there is misery, for which he thought there existed a very easy remedy, and perfectly consistent both with reason and religion: with these ideas he published, in 1644, the Doctrine of Divorce. He addresses the work to the parliament, with great spirit and eloquence, and after asserting the purity of his precepts, and the beneficence of his design, he says, with patriotic exultation, "let not England for

get her precedence of teaching nations how to live."

Sanguine as Milton was in the hope of promoting the virtue and happiness of private life by this publication, the Presbyterian clergy, notwithstanding their past obligations to the author, endeavoured to persecute him for the novelty and freedom of his sentiments. "The assembly of divines, sitting at Westminster, impatient," says Anthony Wood, "of having the clergy's jurisdiction, as they reckoned it, invaded, did, instead of answering or disproving what those books had asserted, cause him to be summoned before the House of Lords; but that house, whether approving the doctrine, or not favoring his accusers, did soon dismiss him."

Milton, whom no opposition could intimidate when he believed himself engaged, in the cause of truth and justice, endeavoured to support his doctrine by subsequent publications; first, "The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce;" this also he addresses to the parliament, and

says, with his usual spirit, "God, it seems, intended to prove me, whether I durst alone take up a rightful cause against a world of disesteem, and found I durst. My name I did not publish, as not willing it should sway the reader either for me or against me; but when I was told that the stile (which what it ails to be so soon distinguishable I cannot tell) was known by most men, and that some of the clergy began to inveigh and exclaim on what I was credibly informed they had not read, I took it then for my proper season, both to shew them a name that could easily contemn such an indiscreet kind of censure, and to reinforce the question with a more accurate diligence; that if any of them would be so good as to leave railing, and to let us hear so much of his learning and Christian wisdom, as will be strictly demanded of him in his answering to this problem, care was had he should not spend his preparations against a nameless pamphlet."

These expressions displayed the frankness and fortitude of a noble mind, perfectly

conscious of its own integrity, in discussing a very delicate point, that materially affects the comfort of human life. This integrity he had indeed protested very solemnly in his former Address to the Parliament, where after asserting that the subject concerned them chiefly as redressers of grievances, he proceeds thus, "Me it concerns next, having with much labour and faithful diligence, first found out, or at least with a fearless communicative candour first published, to the manifest good of christendom, that which, calling to witness every thing mortal and immortal, I believe unfeignedly to be true." The solemnity of this protestation, confirmed as it was by the singular regularity of his morals, and the sincerity of his zeal as a christian, could not secure him from censures of every kind, which vehement as they were, he seems to have despised. His ideas were derided by libertines, and calumniated by hypocrites and bigots; but superior to ridicule and to slander, he proceeded resolutely in what he thought his duty, by shewing how completely his doc