INTRODUCTION.

THIS

HIS volume contains all those Prose Writings of Milton in which he set forth, as he himself thought best, his views on all that is most vital to the body politic. The people make the state, and their well-being is dependent chiefly upon their religious life, their home life, the right training of their children and a civil government adapted to their highest needs. I have grouped Milton's papers under headings which show that they cover all this ground, and deal only with these essentials of citizenship.

There are omitted from this volume all the writings in which Milton replied to the opponents of his views. The controversies of 250 years ago travelled by many paths in which we care no longer to assert a right of way. At all times, the Reformer who is answering opponents has his course of argument determined by the reason or the unreason of other men. Forms of reply dependent upon accidents of the attack are only to be read with measured judgment by those who have read the attack also; and often when we have read both, we have heard a sound of battle in the air that has appealed to our imaginations and disturbed our judgment. The battle of opinion rolls forward to new ground from century to century. The great truths are immutable, the applications of them vary with the change of time.

But when a writer who looks to the highest aims of life and is concerned only with its highest interests has resolved to set forth opinions to the world, and having, as Milton says, summoned

up all his reason and deliberation to assist him, searched, meditated, been industrious, and likely consulted and conferred with his judicious friends, he arranges the expression of his thought as he best can, he meets as he goes the objections that are likely to arise from men of differing opinion, ranging all to the utmost of his own capacity into one clear enforcement of what he thinks is for the public good. Of course, also, he applies as he goes his principles,—immutable, if they be true,—to mutable condition of the time for which he writes.

In that way Milton wrote the pieces that are here collected. Of every argument that seemed to strike too boldly against custom and tradition he had to continue the defence against hot controversialists at a time when controversy was a graceless work. And even now it is of little grace. We have not learnt yet how much that most necessary factor in the progress of the world would gain in reason by the loss of passion, how much force there is in fairness, and that only poverty of spirit turns debate to quarrel. Milton's "Eikonoklastes" is an answer to "Eikon Basilike," following that work section by section. The famous Latin works in defence of the People of England were replies to attacks. But the defence in each case is of principles which Milton had set forth in his own way, and upon his own motion, in his treatise on "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates." Only that treatise falls, therefore, within the plan of this collection of Milton's reasonings upon the principles that should control the settlement of Church and State. To bring the whole collection within the compass of one volume it has been necessary that the suggestion of a plan for the establishment of a Free Commonwealth should be given at the close of the book in smaller type, and that whatever may be said by way of annotation should be confined to the Introduction. Inasmuch as the purpose of this volume is to enable many readers to know clearly for themselves what Milton really taught in his prose writings, and inasmuch as he wrote with an emphasis that made his meaning upon each point in the argument entirely clear, there may, after all, be some advantage in the enforced absence of notes. Notes might possibly divert too much attention from

the main course of the argument, by establishing a side interest in many scholarly allusions to books now seldom read and facts known but to few. Thus we lose the fuller sense of wit and knowledge used for illustration and enforcement of each thought; but this is partly, perhaps, compensated by the gain of a less broken attention to the substance and the continuity of reasoning.

All the great books in the world deal with essentials. Those written in former time are of the past and of the present, as those written now are of the present and the future. The true reader

of the true old book looks to the soul of it, and while hearing that speak to the day for which it lived and worked, adapts its voice also to the changed conditions of the later day in which it may be still living and working. Custom and tradition have confined too much the reading of Milton's reasonings on Church and State within a narrow circle. Much that he battled for has been already The Church of England now leaves conscience free. Our Monarchy has lost its despotism: were Milton living now how would he shape to these our days his exhortation to look upward and be free? Still, if we read them with clear eyes, there is a life beyond life in the prose writings of John Milton.

won.

Of Milton himself, as he was when he published them, let us recall first the memory; then, looking at the time for which he wrote, fix our attention on the purport of his teaching, as it concerned those times and these. We shall not be less loyal subjects or worse Churchmen, but we shall be stronger men to-day for taking Milton into council.

John Milton was born in the reign of James the First, at his father's house in Bread Street, Cheapside, on the 9th of December 1608. That was between seven and eight years before the death of Shakespeare. The Milton family was of Oxfordshire, and in early times may have been named from the Oxfordshire village of Great Milton, about eight miles from Oxford near Halton and Thame. There are some eighteen Miltons in different parts of England, groups of homesteads that first took this name from the wind or water mill conspicuous among them. The poet's grandfather was probably a Richard Milton of Stanton St. Johns, about

up all his reason and deliberation to assist him, searched, meditated, been industrious, and likely consulted and conferred with his judicious friends, he arranges the expression of his thought as he best can, he meets as he goes the objections that are likely to arise from men of differing opinion, ranging all to the utmost of his own capacity into one clear enforcement of what he thinks is for the public good. Of course, also, he applies as he goes his principles,-immutable, if they be true,—to mutable condition of the time for which he writes.

66

In that way Milton wrote the pieces that are here collected. Of every argument that seemed to strike too boldly against custom and tradition he had to continue the defence against hot controversialists at a time when controversy was a graceless work. And even now it is of little grace. We have not learnt yet how much that most necessary factor in the progress of the world would gain in reason by the loss of passion, how much force there is in fairness, and that only poverty of spirit turns debate to quarrel. Milton's Eikonoklastes" is an answer to "Eikon Basilike," following that work section by section. The famous Latin works in defence of the People of England were replies to attacks. But the defence in each case is of principles which Milton had set forth in his own way, and upon his own motion, in his treatise on "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates." Only that treatise falls, therefore, within the plan of this collection of Milton's reasonings upon the principles that should control the settlement of Church and State. To bring the whole collection within the compass of one volume it has been necessary that the suggestion of a plan for the establishment of a Free Commonwealth should be given at the close of the book in smaller type, and that whatever may be said by way of annotation should be confined to the Introduction. Inasmuch as the purpose of this volume is to enable many readers to know clearly for themselves what Milton really taught in his prose writings, and inasmuch as he wrote with an emphasis that made his meaning upon each point in the argument entirely clear, there may, after all, be some advantage in the enforced absence of notes.

Notes might possibly divert too much attention from