he went to Siena, thence to Rome. At Rome he stayed during another two months, and made more friends. From Rome he went southward to Naples, and obtained there the friendship of Count Manso, friend and biographer of Tasso. Then the way on would be to Sicily and Greece, but, Milton wrote, in his "Second Defence of the People of England," "When I was preparing to pass over into Sicily and Greece, the melancholy intelligence which I received of the civil commotions in England made me alter my purpose, for I thought it base to be travelling for amusement abroad while my fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home." That is to say, the place of a citizen in any state, be his powers great or small, is in the ranks of his countrymen at any time of danger to his country. It did not mean that Milton should go home to handle sword, or pike, or gun, which to him were arguments "of human weakness rather than of strength." While an incomplete civilisation makes it still inevitable that brute force shall oppose brute force in battles of opinion, the conditions of the time must be accepted. But sword and gun achieve only the triumph of a day, if reason be against the cause they battle for. Milton's duty to his country in a time of danger from the clashing of opinions, was to reason against opinions that imperilled liberty, to be a spiritual soldier in the wars of truth. Captain, or colonel, or man-at-arms, every Englishman is, in that way, soldier for his country, and must be at his post when the alarm is sounded.

The English news that reached Milton in Italy told of the King's temporising with the Scots while gathering force to subdue them. The Covenanters were preparing for the danger. Already in July 1638, three months after Milton left England, they had a magazine of pikes, halberts, and muskets. Early in December a ship in which a merchant of Edinburgh was bringing six thousand muskets out of Holland was stopped by the government of the United Provinces, but set free by aid of the King of France, and sent on to Leith. Laud lamented on the 7th of December that "the jealousies of giving the Covenanters umbrage too soon had made preparation so late." At the beginning of the year 1639 the King was appointing officers, ordering the muster of trained

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bands, and endeavouring to get six thousand foreign troops. The Scots did not wait for attack. Leslie, their General, in March surprised and took Edinburgh Castle, other castles were surrendered to the Covenanters. On the 30th of May the armies of the King and of the Covenanters were encamped within sight of each other. Milton had given up his journey into Greece, where letters would seldom reach him, and turned homeward, again making long stays in Rome and Florence, always within hearing of news from England. He stayed a month at Venice, whence he shipped home books and music, then he came back through Verona, Milan, and Geneva. Imminent risk of the beginning of a civil war was averted by the pacification of Berwick.

When Milton came home, in the summer of 1639, he presently took a lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard, at the house of a tailor named Russel, while looking for a place fit for his purpose of establishing a school. He took charge at once of the education of his nephews, Edward and John Phillips, children born to his sister Anne at the close of her seven years' marriage with Edward Phillips of the Crown Office. She had been left a widow with those boys, one of a year old, named after her husband Edward, the other perhaps unborn when her husband died, named after her brother, John. Her first husband having died in 1631, she had married again. Her second husband was a Mr. Agar, who succeeded also to her former husband's work in the Crown Office. Her boys, now about ten and nine years old, were put under their uncle's care. Milton found for his school what his nephew called “a pretty garden house in Aldersgate Street at the end of an entry." Aldersgate Street then having gardens about its houses, a passage between garden walls of houses fronting to the road led to the gate of a garden in the rear, with a house in it more distant from the line of traffic. Into his garden house, well chosen for such a purpose, Milton gathered his books and his boys. The boys he taught seem to have come from families of merchants and others, prosperous and intellectual. Cyriac Skinner, to whom he wrote afterwards two sonnets, was one of his old

boys; two others, of whom we chance to learn, were a son of Robert Boyle's sister, Lady Ranelagh, and her nephew, the Earl of Barrimore.

During Milton's travel in Italy, his friend Charles Diodati died, and the lament for him in Latin verse, "Epitaphium Damonis," written by Milton after his return, expresses a tenderness of feeling which may be illustrated by this passage from it, in Cowper's translation:

Ah, blest indifference of the playful herd
None by his fellow chosen or preferred!
The sparrow meanest of the feathered race
His fit companion finds in every place,

With whom he picks the grain that suits him best,
Flirts here and there, and late returns to rest;

And whom if chance the falcon make his prey,

Or hedger with his well aimed arrow slay,
For no such loss the gay survivor grieves,
New love he seeks, and new delight receives.
We only, an obdurate kind, rejoice,
Scorning all others, in a single choice;

We scarce in thousands meet one kindred mind,
And if the long-sought good at last we find,
When least we fear it, Death our treasure steals,
And gives our heart a wound that nothing heals.

Go, go, my lambs, unpastured as ye are,
My thoughts are all now due to other care.
Ah, what delusion lured me from my flocks,
To traverse Alpine snows and rugged rocks!
What need so great had I to visit Rome,
Now sunk in ruins and herself a tomb?
Or, had she flourished still as when, of old,
For her sake Tityrus forsook his fold,
What need so great had I to incur a pause
Of thy sweet intercourse for such a cause,
For such a cause to place the roaring sea,
Rocks, mountains, woods, between my friend and me?

Else had I grasped thy feeble hand, composed

Thy decent limbs, thy drooping eyelids closed,
And, at the last, had said—"Farewell-ascend—
Nor even in the skies forget thy friend!"

That is the John Milton who in the year 1640, in the thirtysecond year of his life, began to keep school at the garden house in Aldersgate Street. Milton was proposing then to use his leisure in the shaping of an Epic based like Virgil's upon the mythical tale of the founder of his country. His mind was on his two callings of teacher and poet, when the clouds gathered again, and there broke forth in 1641 a storm of public feeling against prelacy.

In August 1640 the Scots had crossed the border and routed in the first conflict five thousand horse and foot at Newburn. While the Scots held Newcastle the King was at last obliged, against his will, to call a Parliament-known now as the Long Parliament —which was to meet at Westminster on the 3rd of November 1640. At the end of January 1641 Bishop Hall published in defence of the Liturgy and Episcopal Government, his "Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament." Towards the close of March there appeared an answer to this by five divines

one of them Milton's old teacher, Thomas Young—who joined their initials to make one author's name, Smectymnuus (Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Sparstow). Usher, Archbishop of Armagh, argued, towards the end of May, out of Antiquity the confirmation of Episcopacy. Laud had been impeached in February, and in March committed to the Tower. On the 27th of May the House of Commons passed the second reading of a bill "for the utter abolishing and taking away of all Archbishops, Bishops, &c.," while there was also awaiting decision a bill for the exclusion of Bishops from the House of Lords.

It was then that Milton joined his voice to the argument by publishing his two books "Of Reformation touching Church Discipline," which was followed quickly by a shorter pamphlet on Prelatical Episcopacy replying to Usher, and a defence of

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Smectymnuus against attack. In January 1642 there was the King's arrest of the Five Members on the 14th of February, the King gave his assent to the bill excluding Bishops from the House of Lords, and the second piece of Milton's given in this volume "The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty," was published at that time. On the 22nd of the following August the King set up his standard at Nottingham, and Civil War began. Milton's arguments concerning Prelacy may be left to speak for themselves. His aspiration clearly is for a pure, spiritual Church, and he appeals only to Scripture and reason. It is equally clear that the experience of his time, and of history before his time, gave Milton little hope of such a change as we see now. Whatsoever ailments may remain for time to heal, the Church of England now welcomes the fellowship of all who join her in the labour to establish peace on earth and goodwill among men.

In June 1643, Milton went into Oxfordshire and married the eldest daughter of a near neighbour to the Oxfordshire Miltons, Richard Powell of Forest Hill. He must have known her since her birth. She was in her eighteenth year, he in his thirty-fifth, and it was eighteen years since Milton went to College, where, when he was a student, Mary Powell's father had given evidence of friendship by borrowing of him five hundred pounds. There is no reason at all why we should think ill of Mary Powell. When Milton brought her-about the end of June 1643into his house of the worker, there were in the first days little adjustments necessary to enable two lives that had hitherto run different courses to take one course and keep step together. Milton's young wife was not prepared. Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips, says that she felt the change from a great house in which there had been much company. Some of her family came with her and feasted for about a week. Then she was left. After another fortnight she was invited to go home till Michaelmas. She had only been married for about a month when she went home, towards the end of July, and had no wise home counsel in aid of her troubled inexperience. She was kept from her husband; and when Milton sent for her, his servant was sent back by her unwise