left on the point of commencing practice as a physician in London. It is a singular coincidence that it was during his stay in Geneva that news reached him of Charles's death. This sad event inspired a little later the last and the best of his Latin poems, the "Epitaphium Damonis," or "Lament for Damon." Though, like "Lycidas,' this follows the strict pastoral convention, it is, despite its alien language, far more tender in feeling and personal in tone than the English elegy. With the sadness of his loss weighing heavily upon him, he now retraced his former course through France, reaching London in August 1639. He had been absent just fifteen months.

Two matters connected with this Continental tour are worthy of passing remark. In the first place, we have his word for it that, wherever he went and whatever might be the society in which he found himself, though it was his invariable rule "never to be the first to begin any conversation on religion," yet, if any question were put to him concerning his own faith, he answered it "without any reserve or fear." This freedom of utterance under repressive conditions which he deplored led occasionally to slight difficulties, and once almost to serious trouble; for on his way back from Naples to Rome he learned from some merchants that the English Jesuits in the latter city had laid a plot against him because he had spoken too boldly about religion. Nevertheless, he adds, "I again openly defended, as I had done

before, the Reformed religion in the very metropolis of Popery." Secondly, an element of romance pertains to his Italian travels which is the more interesting on account of the mystery which still surrounds it. Some years afterwards, replying to the loose accusations of one of his many calumniators, Milton proudly declared that "in all those places in which vice meets so little discouragement and is practised with so little shame, I never once deviated from the paths of integrity and virtue." No one who

knows him would for a moment question his statement. Yet we wholly misconceive his character if we imagine that his absolute rectitude and austere purity of life betokened any deficiency on the emotional side. On the contrary, his was indeed an ardent nature, and one extraordinarily sensitive to the fascinations of beauty and the influences of love. This is strikingly illustrated by the romantic incident now referred to. Somewhere in Italy, perhaps towards the end of his tour there, though regarding both place and time we are in entire uncertainty, he met an Italian lady, dark-eyed, dark-haired, who at once took his heart captive by her personal loveliness and the charm of her singing, and aroused in him a passion so strong that, as it would seem, he had to seek safety from it in flight. The patient searchings of the biographers have thus far failed to bring to light any particulars of this episode; no clue has been discovered to the identity of the lady; nothing is known of the circumstances in which

he met her or of the details of their relationship. Five Italian sonnets and a canzone which will be found in any complete edition of Milton's poetical works remain as our only record of what must have been, at the time, a critical passage in his life. I mention it here because it brings into such clear view an aspect of Milton's complex character which, in our preoccupation with his Puritanism, we are too apt to overlook.

The news which had reached Milton in Naples had not exaggerated the gravity of the situation at home. On his arrival in England he found the king engaged in what is known as the Bishops' war with the Scots, who were resisting by force of arms the attempt of Laud to dictate to them in matters of Church government and religious worship. Disaffection spread; things went from bad to worse; supported by his two evil counsellors, Laud and Strafford, Charles pursued his reckless policy of high-handed tyranny, vacillation, and childish blundering. For eleven years from March 1629 to April 1640 he had persisted in ruling the country without a Parliament. The Parliament which he was then compelled to convene the Short Parliament as it is called-was dissolved by him in twenty-three days because it made demands upon him which in his unwisdom he saw fit to reject. His action greatly exasperated the Commons. In the November of the same year Parliament was again called together, and this time the king did not dare to interfere. Then the storm broke. Strafford was impeached,

tried, and, abandoned by the royal master whom he had served not indeed well but faithfully according to his lights, perished on the scaffold. A struggle for supremacy ensued between the king and the House of Commons, and in 1642 England was plunged into civil war. As in this tremendous conflict it was practically inevitable that every man should take a side, minor differences were for the time being obliterated. In each camp there were moderate men as well as extremists, but, speaking generally, the opposed armies represented the king and the Church on the one side, and Parliament and Puritanism on the other.

The language which Milton used regarding his return to England clearly suggests his intention of taking some personal part in public affairs. Apparently he found no immediate opening for his energies, for, "cheerfully leaving" the burning issues of the hour "first to God, and then to those to whom the people had committed that task," he himself resumed his former studious routine of life. He took lodgings to begin with in the house of a tailor in St. Bride's Churchyard, Fleet Street, moving thence in 1640 to a "pretty garden-house" in Aldersgate Street, then outside the walls and in a quiet, almost rural quarter of the city. Not even now did he adopt any definite profession, contentedly living in his simple fashion on the means provided by his father. But he employed much of his time in the education of his nephews, John and Edward Phillips, sons of his only sister

by her first marriage, and in this way he was led a little later to take a few other pupils into his house.

Meanwhile he had found that it was by pamphleteering that, as a private citizen, he could for the time being most effectively help his fellow-countrymen in their struggle for political and religious liberty. "I resolved," he says, "though I was then meditating other matters, to transfer into this struggle all my genius and all the strength of my industry." He now became active and influential as a prosewriter and controversialist, setting aside in obedience to the urgent claims of the hour the prosecution of those poetic designs upon which more than ever he had set his heart. But before we turn to the polemical work which, though he did not then guess it, was to absorb his energies and to withhold him from the "other matters " of which he speaks for the next twenty years, it will be well to outline the course of his private life.

Unfortunately, the record soon becomes disturbed by domestic troubles. In June 1643 he married Mary Powell, the daughter of an Oxfordshire squire. This was, as the immediate sequel showed, a most injudicious step. That Milton should have taken it, and taken it, as is only too evident, without forethought, is another fact which proves in how many important respects the popular conception of his character needs correction. As it was, the strong feelings and idealising imagination of the poet must