integrity of life," he had come to perceive "that there were three species of liberty which are essential to the happiness of social lifereligious, domestic, and civil." His pamphlets on Church government, in which he took the side not of the moderate reformers, but of the radicals, were his contributions to the cause of religious liberty. Civil liberty he left untouched, because "the magistrates were strenuously active in obtaining" it. As for domestic

liberty, this, as he conceived it, involved "three material questions-the conditions of the conjugal tie, the education of the children, and the free publication of thoughts." The "Areopagitica" is devoted, as we have seen, to the last of these great topics. His tract on Education is based upon the principle that a proper training in virtue is "the only genuine source of political and individual liberty." It has little importance on the pedagogical side, but it shows how fully the writer recognised the fact that if liberty is left to those who are not inwardly fit for it, it will soon degenerate into license; and like every true lover of liberty, Milton had a horror of license. Finally, in his four tractates on divorce, he boldly advocated views which even now would be deemed advanced, attacking the doctrine of the indissolubility of the marriage-bond, and maintaining the thesis that a just ground for dissolving it may be found in "indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind.” It is a nice question how far these opinions were directly influenced by his own

unfortunate venture in wedlock; certainly if, as seems probable, the first of these pamphlets was actually written during the month preceding his wife's desertion of him, the connection between his theories and his personal experiences may have been very close. But we have not now to analyse his arguments or weigh his conclusions. It is enough to note that his unqualified enunciation of ideas which he knew to be extremely unpopular even among his friends is a signal proof of his moral courage, and that in this matter again he regarded himself, rightly or wrongly, as the apostle of a wise and beneficial liberty. On the question of the relations of the sexes, Milton, as every reader of "Paradise Lost" will soon discover for himself, held very strong opinions regarding the superiority of man and the subordination of woman. These opinions sound extremely reactionary to most of us to-day. But his ideal of marriage and its responsibilities was singularly high and pure.

The first two divorce tracts were published in 1644, the remaining two in 1645. In January of the latter year Laud was executed; in June the forces of the king met overwhelming defeat on the field of Naseby. Had Charles been resolute and wise, he might still have saved, even at this late hour, himself and the crown. But he was neither resolute nor wise. In his weak and shifty way he temporised and intrigued, and finally surrendering himself to the Scots was by them handed over to the

English Parliament. By this time contentions had arisen between Parliament and the Army; the Army triumphed; Charles was seized, formally tried, sentenced to death on January 27, 1649, and three days later beheaded. Then a Commonwealth was established. Cromwell, the man of the moment, rose into power, and, after a period of great confusion, was in 1653 proclaimed Lord Protector. It is necessary just to recall these events because of their bearings on the course of Milton's life. At first, intensely interested as he must have been in movements which obviously tended towards the consummation of his own political ideals, he held altogether aloof. Amid the distracting noises and conflicts he continued to be peacefully occupied with various literary projects-with designs for a Latin dictionary, for a History of England, for a system of theology, as well as with thoughts of his great epic. His home was now relieved of the burden of the Powell family, and his abandonment of tutorial work left him more leisure for meditation and writing. The way was thus clear for progress with his plans. But the execution of the king called him out of his retirement and turned his energies into the channel of public affairs. Two weeks after Charles's death on the scaffold, Milton published a pamphlet entitled "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates," the thesis of which was that it

is lawful, and hath been held so, through all ages, for any who have the power to call to account a tyrant or wicked king, and after due

conviction, to depose and put him to death, if the ordinary magistrates have neglected or denied to do so.' Manifestly, this was not an essay in abstractions, nor even a mere counterblast against the Stuart doctrine of the "divine right of kings"; it was intended to justify the Army in Charles's trial and death, and, as Milton himself put it, "to reconcile the minds of the people to the event." It is easy to understand

that it at once drew the attention of those now in authority to its writer. The result was that, through personal influences and greatly to his own surprise, the Council of State appointed Milton Latin secretary to the Committee for Foreign Affairs at a salary curiously fixed at the sum of £288 135. 6d. a year. We must not exaggerate the political importance of this position. His main business was that of clerk and translator; he turned English despatches into Latin, and foreign despatches into English, and sometimes acted as interpreter at audiences of foreign envoys. There his official duties ended. The legends which have grown up about his prominence and power in practical politics must therefore be dismissed, and particularly that of his personal connection with the Lord Protector. A popular picture represents him sitting at a table while Cromwell, standing near by, dictates to him. As Mr. Augustine Birrell has pointed out, this picture is "all imagination, nor is there anything to prove that Cromwell and Milton, the body and soul of English Republicanism, were ever in the

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same room together, or exchanged words with one another." Certainly, Milton had nothing whatever to do, as a paid minor official, with shaping the policy of the Commonwealth. But in another capacity—as a publicist and the wielder of the most powerful pen in Englandhe rendered important assistance to the Government. The publication of a book of prayers and meditations, entitled "Eikon Basiliké, the Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Sufferings "(purporting to be the work of Charles himself, but now generally believed to have been written by a Dr. Gauden), greatly stimulated the reaction in popular feeling in favour of the late king. At the request of the Council of State Milton replied to this in his "Eikonoklastes." A more considerable task was entrusted to him when he was called upon to answer the Royalist attacks upon the Commonwealth made by a famous Dutch scholar, Salmasius, at the instigation of the late king's son, afterwards Charles II., who was then living at The Hague. This answer took the form of a "Defensio pro Populo Anglicano," or "Defence of the English People," which appeared in 1651. A rejoinder was issued in 1652 containing many scurrilous accusations against Milton himself. To this Milton replied in his "Defensio Secunda," or "Second Defence," in which, while arguing in support of the now established Protectorate, he enters into particulars concerning his own early life and conduct. Thus, as the various references which we have made to it