finally an earthen rampart, with bastions, and redoubts, and all the other systematic defences of a beleaguered city, was carried entirely round London, Westminster, and Southwark. The plan of the city and suburbs, thus fortified, in 1642 and 1643, is copied below:-— AN EXPLANATION OF THE SEVERAL FORTS IN THE LINE OF COMMUNICATION. 1. A Bulwark and half on the hill at the north 2. A Hornwork near the Windmill in Whitechapel Road. 3. A Redoubt, with two flanks, near Brick Lane. 5. A Redoubt, with four flanks, in Kingsland Road, 6. A Battery and Breastwork at Mount Mill. 9. A Large Fort, with four half Bulwarks, at the 10. A Battery and Breastwork on the hill east of 11. Two Batteries and a Breast work at Southamp 12. A Redoubt, with two flanks, near St. Giles's 13. A Small Fort at the east end of Tyburn Road. 15. A Small Bulwark at the place now called Oli. 16. A Large Fort with four Bulwarks, at Hyde Park 17. A Small Redoubt and Battery on Constitution 18. A Court of Guard at Chelsea Turnpike. 21. A Fort, with four half Bulwarks, at the Dog 22. A Large Fort, with four Bulwarks, near the end 23. A Redoubt with four flanks, near the Lock In 1643 Milton married. Aubrey's account of this marriage and the subsequent separation is given with his characteristic quaintness :-" His first wife (Mrs. Powell, a Royalist) was brought up and lived where there was a great deal of company and merriment, dancing, &c.: and when she came to live with her husband at Mr. Russell's, in St. Bride's Churchyard, she found it very solitary; no company came to her, oftentimes heard his nephews beaten and cry. life was irksome to her, so she went to her parents at Forest Hill. He sent for This her (after some time), and I think his servant was evilly entreated; but as for wronging his bed, I never heard the least suspicion, nor had he of that jealousy." In another place he says, "She was a zealous Royalist, and went without her husband's consent to her mother in the King's quarters near Oxford: two opinions do not well on the same bolster." Philips, Milton's relation, gives pretty much the same account of the matter. That such cases were not uncommon in an age distracted by controversial opinions in religion and politics may readily be imagined. The general argument of Milton's elaborate treatises on Divorce is, that disagreements in temper and disposition, which tend to produce indifference or dislike, are sufficient to set aside the bond of marriage. The company and merriment, dancing, &c., in the midst of which Milton's wife was brought up, were inconsistent with his notions of pleasure and propriety. Aubrey tells us, "he was of a very cheerful humour. He would be cheerful even in his goutfits, and sing." In his sonnet to Lawrence, written most probably when he was fifty, the same cheerfulness prevails : "What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise Again, in his sonnet to Cyriack Skinner: "To-day deep thoughts resolve with me to drench He adds, mild Heaven disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And when God sends a cheerful hour refrains." This was not Puritanism; but neither was it the tumultuous merriment nor the secret licentiousness of the Cavaliers. The example of Milton may instruct us that the society of London was not to be wholly divided into these extreme classes. His plan of an academy, which Johnson calls impracticable, was founded, we have little doubt, upon a careful consideration of the desires and capacities of the intellectual class amongst whom he lived. There were other Englishmen in those days than fanatics and reprobates. He has eloquently described, in The Liberty of unlicensed Printing,' the thirst for knowledge, the ardent desire for truth, which prevailed in London even amidst the disorders of contending factions, the din of warfare, and the going forth of its sons and husbands to battle in a great cause:-" Behold now this vast city, a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his (God's) protections. The shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and heads there sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty, the approaching reformation: others as fast reading, trying all things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement. What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so prone to seek after knowledge?" Yet in the same wonderful composition he tells us plainly enough, and without any severity of rebuke, that London had its recreations and its lighter thoughts, amidst this " diligent alacrity in the pursuance of truth;" and that there were temptations which were only innocuous upon his principle that he that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian." The following graphic description of some of the social aspects of London is a remarkable exception to Milton's usual style of writing; and it almost tempts us to withdraw the remarks with which we introduced this paper, in which we spoke too slightingly of Milton's power as a painter of manners:-" If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth, but what by their allowance shall be thought honest; for such Plato was provided of. It will ask more than the work of twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, the violins, and the guitars in every house; they must not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must be licensed what to say. And who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers? The windows also, and balconies, must be thought on; there are shrewd books, with dangerous frontispieces, set to sale; who shall prohibit them?-shall twenty licensers? The villages also must have their visitors, to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebeck reads, even to the ballatry and the gammut of every municipal fiddler; for these are the countryman's Arcadias, and his Monte Mayors. Next, what more national corruption, for which England hears ill abroad, than household gluttony? who shall be the rector of our daily rioting? and what shall be done to inhibit the multitudes that frequent those houses where drunkenness is sold and harboured? Our garments also should be referred to the licensing of some sober work-masters, to see them cut into a less wanton garb. Who shall regulate all the mixed conversation of our youth, male and female together, as is the fashion of this country? Who shall still appoint what shall be discoursed, what presumed, and no farther? Lastly, who shall forbid and separate all idle resort, all evil company? These things will be, and must be; but how they shall be least hurtful, how least enticing, herein consists the grave and governing wisdom of a state. To sequester out of the world into Atlantis and Utopian politics, which never can be drawn into use, will not mend our condition; but to ordain wisely as in this world of evil, in the midst whereof God hath placed us unavoidably.” Milton's reconciliation with his wife took place, it is recorded, in the house of a relation in St. Martin's-le-Grand. Committed as he was by his opinions on the general subject of divorce, he perhaps considered it fortunate that circumstances had prevented him acting upon them. He probably, had this trial been reserved to him, would have been an evidence of the hollowness of his own arguments. As it was, we hear no subsequent complaints; and his house afforded his wife's family a shelter when the advocates of the Royalist cause were exposed to persecution. It was in Barbican that Milton lived after his wife returned to him. In 1647 Milton had again moved to a small house in Holborn, which opened behind into Lincoln's Inn Fields. He here continued to work in the education of a few scholars :- [Barbican. Designed from old Maps and Elevations, temp. James and Charles I.] But within two years Milton was called to higher occupation. In the Councilbooks at the State Paper Office, some extracts from which were first published in the preface to Dr. Sumner's translation of Milton's 'De Doctrina Christiana,' there is this entry, under date of November 12, 1649:-" Ordered that Sir John Hippesley is spoken to that Mr. Milton may be accommodated with the lodgings that he hath at Whitehall." And on the following 19th of November :-"That Mr. Milton shall have the lodgings that were in the hands of Sir John Hippesley in Whitehall, for his accommodation, as being secretary to the Council for Foreign Languages." Here, then, was Milton, after having written the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,' and the 'Iconoclastes,' fixed upon the very spot where, according to his own account, a "most potent King, after he had trampled upon the laws of the nation, was finally, by the supreme council of the kingdom, condemned to die, and beheaded before the very gate of the royal palace;”* but where, according to those who took a different view of the matter, a "black tragedy was acted, which filled most hearts among us with consternation and *Defensio pro Populo Anglicano. horror." "* After the sword was drawn and the scabbard thrown away, the Whitehall which Milton must have had in his mind when he wrote of "Throngs of knights and barons bold was deserted; its courts were solitary, its chambers were vacant; their hangings rotted on the walls; their noble pictures were covered with dust and cobweb. Howell tells a remarkable story about the desolation of the favourite palace of James and Charles:-" I send you these following prophetic verses of Whitehall, which were made above twenty years ago to my knowledge, upon a book called 'Balaam's Ass,' that consisted of some invectives against King James and the court in statu quo tunc. It was composed by one Mr. Williams, a counsellor of the Temple, but a Roman Catholic, who was hanged, drawn, and quartered at Charing Cross for it; and I believe there be hundreds that have copies of these verses ever since that time about the town yet living. They were these:— Some seven years since Christ rid to court, And there he left his ass, The courtiers kick'd him out of doors, The ass went mourning up and down, If that they could not give me grass, Will nothing find within that court Which was found to happen true in Whitehall, till the soldiers coming to quarter there trampled it down." Milton was settled in Whitehall little more than two years. Within six months of his establishment there he received from the Council a warrant to the trustees and contractors for the sale of the King's goods, to deliver to him such hangings as should be sufficient for the furnishing of his lodgings. In 1651 the Council and the Committee of Parliament for Whitehall were at issue with regard to Milton's remaining in these lodgings; and the Council appointed a Committee to endeavour with the Committee of Parliament, "that the said Mr. Milton may be continued where he is, in regard of the employment he is in to the Council, which necessitates him to reside near the Council." But he left these lodgings. From 1652, till within a few weeks of the restoration of Charles II. in 1660, he resided in Petty France, Westminster, in the house "next door to the Lord Scudamore's, and opening into St. James's Park." He held the office of Foreign Secretary till 1655. In April the 17th of that the year following entry is found in the Council-books:-" Ordered that the former yearly salary of Mr. John Milton, of two hundred and eighty-eight pounds, &c., formerly charged on the Council's contingencies, be reduced to one hundred and fifty pounds per annum, and paid to him during his life out of his Highness's Exchequer." This reduced payment was no doubt a retiring pension to Milton; Howell's Letters. |