All parties have agreed in paying this compliment to Charles II. that it was owing to no weakness or oversight of his, if Milton escaped. It is supposed that his friend Andrew Marvell, the member for Hull, Made some interest for him in the House of Commons ; and we are told that Sir Thomas Clayes, and Secretary Morris, made exertions for his preservation. But the most earnest and grateful interposition seems to have been that of Sir William Davenant, who had been saved on a former occasion by the mediation of Milton. But though his person was spared, his konoclastes, and the Defence of the People of England, were condemned to be burnt by the hands of tile hangman. Milton might well smile at this vindictive show of triumph. No sentence, no hangman, no flames conld destroy the fame of the Defence of the people of England. He might also console himself by reflecting, that those who sentenced his book to be burnt, were the same who dug up the body of Blake to be hung on a gib bet, and who brought back the punishment of em bowelling on the scaffold, ere they were yet dead, the expiring victims for treason ; a relic of barbarism which had been abolished during the republic. Mil ton was for some time in the custody of the Serjeant at-Atms, but was discharged, and attention was even paid to his complaint of the demand of excessive fees. This attention, however, was paid to him by the par liament, and not the crown.
Being now in reduced circumstances, and under the discountenance of power, he removed to a private ha bitation in the city, and, in order to alleviate his for lorn condition, he desired his friend Dr. Paget to look out for a third wife for him. He recommended a re lative of his own, Elizabeth Minshull, of a good family in Cheshire, and the union took place in Milton's fifty thild or fifty-fourth year. About the time of his mar riage, or probably a little before it, he published a short treatise, entitled Accidence Commenced Grammar, in tended to facilitate the first weak step of the juvenile student, and remarkable only for its exhibition of a mighty mind stooping in dignified condescension to utility. In 1655, he gave to the public another MS. of Sir Walter Raleigh's, containing aphorisms of State, with the title of the "Cabinet Council." That he was offered from the court, and refused the post which he had held under the former government, has been as serted, but with little probability, since his manners were by no means accommodated to the new reign, and he had offended too deeply to be more than forgiven.
He had now to resume the character of a poet, which for many years had been sunk in that of a politician and controversialist, for his few compositions in verse during this period, though exquisitely beauti ful, were not sufficiently attended to, to add to his poetical reputation. When he first formed the resolu tion of writing an epic poem, he thought of some sub ject in the heroic times of English history. Religion and the study of the Hebrew Scriptures decided him in favour of a religious subject. His mind, now con centrated and undisturbed, fulfilled the great concep tions which he had designed of Paradise Lost. The exact time employed in the composition of this poem is not ascertained, but it probably occupied his thoughts Nvith no considerable interruptions of any other litera ry subject for eleven years, from 1654 to 1665, at which period Elwood the quaker says it was finished ; a time when Milton, to avoid the contagion of the plague in London, made a retreat to Chalfont in Buck inghamshire. Paradise Lost was first printed in 1667,
in small quarto, and divided into ten books ; and his biographers have been very minute in recording the trifling sum which he received for the copy-right of it. Much discussion has also taken place respecting the original conception of this grand performance. Vol taire first suggested, that the hint had been given by the Aclamo, a poor drama, full of allegory, conceit, and bombast, written by one Andreini, a strolling player of Italy. Dr. Johnson rejected the hypothesis with contempt, but from the circumstance distinctly prov ed, of Milton's poem being first projected by him in a dramatic shape, and from the similarity of the allegori cal beings first sketched by Milton with those of An dreini, it seems by no means improbable, that the sup position suggested by Voltaire, and illustrated by Mr. Hayley, is correct.
In the second edition of the Paradise Lost, which was published in 1674, the author divided the seventh and tenth books, for the purpose of breaking the length of their narrative, each into two, and thus changed the original distribution of his work, from ten to twelve hooks. On this new arrangement the addition of a few lines became necessary to form a regular opening to the eighth and the eleventh books; and these nine verses, with six others, inserted partly in the fifth and partly in the eleventh, constituted all the alterations for this mighty production, on which his own and the epic fame of his country was to rest.
Paradise Regained, written upon a suggestion of El wood's, and apparently regarded by the author as the the ological completion of this plan, followed in 1670. He is said to have viewed this production with the partial fondness of a parent for his latest offspring. He could not bear the disparaging comparison of it with his great work, which was generally made. The general opinion of this poem certainly places it at an humble distance from Paradise Lost. The extreme narrowness of its plan, the small proportion of it which is assigned to ac tion, and the larger portion which is given to disputa tions and didactic dialogue, its paucity of characters and poetical imagery, and its general deficiency in the charm of numbers, exclude it from a wide range of popularity. It is embellished, however, with several exquisite pas sages, which discover the still existing author of the Paradise Lost. Sampson ilgonistes was published at the same time, a manly, noble, and pathetic drama ; though it cannot be asserted that its action is undefective, or that all its scenes tend harmoniously to the developement of the fable. The unlithited and capricious wanderings of the choral measures are also such as would be likely to offend us, if we were not prejudiced by the conscious ness of reading Milton.