Milton

At the Restoration Milton went into hiding in a friend's house. Two of his books were burned by the hangman, but in some unexplained way, partly no doubt through the influence of Marvell, he was not exempted from the benefits of the Act of Indemnity (29 Aug. 1660). Later he was arrested, but he was soon released and he had influence enough to protest vigorously against being required to pay excessive fees to the sergeant-at-arms of the House of Com mons. His immunity from punishment caused much comment, and stories like that of a mock funeral and that of the intervention of Sir William D'Avenant (q.v.) in return for a previous similar intervention by Milton. were probably invented to account for what seemed to be an extraordinary case of leniency or of forgetfulness. When he was out of danger, Milton took a house in Holborn and then in Jewin street. The loss of his salary and of some investments doubtless forced him to lower his scale of living and also prompted him to look out for a third wife who would manage his home better than his eldest daughter did. In February 1662-63 he married Elizabeth Min shut!, who seems to have made his last years comfortable in a house in Artillery Walk, Bun hill Fields.

Not long after this last marriage he appeart to have finished Paradise Lost> and, with some trouble, to have secured a license for it from Thomas Tomkyns, chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury. During the plague of 1665 he retired to Chalfont Saint Giles in Buckingham shire, and there he loaned his Quaker friend, Thomas Ellwood (q.v.), the complete manu script of the great epic. Ellwood on returning it made the famous remark which led to the writing of Paradise ham said much here of Paradise Lost, but what halt say of Paradise Found It was not until April 1667, partly, perhaps, in consequence of the fire of 1666, that Milton secured a publisher for 'Paradise Lost.' Then he signed a contract with. Samuel Symmons by which the latter was to pay L5 down and 15 more on the sale of each of the first three editions, which were not to exceed 1,500 copies apiece. This is usually referred to as a hard bargain, but in view of Milton's unpopularity, the length and theme of his poem, and his innovation in the use of blank verse, it seems unfair to blame Symmons. It is equally unfair to Milton's contemporaries to maintain that Addison's criticisms in The Spectator first showed Englishmen that they possessed an epic poet worthy to rank with Homer and Virgil. Six editions had been pub lished before the close of the 17th century, elaborate annotations had been made upon it and Dryden and Marvell had extolled it. The religious nature of its theme has al ways, of course, given it a standing somewhat independent of its consummate poetic merits; but these, especially its sublimity and its un rivaled harmonies, have rarely been denied by competent critics of any nationality, and efforts to show Milton's excessive indebtedness to other poets, such as Andreini and Vondel, have not met with great success. That

dise Lost> is a popular poem or Milton a poet whose genius is ungrudgingly acknowledged by all is not to be maintained; but the supreme and isolated greatness of both seems likely to es cape serious challenge. When Re gained> was finislIed and when was written cannot be accurately determined. They appeared in one volume in 1671, and probably represent Milton's last crea tive literary labors. It is said that he could not bear to have Regained> pronounced inferior to Lost> — a fact, if fact it be, which has been twisted into the statement that he preferred the poem which the public most systematically neglects. This is scarcely credible since the theme, scope and style of the two poems are so different as to render com parison rather meaningless save with regard to interest and to the level kept by the poet's imagination, points in which the superiority of (Paradise Lost> is manifest On the other Regained> in its noised nobility and its artistic use of the materials furnished by the Gospel narratives of the Temptation is so perfect of its kind that Milton's indignation at hearing it undervalued is easily compre hended. Agonistes' has fared better at the hands of critics and readers. It is probably the most successful tragedy of the Greek type ever written by an English, if not a modern, poet, and it is certainly full of the un quenchable spirit of its author. Samson blind, in the midst of his enemies, the victim of his own infatuation for a woman, was a hero with whom Milton, of all men, could thoroughly sympathize.

The poet's health was now undermined by the gout, and he devoted his closing years to setting his miscellaneous writings before the world in a proper shape. Besides the academic publications already mentioned, he revised his early poems in 1673, adding to them a few youthful pieces and some of his later sonnets, and the next year he collected his Familiar Epistles, with his College Exercises. On 8 Nov. 1674 he died peacefully, and four days later he was buried in Saint Giles, Cripplegate, beside his father. It may be inferred that some of the obloquy once heaped upon him had been dissipated, since his funeral was well attended. His daughters, who had not made his life pleas ant, and whom he had employed as readers in languages they could not understand, and had not educated or perhaps appreciated as a school master and man of such refinement might have been expected to do, disputed with his widow the terms of his nuncupative will, but the mat ter was finally compromised. The widow sur vived till 1727, a date at which all trace of the poet's descendants through certain Clarkes in India seems to have been lost. The grand daughter for whose benefit 'Comus) was per formed in 1750 had buried her seven children in infancy. Nor was the poet's progeny short lived only; it appears to have sunk decidedly in the social scale.