Milton - PR3550 D77 1777 M2

TEit LIVE oP MILTON'. 397 lers difgrace in the defeat, or more glory in the viaory. He hand° led the fubje& more at large in his next performance, which was the Reafon of Church Government urged againft Prelaty, in two books. And Bifhop Hall having publithed a Defence of the Humble Remen- firance, he wrote Animadverfions upon it. All thefe treatifes he publifhed within the courfe of one year, 164t, which fhow how very diligent he was in the caufe that he had undertaken. And the next year he fet forth his Apology for Smetlymnutts, in anfwer to the con. futation of his Animadverfions, written as he thought himfelf by tifbop Hall or his fon. And here very luckily ended a controverfy, Which detained him from greater and better writings which he was meditating, more ufeful to the public, as well as more fuitable to his own genius and inclination : but he thought all this while that he was vindicating ecclefiaftital liberty. In the year 1643, and the 35th of his age, he married; and indeed his family was now growing fo numerous, that it wanted a miftrefs at the head of it. His father, who had lived with his younger fon at Reading, was, upon the taking of that place by the forces under the Earl of Effex, neceflitated to come and live in London with this his elder fon, with whom he continued in tranquillity and devotion to his dying day. Some addition too was to be made to the number of his pupils. But before his father or his new pupils were come, he took a journey in the Whitfuntide vacation, and after a month's abfence returned with a wife, Mary, the e]defl daughter of Mr. Richard Powell, of Forefthill near Shotover in Oxfordfhire, a jultice of the peace, and a gentleman of good repute and figure in that county. But The had not cohabited with her hufband above a month, before the was earnefily folicited by her relations to come and fpend the remaining part of the mummer with them in the country. If it was not at her inftigation that her friends made this requeft, yet at leaf it was agreeable to her inclination ; and the obtained her hulband's confent upon a promife of returning at Michaelmas. In the mean while his studies went on very vigoroufly ; and his chief diver. lion, after the bufinefs of the day, was now and then in an evening to vilit the Lady Margaret Lee, daughter of the Earl of Marlborough, del m Lord

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=