400 Til E LIFE of MILTON. not a little to make hint fuch an enemy to the Prefbyterians, to whoui Ise had before dillinguiffied himfelf a friend. He compofed likewife two of his fonnets on the reception his book of divorce met with, but the latter is much the better of the two. To this account it may be added from Anthony Wood, that after the King's refloration, when the fubje&of divorcewas under confideration with the Lords upon the account of John Lord Ros or Roos his feparation from his wife Anne Pierpoint eldeft daughter to Henry Marquis of Dorchefter, he was confulted by an eminent member of that Houle, and about the fame time by a chief officer of Rate, as being the prime perfon, who was knowing in that affair. But while he was engaged in this controverfy of divorce, he was not fo totally engaged in it, but he attended to other things ; and about this time publifhed his letter of Education to Mr. Samuel Hartlib, who wrote fome things about hufbandry, and was a man of confider. able learning, as appears from the letters which paffed between him and the famous Mr. Mede, and from Sir William Petty's and Pell the mathematician's writing to him, the former his treatife for the advancement of fome particular parts of learning, and the latter his Idea of the Mathematics, as well as from this letter of our author, This letter of our author has ufually been printed at the end of his poems, and is as I may fay the theory of his own praaice ; and by the rules which he has laid down for education we fee in fome mead fure the method that he purfued in educating his own pupils. And in 1644 he publifhed his Areopagitica or Speech for the liberty of unlicenfed printing to the Parliament of England. It was written at the defire of feveral learned men, and is perhaps the belt vindication, that has been publifhed at any time or in any language, of that liberty which is the bats and Support of all other liberties, the liberty of the prefs : but alas it had not the defired effea; for the Prefbyterians were as fond of exercifing the licenfing power, when they got it into their own hands, as they had been cla- morous before in inveighing againft it, while it was in the hands of the prelates. And Mr. Toland is rniftaken in faying, " that fuch " was the effect of this piece, that the following year Mabol a licenfer " offered
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