"Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson's learned sock be on, Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child, The day of Il Penseroso, that is, of the thoughtful or contemplative2 man, begins at evening, with the nightingale's song, spends the night in study or quiet recreations; and marly to addition. reatise on eft hand Other prose give ev come when the sun comes up, seeks protection from its beams in groves or the "studious cloister's pale." Milton's Prose Period. - We resume now the account of Milton's life, which we interrupted at the time of his return from the Continent in 1639. The storm of the Civil War did not burst immediately, and Milton set up as schoolmaster 1 The sock stands for comedy. 2 These adjectives express better the idea of Milton than does "melancholy." y mont her resi 1 She ture that sounds like literal translation from Latin. When we think, however, of what the world would be to-day without freedom of the press, we realize the interest an eloquent plea for that freedom is likely to have for us. This of Milton's has, moreover, many passages so forceful and every way admirable that they have passed into common speech: "Opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making." "As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye." Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, above all other liberties." 66 Papers on the Execution of Charles. The remainder of Milton's prose is occupied with a defence of the Puritans. for their execution of Charles. The papers are all controversial, and are marred by undignified and harsh language that one would wish to think not natural to the writer. In 1656 Milton married Catherine Woodcock, with whom (if we may judge from his twenty-third sonnet) he lived not unhappily until her death, fifteen months afterward. Since 1652 he had been totally blind, a result, doubtless, of excessive use of his eyes. On the subject of his blindness he wrote one of his greatest sonnets, closing with the memorable line, "They also serve who only stand and wait." Milton's Sonnets. A word should be said regarding Milton's contribution to the development of the English sonnet. In the words of Mark Pattison: "Milton emancipated the sonnet as to subject-matter." The Elizabethan sonnet, we have seen, was usually concerned with love; and Shakspere, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest wrote sonnet |