The "old man eloquent" is Isocrates, the Athenian orator, whose patriotism made him refuse to survive the defeat of the Athenians and Thebans by Philip of Macedon at Chæroncia, This comparison of the lady's father to the famous Greek is perhaps the most poetical turn in the Sonnet. For the rest, it tells us something about the lady herself. She must have been somewhat, if not considerably, older than Milton; for, though Milton had been twenty years old at the time of the good Earl's death, and might therefore well remember his Treasurership and Presidency of the Council, he speaks of knowing the days wherein the old peer had flourished chiefly through the Lady Margaret's talk about him and them. Her conversation, it would therefore seem, ran much upon her father and his private and political virtues; and Milton listened respectfully, seeing much in the lady herself of what she praised in her sire. Perhaps Milton would talk to her freely in return of his own concerns. The Lady Margaret Ley, and her husband, Captain Hobson, were probably in his confidence on the subject of his marriage misfortune. The Sonnet was unquestionably written in 1643 or 1644. [Footnote: It was printed in the first or 1645 edition of Milton's Poems, and it is placed last in the series of Sonnets there contained. The draft of it in the Cambridge Book of Milton's MSS. is in Milton's own hand—the title "To the Lady Margaret Ley" being likewise his hand.]
A younger and unmarried lady must then also have been among Milton's acquaintances. How else can we account for this other Sonnet?
"Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth
Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green,
And with those few art eminently seen
That labour up the hill of heavenly truth,
The better part, with Mary and with Ruth,
Chosen thou hast; and they that overween,
And at thy glowing virtues fret their spleen,
No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth.
Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends
To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light,
And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure
Thou, when the Bridegroom with his feastful friends
Passes to bliss at the mid hour of night,
Hast gained thy entrance, Virgin wise and pure."
This Sonnet, to which the heading "To a Virtuous Young Lady" is now prefixed in the editions of Milton, had no such heading prefixed in his own copy. [Footnote: In the Cambridge MSS. there is a draft in Milton's own hand immediately before the draft of the Sonnet to Lady Margaret Ley. In the edition of 1645 the Sonnet was printed in the same order and without a heading. In the MS. draft there are several erasures and corrections. Thus Milton had originally written "blooming virtue" in as if with reference to the personal appearance of the young lady; but in the margin he substitutes the present reading, "growing virtues.">[ Who the young lady was that so won upon Milton at this critical time, and seemed to him so superior to the more commonplace of her sex, we are left uninformed. There is a conjecture on the subject, which may afterwards appear. It is clear, meanwhile, that the poor absent Mary Powell may have suffered not only from her own defects, but also from the opportunity of some such contrast.
The Divorce subject continued to occupy Milton. His tract had been rapidly bought, and had caused a sensation. Through the cold winter of 1643-4, while the Parliament and the Assembly were busy, and the auxiliary Scottish army was expected, a good many people had leisure to read the strange production, or at least to look into it, and be properly shocked. It seems to have been about this time, for example, that James Howell, the letter-writer, came, upon a copy. Or rather the copy must have come upon him; for the poor man, now past fifty years of age, and ousted from his clerkship to the Privy Council, was in the Fleet Prison for debt, and dependent for his subsistence there on translations, dedications and poems to friends, and all sorts of literary odds and ends. [Footnote: Wood's Ath. III. 745, and Cunningham's London Article Fleet Prison.] In one of his rambling pieces, afterwards published in the form of Letters, mostly without dates, and addressed to friends from feigned places, he thus gives what I take to be his impression of Milton's tract when it first reached him in the Fleet: "But that opinion of a poor shallow-brained puppy, who, upon any cause of dissatisfaction, would have men to have a privilege to change their wives, or to repudiate them, deserves to be hissed at rather than confuted; for nothing can tend more to usher in all confusion and beggary throughout the world: therefore that wiseacre deserves," &c. [Footnote: Howell's Familiar Letters Book IV, Letter 7, addressed "To Sir Edward Spencer, knight," (pp 453-457 of edit. 1754.) The letter is dated "Lond. 24 Jan.," no year given; but the dates are worthless, being afterthoughts, when the Letters were published in successive batches.] As Mr. Howell's own notions about marriage and its moralities were of the lightest and easiest, his severe virtuousness here is peculiarly representative. More interesting on its own account is the opinion of another contemporary—no other than Milton's late antagonist Bishop Hall. In Hall's Cases of Conscience (not published till 1649) he thus describes the impression which Milton's Divorce pamphlet had made upon him when he first read it in its anonymous form: "I have heard too much of, and once saw, a licentious pamphlet, thrown abroad in these lawless times in the defence and encouragement of Divorces (not to be sued out; that solemnity needed not; but) to be arbitrarily given by the disliking husband to the displeasing and unquiet wife, upon this ground principally, That marriage was instituted for the help and comfort of man: where, therefore, the match proves such as that the wife doth but pull down aside, and, by her innate peevishness and either sullen or pettish and froward disposition, bring rather discontent to her husband, the end of marriage being hereby frustrate, why should it not, saith he, be in the husband's power, after some unprevailing means of reclamation attempted, to procure his own peace by casting off this clog, and to provide for his own peace and contentment in a fitter match? Woe is me! to what a pass is the world conic that a Christian, pretending to Information, should dare to tender so loose a project to the public! I must seriously profess that, when I first did cast my eyes upon the front of the book, I supposed some great wit meant to try his skill in the maintenance of this so wild and improbable a paradox; but, ere I could run over some of those too well-penned pages, I found the author was in earnest, and meant seriously to contribute this piece of good counsel, in way of reformation, to the wise and seasonable care of superiors. I cannot but blush for our age wherein so bold a motion hath been, amongst others, admitted to the light. What will all the Christian Churches through the world, to whose notice these lines shall come, think of our woeful degeneration, &c."? [Footnote: Hall's Works (edit. 1837), VII. 467.] Hall, it will be seen, had noted the literary ability of the pamphlet, while amazed by its doctrine.
Neither Howell's nor Bishop Hall's opinion can have reached the author of the pamphlet till long after the date now in view. But other opinions to the same effect had been reaching him. Especially, it seems, the pamphlet had caused a fluttering among the London clergy. The consequence had best be told by himself. "God, it seems, intended to prove me, whether I durst alone take up a rightful cause against a world of disesteem, and found I durst. My name I did not publish, as not willing it should sway the reader either for me or against me. But, when I was told that the style (which what it ails to be so soon distinguishable I cannot tell) was known by most men, and that some of the clergy began to inveigh and exclaim on what I was credibly informed they had not read, I look it then for my proper season both to show a name that could easily contemn such an indiscreet kind of censure, and to reinforce the question with a more accurate diligence, that, if any of them would be so good as to leave railing, and to let us hear so much of his learning and Christian wisdom as will be strictly demanded of him in his answering to this problem, care was had he should not spend his preparations against a nameless pamphlet." [Footnote: This passage, fitting in here with chronological exactness, occurs in Milton's Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce, published in July 1644.] In other words, he resolved to abandon the anonymous. His pamphlet, easily traced to him from the first by its Miltonic style, had been sold out, or nearly so; people generally, but clergymen especially, were saying harsh things about it, and about him as its author; but some of these critics, he authentically knew, had never read the pamphlet, and others were making a point of the fact that it had appeared without its author's name. Well, there should be an end of that! He would put forth a second edition of the pamphlet, and avow the authorship! And this he would do rather because, since the publication of the first edition, he had been looking farther into the literature of the question, and could now fortify his own reasoned opinion with authorities he had been but dimly aware of, or had altogether overlooked.
Accordingly, on the 2nd of February, 1643-4, there did come forth a second edition of Milton's first Divorce Tract, with this new title: "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Restor'd to the good of both Sexes, from the bondage of Canon Law, and other mistakes, to the true meaning of Scripture in the Law and Gospel compar'd. Wherein are set down the bad consequences of abolishing or condemning of Sin, that which the Law of God allowes, and Christ abolisht not. Now the second time revis'd and much augmented. In Two Books: to the Parliament of England with the Assembly. The Author J.M." Underneath this title, the text Matth xiii. 52 is repeated from the title-page of the first edition; with this new text added, Prov. xviii. 13: "He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him." Then follows the imprint, "London, Imprinted in the yeare 1644." In the copy in the British Museum which is my authority, the collector Thomason has put his pen through the final figure 4, and has annexed, in ink, the date "Feb. 2, 1643." [Footnote: Brit, Mus. Press-mark, 12. E.e. 5/141.] This fixes the exact date of publication as above, Feb. 2, 1643-4.
This second edition is a great enlargement and improvement of the first. The 48 small quarto pages of the first swell into 88 pages; the text is divided into Two Books, each of which is subdivided into Chapters, with carefully-worded headings; and, on the whole, the treatise is made more inviting in appearance. The bold Introductory Letter, addressed "To the Parliament of England, with the Assembly," consists of six pages, and is signed not with the mere initials "J.M." which appear on the title-page, but fully "John Milton." The additions in the text consist sometimes of a few words inserted, sometimes of expansions of mere passages of the first edition into two or three pages: in the Second Book they attain to still larger dimensions, so that much of that Book is totally new matter. Thus Chapters I., II., and III., of this Book, forming ten pages, come in lieu of a single paragraph of two pages in the first edition; Chapters IV., V., VI., and VII., forming together six pages, are substituted for about a single page of the first edition; and Chapter XXI., consisting of nearly five pages, is an expansion of about a page and a half in the first edition. The additions and expansions appear to have been made on various principles. Sometimes one can see that a passage has been added for the mere poetic enrichment of the text, and to prove that the hand that was writing was not that of a musty polemic, but of an artist, at home in splendours. There is a striking instance in point in Chap. VI. of Book I., where there is interpolated a gratuitously gorgeous myth or fable, which may be entitled Eros and Anteros, or Love and Its Reciprocation. The passage is characteristic and may be quoted:—
Marriage is a covenant the very being whereof consists, not in a forced cohabitation, and counterfeit performance of duties, but in unfeigned love and peace. And of matrimonial love no doubt but that was chiefly meant which by the ancient sages was thus parabled: That Love, if he be not twin-born, yet hath a brother wondrous like him, called Anteros; whom while he seeks all about, his chance is to meet with many false and feigning desires that wander singly up and down in his likeness. By them in their borrowed garb Love, though not wholly blind as poets wrong him, yet having but one eye, as being born an archer aiming, and that eye not the quickest in this dark region here below, which is not Love's proper sphere, partly out of the simplicity and credulity which is native to him, often deceived, embraces and consorts him with these obvious and suborned striplings, as if they were his Mother's own sons, for so he thinks them while they subtly keep themselves most on his blind side. But, after a while, as his manner is, when, soaring up into the high tower of his Apogæum, above the shadows of the Earth, he darts out the direct rays of his then most piercing eyesight upon the impostures and trim disguises that were used with him, and discerns that this is not his genuine brother, as he imagined, he has no longer the power to hold fellowship with such a personated mate. For straight his arrows loose their golden heads and shed their purple feathers; his silken braids untwine and slip their knots; and that original and fiery virtue given him by Fate all on a sudden goes out and leaves him undeified and despoiled of all his force; till, finding Anteros at last, he kindles and repairs the almost faded ammunition of his Deity by the reflection of a coequal and homogeneal fire. Thus mine author sung it to me; and, by the leave of those who would be counted the only grave ones, this is no mere amatorious novel (though to be wise and skilful in these matters men heretofore of greatest name in virtue have esteemed it one of the highest arcs that human contemplation circling upwards can make from the glassy sea whereon she stands); but this is a serious and deep verity, showing us that Love in Marriage cannot live nor subsist unless it be mutual.
Unless more is meant than meets the eye by Anteros here in Milton's own case, this interpolation [Footnote: The manner of the interpolation is so curious that it deserves a note. Milton, perceiving that such a poetic Fable might be objected to as fitter for a "mere amatorious novel" than for a controversial treatise, insinuates an apology for its introduction. The apology is that some of the wisest and greatest men had allowed the use on occasion of those "highest arcs that human contemplation, circling upwards, can make from the glassy sea whereon she stands." In this phrase Milton furnished his critics with a weapon which they might have used against himself. Even now the most general objection to his prose writings would be that they contain too many of those gratuitous grandeurs, those upward arcs and circlings from the glassy sea. But, in fact, he had his own theory of prose-writing as of other things, and it was not Addison's, nor any other that has been common since.] was for literary effect only. Very frequently, however, the additions are of new reasonings, or farther interpretations of Scripture. Above all, we have in the second edition the results of Milton's ranging in the literature of the question since he had published the first. In that first edition he had been able to make some reference to Hugo Grotius, having fortunately at the last moment come upon some notes of Grotius on Matth. v. which he thought reasonable. But since then he had lighted on a more thorough-going authority on his side in one of the German theologians of the Reformation period—Paul Fagius (1504- 1550). "I had learnt," he says, "that Paulus Fagius, one of the chief divines in Germany, sent for by Frederic the Palatine to reform his dominion, and after that invited hither in King Edward's days to be Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, was of the same opinion touching Divorce which these men so lavishly traduced in me. What I found I inserted where fittest place was, thinking sure they would respect so grave an author, at least to the moderating of their odious inferences." [Footnote: This explanation, referring to the second edition of the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, does not occur in that treatise itself, but in the Judgment of Martin Bucer, published some months afterwards.] Accordingly, in the second edition, considerable use is made of Fagius, as well as of Grotius, while, as before, other theologians of historical note—Calvin, Beza, Pareus (1548- 1622), Perkins (1558-1602), Rivetus (1572-1651)—are respectfully cited, sometimes as furnishing a favourable hint, but sometimes as requiring reply and correction. Not the least interesting perhaps of the added passages is this in the last chapter: "That all this is true [i.e. that Divorce is not to be restricted by Law] whoso desires to know at large with least pains, and expects not here overlong rehearsals of that which is by others already judiciously gathered, let him hasten to be acquainted with that noble volume written by our learned Selden, 'Of the Law of Nature and of Nations;' a work more useful and more worthy to be perused, whosoever studies to be a great man in wisdom, equity and justice, than all those Decretals and sumless Sums which the Pontifical clerks have doted on." The particular work of Selden's here referred to is his folio, De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta Disciplinam Hebræorum, published in 1640. His work more expressly on Divorce, entitled Uxor Hebraica, sive De Nuptiis ac Divortiis, did not appear till 1646—i.e. it followed Milton's publications on the subject, and in the main backed the opinion they had propounded. It seems to me not improbable that in 1643-4, when Milton paid Selden the compliment we have quoted, he had just made Selden's personal acquaintance. Selden was then in his sixtieth year; Milton in his thirty- sixth.