The plan of the tract was not speculative only. Since 1639, when he lived in the St. Bride's Churchyard lodging, Milton had been teaching his two nephews, and had had the younger nephew, Johnny Phillips, boarding with him entirely; when he removed in 1640 to the house in Aldersgate Street, the elder nephew, Edward Phillips, also came under his roof; and in 1643, after his wife had deserted him, and his father had come to live with him, he had received into his house, as boarders or day-boarders, a few additional pupils. How many there were we do not know: probably, with the two nephews, not more than eight or a dozen at most. Part of his daily work, therefore, at the very time when he wrote the tract to Hartlib, was the teaching of these few boys. Accordingly, it is at this point that we may best quote Edward Phillips's account of his uncle's method with his pupils. He had himself had four or five years' experience of the method, and was now (1644) fourteen years of age. In his account, however, though he inserts it as early as the year 1639 in his Memoir, he inweaves recollections that must span from 1639 to 1646, so as to describe in one passage his uncle's training of boys from the age of ten to that of fifteen or sixteen:—
"And here, by the way, I judge it not impertinent to mention the many authors both of the Latin and Greek which, through his excellent judgment and way of teaching, far above the pedantry of common Public Schools (where such authors are scarce ever heard of), were run over within no greater compass of time than from ten to fifteen or sixteen years of age:—Of the Latin, the four grand authors De Re Rusticâ, CATO, VARRO, COLUMELLA, and PALLADIUS; a great part of PLINY'S 'Natural History'; VITRUVIUS his 'Architecture'; FRONTINUS his 'Stratagems'; with the two egregious Poets, LUCRETIUS and MANILIUS: Of the Greek, HESIOD, a poet equal to Homer; ARATUS his Phænomena and Diosemeia; DIONYSIUS AFER 'De Situ Orbis'; OPPIAN'S 'Cynegetics' and 'Halieutics'; QUINTUS CALABER his Poem of the Trojan War continued from Homer; APOLLONIUS RHODIUS his 'Argonautics'; and, in prose, PLUTARCH'S 'Placita Philosophorum' and [Greek: Peri Paidon Agogias]; GEMINUS'S Astronomy, XENOPHON'S Cyri Institutio and Anabasis, ÆLIAN'S 'Tactics,' and POLYÆNUS his 'Warlike Stratagems.' Thus, by teaching, he in some measure increased his own knowledge, having the reading of all these authors as it were by proxy…. Nor did the time thus studiously employed in conquering the Greek and Latin tongues hinder the attaining to the chief Oriental languages, viz. the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac, so far as to go through the Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses, in Hebrew, to make a good entrance into the Targum, or Chaldee Paraphrase, and to understand several chapters of St. Matthew in the Syriac Testament: besides an introduction into several Arts and Sciences, by reading URSTISIUS his Arithmetic, RIFF'S Geometry, PITISCUS his Trigonometry, JOANNES DE SACRO BOSCO De Sphæra; and into the Italian and French tongues, by reading, in Italian, GIOVAN VILLANI'S History of the Transactions between several petty States of Italy, and, in French, a great part of PIEREE DAVITY, the famous geographer of France in his time.——The Sunday's work was for the most part the reading each day a chapter of the Greek Testament and hearing his learned exposition upon the same (and how far this savoured of Atheism in him I leave to the courteous backbiter to judge); the next work after this was the writing from his own dictation some part, from time to time, of a Tractate which he thought fit to collect from the ablest of Divines who had written of that subject (AMESIUS, WOLLEBIUS, &c.)—viz. A Perfect System of Divinity; of which more hereafter." [Footnote: The books named in this extract from Phillips, but not in Milton's tract, may be noted:—The PALLADIUS, who is here added to the three Latin writers on Agriculture mentioned in the tract, lived probably in the fourth century, and left a treatise De Re Rustica, very popular through the Middle Ages. It had not been translated into English. FRONTINUS (who had preceded Agricola as Roman Governor of Britain, and died circ. A.D. 106) was the author of Stratagematicon Libri IV., a kind of anecdotic treatise on the Art of War; ÆLIANUS (time of the Emperor Hadrian) and POLYÆNUS the Macedonian (second century) were Greek writers on the Military Art. Though Milton does not name them in his tract, he doubtless had them in view among Military Books to be read. Two of them had been translated into English—Frontinus, by "Richarde Morysine" (1539), and Ælianus by "John Bingham" (1616-31). QUINTUS CALABER, the nature of whose Poem in 14 Books is sufficiently described in the text (really a native of Smyrna, but called "Calaber" because the best known copy of his Poem was found in Calabria), lived late in the fourth century; APOLLONIUS RHODIUS, so called because he lived long in Rhodes, though born in Alexandria, is a much earlier and much better known Greek poet (circ. B. C. 200). Neither of these Greek poets seems to have been translated in Milton's time. GEMINUS was a Greek mathematician of the first century, who seems to have lived in Rome, and who left an [Greek: Pisagogæ kis ta phainomena], or treatise on the Sphere. Lowndes mentions no English version of it. URSTISIUS, who is mentioned for his Arithmetic, is CHRISTIAN WURZTICIUS, an Italian mathematician (1544-1588); RIFF I have not farther identified; PITISCUS is Bartholomew Pitiscus (1561-1613); and JOANNES DE SACRO BOSCO is the famous Englishman John Holywood (died 1256), whose treatise De Sphæra, often re-edited and re-published, was the most popular manual of Astronomy in the Middle Ages. VILLANI, the Florentine historian, died 1348; DAVITY, the French geographer, is unknown to me; AMESIUS, author of the Medella Theo logia and other theological works, is the William Ames (1576-1633), already known to us (Vol. II. p 579); and WOLLIBIUS (1536- 1626) was a Divine of Basle and author of Compendium Theologiæ.]
What a busy domicile the wifeless house in Aldersgate Street must have been through the year 1644! Pupils and their lessons through the solid part of the day; only a margin, morning and evening, for Milton's own readings and meditations; the father sometimes with him for an hour or so of music, but oftener in his own room, "retired to his rest and devotion, without the least trouble imaginable;" every hour of the day crammed with work; even on the Sundays those expositions of the Greek Testament to his pupils, and those dictations to them in Latin of portions of a System of Divinity which he had resolved to compile from the Scriptures and the works of the best Protestant theologians! And yet it was out of this quiet and industrious household that there had burst upon the English public that thunderbolt of the Divorce heresy!
A SECOND DIVORCE TRACT: COMPILATION FROM BUCER.
The Divorce idea still occupied Milton. On the 15th of July, 1644 (five weeks after the publication of the Tract on Education addressed to Hartlib, and five months and a half after the publication of the Second Edition of the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce), there was entered at Stationers' Hall another tract, which appeared on that day, or immediately afterwards, with this title: "The Judgement of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce. Writt'n to Edward the Sixt, in his Second Book of the Kingdom of Christ. And now Englisht. Wherein a late Book restoring the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, is heer confirm'd and justify'd by the authoritie of Martin Bucer. To the Parlament of England. John 3, 10: Art thou a teacher in Israel, and know'st not these things? Publisht by Authoritie. London, Printed by Matthew Simmons, 1644." Martin Bucer [Footnote: The entry in the Stationers' Hall Registeris as follows:—"July 15, 1614: Matt. Symmons cut. for his copie, under which, of Mr. Downham, and Mr. Parker, warden, the Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce, written to King Edw. ye 6th in the 2nd Book of the Kingdom of Xt.: Englished by Mr. Milton.">[ The tract consists of 40 small quarto pages in all; of which, however, only 24 are numbered. These numbered pages, forming the body of the tract, are abridged translations by Milton of the passages from Martin Bucer which he wished to introduce to the English public. They are preceded by six pages of "Testimonies of the high approbation which learned men have given of Martin Bucer" (viz. quotations by Milton from Calvin, Beza, Sturmius, and others, to show what a man Bucer was), and then by eight pages of closer type, addressed by Milton to the Parliament and signed with his name in full. At the end, after the numbered pages, there is a postscript of two pages, in which Milton again speaks directly, and winds up the tract.
The title-page of the tract indicates Milton's purpose in it, His original Divorce treatise had been put forth as the result of his own reasonings and meditations, without the knowledge that any had preceded him in the same track to anything like the same extent. While preparing the second edition he had become aware that strong support from learned authorities might be adduced for his doctrine; in especial, he had become aware that he had had a forerunner in the famous Reformer Paul Fagius. Much of the added matter in the second edition consisted, accordingly, in the citation of Fagius and other witnesses to strengthen his argument. Strangely enough, however, he was still unaware that he might have the benefit of a witness more renowned even than Paul Fagius. Not till May 1644 did he chance to learn this fact. "When the book," he says, "had been now the second time set forth well-nigh three months, as I best remember, I then first came to hear that Martin Bucer had written much concerning Divorce: whom earnestly turning over, I soon perceived, but not without amazement, in the same opinion, confirmed with the same reasons, which in that published book, without the help or imitation of any precedent writer, I had laboured out and laid together." The particular writing of Bucer's in which Milton found this extraordinary coincidence with his own views was the De Regno Christi ad Edw. VI., written by Bucer about 1550, but first published at Basle in 1557. There was reason, Milton is careful to impress on his readers, why Bucer, and Fagius along with Bucer, should be remembered with unusual reverence by the Protestants of England. Coming over to England in 1549, each with his great continental fame already won, they had been placed in Cambridge by the young Edward VI., then desirous of completing and perfecting the Reformation of his kingdom—Bucer as Professor of Divinity, and Fagius of Hebrew. Fagius had died in Cambridge in the same year, when he had barely begun to teach; Bucer, after he had taught for about eighteen months, died in the same place, Feb. 28, 1550-51. Both had thus breathed the last strength of their spirits into the Protestantism of England. Nay, they might be reckoned among the martyrs of English Protestantism; for, when Mary had succeeded Edward, had not their bodies been dug up, as the bodies of heretics, and publicly burnt to ashes in the Cambridge market-place? Let all this be remembered, and especially let it be remembered that Bucer had addressed his De Regno Christi to Edward VI., and intended its admonitions and instructions for the use of that monarch and his people. In that writing Bucer, though he had been dead a hundred years, was still speaking to the people of England, and telling them what remained to be done before their national reformation could be called thorough. Well, in that treatise there was a great deal about Divorce. Bucer had evidently made a study of the topic, and attached great importance to it. A large portion of the Second Book of the treatise consisted of nothing else; and it was this portion of the treatise only that Milton, partly in delight and partly in amazement at its accordance with his own doctrine, proposed to recover out of the neglected Latin, and present in plain English. Not that such drudgery of translation was to his taste. "Whether it be natural disposition or education in me, or that my mother bore me a speaker of what God made mine own, and not a translator," is his proud phrase of explanation why he could "never delight in long citations, much less in whole traductions." Even in this case he would only digest and epitomize. Beginning at Chap. XV. of the Second Book of Bucer's treatise, he would go on to Chap. XLVII. inclusively, indicating the contents of the successive chapters by headings, omitting what was irrelevant to his own purpose, and translating the passages that were most relevant. This is what is done in the 24 numbered pages which form the body of Milton's tract. They are a concatenation of dryish morsels from Bucer, duly labelled and introduced; but they make it clear that Bucer's notion of marriage was substantially the same as Milton's.
As respects Milton himself, the portion of his new Tract which is of greatest interest is the prefixed Address to the Parliament. It is noteworthy that, whereas the Second Edition of his original Divorce treatise is dedicated to "the Parliament of England with the Assembly," the new tract is dedicated to the Parliament only. The Address makes the reason of this plain. It is here, in fact, that we first hear from Milton himself of the obloquy to which his Divorce Doctrine had subjected him. It had begun, he now tells us (and we have already used the information), almost immediately after the publication of the first, and anonymous, edition of his original treatise—his style then betraying him to be the author, and some of the clergy opening loud cry against him in consequence. This had induced him to bring out the second edition, not anonymous, but openly acknowledged. Though aware of the declared hostility among the clergy, he had not then deemed it proper to descant on that subject, but had, in courtesy, dedicated the Second Edition to the Assembly in conjunction with the Parliament. Even then he had no doubt from which of the two bodies he would receive the fairer treatment. "I was confident," he says in his present address of the Bucer tract to the Parliament, "if anything generous, anything noble and above the multitude, were yet left in the spirit of England, it could be nowhere sooner found, and nowhere sooner understood, than in that House of Justice and true Liberty where ye sit in Council." Here the Assembly is ignored, and the insinuation is that, though he had included them in the dedication, it was rather by way of form than in real trust. This had been in Feb. 1643-4, and now, in July 1644, he knew his position so precisely that there was no need for farther reticence. He had not been disappointed in the Parliament. He had had hope in them; "nor doth the event hitherto, for some reasons which I shall not here deliver, fail me of what I conceived so highly." The words I have put in italics can bear no other construction than that Milton had reason to know, from private assurances, which he regarded as confidential, that some leading men in Parliament thought him perfectly entitled to broach his doctrine, and would take care that he should not be troubled for it. He was not uninformed either, he adds, that "divers learned and judicious men," both in and out of Parliament, had "testified their daily approbation" of his treatise. With the Assembly, however, he knew it to be all over. Though from them above all, by reason of "their profession and supposed knowledge," his treatise had deserved a fair hearing, all that he had received was to be "esteemed the deviser of a new and pernicious paradox." He does not, indeed, name the Assembly while intimating this, but only refers to the clergy generally and dispersedly. That he had the Assembly distinctly in view, however, appears not only from the tenor of the whole, but also from a passage in the Postscript, where he hints that such action was at work against him that he might be stopped any day by the official censorship and prevented from printing. If, therefore, this new tract should be permitted to appear, only to the Parliament would he dedicate it. But, while dedicated to the Parliament, it was intended for the Assembly. It was a challenge to them. The Reverend gentlemen had refused to consider the Doctrine of Divorce when propounded by their contemporary, a private layman and reasoner. They had thought it worthy only of denunciation as an impious paradox, destructive of morality and social order. What would they now say to the same Doctrine exhibited to them, chapter and verse, as the doctrine of one of the great European Reformers and Divines, whose name was often in their mouths, though they knew so little about him?
While the Address to Parliament thus makes clear Milton's consciousness that the Assembly were watching him and might at any time denounce him, there is yet another curious strain in it, interesting as an illustration of the writer's character. Milton was evidently divided between delight in having found Bucer his predecessor in the doctrine and a proud feeling of his own self-earned property in the same. Not even to Bucer would he yield the palm of this discovery; nay, generally, he did not care though it should be known that, while he reverenced Bucer and such men of the past, he did not think that God's power to create and endow exceptional human spirits had so exhausted itself in that time and that group of men but that work higher than aught of mere discipleship to any of them might be reserved for himself. Here Milton is in one of his constitutional moods; and it is interesting to observe with what constancy to it he treats the small fact of a discovered coincidence in opinion between himself and Bucer. The following passage will suffice in this respect, and also as a specimen of the whole tract:—
"I may justly gratulate mine own mind with due acknowledgment of assistance from above, which led me, not as a learner, but as a collateral teacher, to a sympathy of judgment with no less a man than Martin Bucer. And he, if our things here below arrive him where he is, does not repent him to see that point of knowledge which he first, and with an unchecked freedom, preached to those more knowing times of England, now found so necessary, though what he admonished were lost out of our memory, yet that God doth now again create the same doctrine in another unwritten table [the tabula rasa of Milton's mind], and raises it up immediately out of his pure oracle to the convincement of a perverse age, eager in the reformation of names and ceremonies, but in realities as traditional and as ignorant as their forefathers. I would ask now the foremost of my profound accusers whether they dare affirm that to be licentious, new and dangerous, which Martin Bucer so often and so urgently avouched to be moot lawful, most necessary, and most Christian, without the least blemish. to his good name among all the worthy men of that age and since who testify so highly of him. If they dare, they must then set up an arrogance of their own against all those churches and saints who honoured him without this exception. If they dare not, how can they now make that licentious doctrine in another which was never blamed or confuted in Bucer or in Fagius? The truth is, there will be due to them, for this their unadvised rashness, the best donative that can be given them—I mean a round reproof [a hint to Parliament about the Assembly?]; now that, where they thought to be most magisterial, they have displayed their own want both of reading and of judgment: first, to be so unacquainted in the writings of Bucer, which are so obvious and so useful in their own faculty; next, to be so caught in a prejudicating weakness as to condemn that for lewd which, whether they knew or not, these elect servants of Christ commended for lawful, and for new that which was taught by these, almost the first and greatest authors of Reformation, who were never taxed for so teaching, and dedicated without scruple to a royal pair of the first Reforming kings in Christendom [Edward VI., for whom Bucer's De Regno Christi was written, and Christian III. of Denmark, to whom it was dedicated when published at Basle in 1557], and confessed in the public Confession of a most orthodoxal Church and State in Germany [the church and community of Strasburg, in whose Confession, according to Milton, Bucer's Divorce Doctrine had been adopted]. This is also another fault which I must tell them—that they have stood now almost this whole year clamouring afar off, while the Book [Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce] hath been twice printed, twice bought up, and never once vouchsafed a friendly conference with the author, who would be glad and thankful to be shown an error, either by private dispute or public answer, and could retract as well as wise men before him: might also be worth the gaining, as one who heretofore hath done good service to the Church, by their own confession. … However, if we know at all when to ascribe the occurrences of this life to the work of a special Providence, as nothing is more usual in the talk of good men, what can be more like to a special providence of God than in the first Reformation of England that this question of Divorce, as a main thing to be restored to just freedom, was written, and seriously commended to Edward the Sixth, by a man called from another country to be an instructor of our nation, and now, in this present renewing of the Church and Commonwealth, which we pray may be more lasting, that same question should be again treated and presented to this Parliament by one enabled to use the same reasons without the least sight or knowledge of what was done before. It were no trespass, Lords and Commons, though something of less note were attributed to the ordering of a Heavenly Power. This question, therefore, of such prime concernment to Christian and Civil welfare, in such an extraordinary manner not recovered, but plainly twice-born to these latter ages, as from a divine hand, I tender to your acceptance and most considerate thoughts."