Mood First.
Samson. My wife, my traitress! let her not come near me!
Chorus. Yet on she moves; now stands and eyes thee fixt,
About to have spoke; but now, with head declined,
Like a fair flower surcharged with dew, she weeps,
And words addressed seem into tears dissolved,
Wetting the borders of her silken veil:
But now again she makes address to speak.
Dalila. With doubtful feet and wavering resolution
I came, still dreading thy displeasure, Samson,
Which to have merited, without excuse,
I cannot but acknowledge: yet, if tears
May expiate (though the fact more evil drew
In the perverse event than I foresaw),
My penance hath not slackened, though my pardon
No way assured. But conjugal affection,
Prevailing over fear and timorous doubt,
Hath led me on desirous to behold
Once more thy face, and know of thy estate;
If aught in my ability may serve
To lighten what thou suffer'st, and appease
Thy mind with what amends is in my power,
Though late, yet in some part to recompense
My rash, but more unfortunate, misdeed.
Samson. Out, out! hyæna! Samson Agonistes, 725-747.
Mood Second.
She ended weeping, and her lowly plight,
Immoveable till peace obtained from fault
Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought
Commiseration: soon his heart relented
Towards her, his life so late and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress,
Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking,
His counsel whom she had displeased, his aid;
As one disarmed, his anger all he lost,
And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon.
Paradise Lost, X. 937-946.
Was this Milton's idealized history long afterwards of his own two moods in Blackborough's house in St. Martin's-le-Grand Lane some time in July or August 1645? So far as it was autobiography at all, I should not say that it was much idealized, except in so far as Dalila in the land of the Philistines, and Eve in Paradise, had to be represented poetically as beautiful, eloquent, and fascinating, while of poor Mary Powell's claims to beauty we know little, and our information as to her eloquence and fascination consists in our irremovable impression that it was of her that Milton had been thinking in that passage in his first Divorce Tract in which he described the hard fate of a man bound fast by marriage to "an image of earth and phlegm." From the side of Milton there was, I think, no idealizing: hardly else than as his own Samson, or his own Adam, in his poems, did Milton feel or speak on any important occasion of his own real experience. If, then, the second mood now prevailed, and he yielded, it was only, I believe, because despair for himself and pity for another overcame him jointly, and what was alone possible was accepted as disastrously fated. So much by way of necessary anticipation, and that there may not be a mistake, even for a moment, as to the real nature of the reconciliation that had been effected. Meanwhile, the friends of both wife and husband were delighted with their success; and, till the new house in the Barbican should be ready, young Mrs. Milton went to lodge in the house of the Widow Webber, Christopher Milton's mother-in-law, near St. Clement's Church in the Strand.
REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN.
September 1645, when the New Model Army had stormed Bristol and was otherwise carrying all before it in the English South-west, when Montrose in Scotland had been extinguished by David Leslie at Philiphaugh, and when the Presbyterian system had been so far arranged for England that the first order of Parliament for the election of Elders in all the London parishes had gone out, and Triers of the competency of these Elders had been appointed in all the London Presbyteries: then it was, as near as one can calculate, that the interesting house in Aldersgate Street was left by Milton, and he, his wife, his father, the two boys Phillips, and the other pupils, entered together into the new house in Barbican.