A remembrance of the reconciliation with his wife, and of his own feelings on that occasion, are said to have suggested to Milton's mind the beautiful scene between Adam and Eve, in the tenth book of the Paradise Lost.
She ended weeping; and her lowly plight,
Immoveable, till peace obtained for faults
Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought
Commiseration; soon his heart relented
Tow'rds her, his life so late and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress,
Creature so fair, his reconcilement seeking;
As one disarmed, his anger all he lost, &c.
Milton's second and most beloved wife (Catherine Woodcock) died in child-bed, within a year after their marriage. He honoured her memory with what Johnson (out upon him!) calls a poor sonnet; it is the one beginning
Methought I saw my late espoused saint
Brought to me, like Alcestis from the grave;
which, in its solemn and tender strain of feeling and modulated harmony, reminds us of Dante. He never ceased to lament her, and to cherish her memory with a fond regret:—she must have been full in his heart and mind when he wrote those touching lines in the Paradise Lost—
How can I live without thee? how forego
Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined,
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart!
After her death,—blind, disconsolate, and helpless—he was abandoned to petty wrongs and domestic discord; and suffered from the disobedience and unkindness of his two elder daughters, like another Lear.[148] His youngest daughter, Deborah, was the only one who acted as his amanuensis, and she always spoke of him with extreme affection:—on being suddenly shown his picture, twenty years after his death, she burst into tears.[149]
These three daughters were grown up, and the youngest about fifteen, when Milton married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull. She was a gentle, kind-hearted woman,[150] without pretensions of any kind, who watched over his declining years with affectionate care. One biographer has not scrupled to assert, that to her,—or rather to her tender reverence for his studious habits, and to the peace and comfort she brought to his heart and home,—we owe the Paradise Lost: if true, what a debt immense of endless gratitude is due to the memory of this unobtrusive and amiable woman!
FOOTNOTES:
[137] What Dr. Johnson wrote is known;—he was accustomed to say that the admiration expressed for Milton was all cant.