In 1638, when he was in his thirtieth year, he determined to broaden his views by travel. He went to Italy, which the Englishmen of his day still regarded as the home of art, culture, and song. After about fifteen months abroad, hearing that his countrymen were on the verge of civil war, he returned home to play his part in the mighty tragedy of the times.
Milton's "Left Hand."—In 1642 the Civil War broke out between the Royalists and the Puritans. He took sides in the struggle for liberty, not with his sword, but with his pen. During this time he wrote little but prose. He regretted that the necessity of the time demanded prose, in the writing of which, he says, "I have the use, as I may account it, but of my left hand."
With that "left hand" he wrote much prose. There is one common quality running through all his prose works, although they treat of the most varied subjects. Every one of these works strikes a blow for fuller liberty in some direction,—for more liberty in church, in state, and in home relations, for the freedom of expressing opinions, and for a system of education which should break away from the leading strings of the inferior methods of the past. His greatest prose work is the Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.
Much of his prose is poetic and adorned with figures of rhetoric. He frequently follows the Latin order, and inverts his sentences, which are often unreasonably long. Sometimes his "left hand" astonishes us by slinking mud at his opponents, and we eagerly await the loosing of the right hand which was to give us Paradise Lost.
His Blindness.—The English government from 1649 to 1660 is known as
the Commonwealth. The two most striking figures of the time were
Oliver Cromwell, who in 1653 was styled the Lord Protector, and John
Milton, who was the Secretary for Foreign Tongues.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF MILTON'S SIGNATURE IN THE ELEVENTH YEAR
OF HIS BLINDNESS.From his application to wed Elizabeth Minshull.
Feb. 11, 1663.]
One of the greatest of European scholars, a professor at Leyden, named Salmasius, had written a book attacking the Commonwealth and upholding the late king. The Council requested Milton to write a fitting answer. As his eyes were already failing him, he was warned to rest them; but he said that he would willingly sacrifice his eyesight on the altar of liberty. He accordingly wrote in reply his Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, a Latin work, which was published in 1651. This effort cost him his eyesight. In 1652, at the age of forty-three, he was totally blind. In his Paradise Lost, he thus alludes to his affliction:—
"Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But clouds instead and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off."
Life after the Restoration.—In 1660, when Charles II. was made king, the leaders of the Commonwealth had to flee for their lives. Some went to America for safety while others were caught and executed. The body of Cromwell was taken from its grave in Westminster Abbey, suspended from the gallows and left to dangle there. Milton was concealed by a friend until the worst of the storm had blown over. Then some influential friends interceded for him, and his blindness probably won him sympathy.
[Illustration: COMUS TITLE PAGE.]