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Milton resumes his epic pen-His acquaintance with the Quaker,
Ellwood-Ellwood's connection with Milton-Completion of

THE

LIFE AND TIMES

OF

JOHN MILTON.

CHAPTER. I.

JOHN MILTON, one of the grandest names in letters, statesmanship, and Christian philosophy, had his nativity cast, by the blessing of God, in one of those transition ages when great and positive intellects are enabled, through the crumbling of old ideas and principles, to new-model their own generation, and to mould the future to a grander destiny. His remarkable genius found ample scope for its exercise in the stirring days of the most momentous epoch in English history. And broadcast in the furrows of the time, lay scattered the seed of a growth destined to be pro

digiously effective both for good and evil in the world.

It was preeminently a period of interesting and instructive import, and singularly productive of famous men. In 1608, the year of Milton's birth, Spenser had been less than ten years dead, and Shakspeare still wrote. So nearly contemporary was this august trinity of poets. The Elizabethan era, fascinatingly gallant and romantic, had already produced Lord Bacon, who wedded religion to the profoundest philosophy in his intellectual theory if not in his daily life, the chivalric Raleigh, and the gentle Sydney, who could write upon his frontlet, and with equal truth, the motto of the French knight Bayard, "Without fear and without reproach," and who fell a martyr to Protestantism while fighting for the religious independence of the Netherlands. Elizabeth's whole reign had been full of that adventure which captivates the imagination, and was also distinguished for that learning and religious enthusiasm which elevates the mind and in

spires the heart. Witnessing the meeting

shock between nascent Protestantism and the

Roman see armed cap-à-pie for the tilt, it saw Catholicism completely unhorsed in England.

At the commencement of the seventeenth century, the Reformation, triumphant in that island, had broken rank into innumerable independent sects, busied mainly in acrimonious controversy concerning doctrinal points not of vital consequence, and united only in claiming from the state larger civil and religious liberty. The Roman-catholic party, still numerous and intriguing, though outnumbered and ostracised at court, recognized the essential agreement of the despotic principles of the then reigning house of Stuart with their own tenets, and therefore yielded an unwavering support to the arbitrary acts of James First, the most pedantic and weak of sovereigns; and of Charles First, the most treacherous and stubborn. The Catholics were still further confirmed in this course by perceiving that the Puritans were constantly drifting into greater hostility to the court, and they reasoned, rightly as the sequel showed, that when the clash came and the king required support, he would look for it to that party which had

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