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during his brief breathing-time of peace and poetic scheming before the great interruption came. Do we not see him? There, through the winter of 1639-40, he sits among his books and papers, in his lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard, his two boy-nephews occasionally with him, or more often in an adjoining room, the bustle of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill well shut out, or only at nights the not unpleasing melancholy of the wintry London gusts mingling with the quiet and warmth within. The very thoughts that then made up Milton's musings are known to us, and we can sce the books that were chiefly on his table. His thoughts were of the Italian scenes and friends so recently left and yet bright in his memory, of the sad death of Diodati and of the poorer English world remaining for himself now that Diodati was gone; yet also of his own duties in that world, foreseen from youth, but now beginning to press through maturity of years and experience. He was to teach the English nation a new ideal of Literature, and for that purpose he must leave his minor Poems behind for what they were worth, and set about works of higher and larger structure that should task his utmost powers. For such works there must be preparation. There must be a due apparatus of material, and of selection and extract from amid that material. Well, there it is! All round his room are books, but there are a few that are habitually in use. They are the Bible (in English and in the originals), some Latin commentaries on the Bible of recognized merit, Holinshed's Chronicles of England and Scotland, Speed's Chronicle, Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Britonum, William of Malmesbury's De Gestis Regum, and one or two others. Over these he pores day after day, reading, ruminating, and making notes. The Seven Pages of Jottings which now form pp. 35-41 of the volume of Milton MSS. at Cambridge were the chief immediate result of those readings. Those pages once lay under Milton's fingers. They were begun, I calculate, in the winter of 1639-40, but may have been continued through 1640 and perhaps into 1641 and 1642. And so, for the present, we leave Milton, books

before him, pen in hand, and the Jottings, which the reader has just seen in their complete state, not yet quite in that state, but only in progress.1

1 A very vigilant reader may require more exact proof than has been furnished in the text that the Seven Pages of Jottings of Subjects in the Cambridge MS. volume do belong to the years 163942, or the year or two immediately following Milton's return from his Italian journey. Here, therefore, are the heads of the proof:-(1) That the Jottings cannot have been made before the Italian journey is proved, not only by the fact that the scheme of a future Poem with which Milton entertained himself during that journey, and for a little while after his return from it, was one quite apart from the Jottings, but also by the evidence of the handwriting. In specimens of Milton's autograph before the Italian journey, including the draft of his Lycidas, written in Nov. 1637, the small letter e is, all but invariably, shaped in the Greek form (e); but after his return from Italy, and probably in consequence of his stay there, his all but uniform habit was to shape it much as we do now (e). This furnishes a useful test of date to be applied to Milton's handwriting in many cases; and, as applied to the Jottings, it is conclusive that they cannot have been made earlier than 1639. The Greek form of the e is superseded in them by our present form. (2) Milton was totally blind in 1652, and for several years before that he had practically ceased to use his own hand in any continuous writing. The latest piece in his own handwriting in the Cambridge volume is a Sonnet of date 1648; the next latest is a Sonnet of date 1646; and the pieces in his hand of later date than 1642 are very few. As the Jottings are an extensive and rather elaborate mass of handwriting, with corrections, interlineations, and close-packing, which must have required the full use of eyesight, it seems fair, on that ground alone, to make the year 1648 the utmost limit of their possibility. (3) A minute examination

of the Cambridge volume, in respect of paper, water-mark, and other such mechanical particulars, shows a certain continuity in the eight sheets forming its middle and larger portion. The entire volume consists of 54 pages, and these middle eight sheets of it are the 32 pages from p. 11 to p. 42 inclusively. They contain the Draft of Comus, the Draft of Lycidas, and the JOTTINGS, and in such a manner that these form a little mass of autograph by themselves, separated by blank pages from what precedes in the volume and from what follows. The suggestion to the eye is that the JOTTINGS either were written in an unoccupied part of a thin paper-book which already contained the Drafts of Comus and Lycidas, or were written on sheets of the same paper still in possession. Either way, the JOTTINGS are brought pretty close to Lycidas. (4) It would be difficult to find a time in Milton's life after 1641 when he could have been at leisure, or in the mood, for such Jottings, and the literary balancings and hesitations which they indicate. (5) From a statement in Phillips's Life of Milton, illustrated by Aubrey's notes, it distinctly appears that Phillips had heard some lines of Paradise Lost read to him by his uncle as early as about 1642. This proves that Milton had by that time done more with the first great subject among the Jottings than merely register it. (6) The passage quoted in the text from The Reason of Church Government, and other passages in the same treatise, would alone be conclusive. That treatise was written at the end of 1641; and the passages in question exhibit Milton as if actually looking at the Jottings lying on his table, taking the public into his confidence respecting them, and explaining with what regret he had in that year torn himself away from such literary contemplations and labours in order to embark in politics.

CHAPTER III.

EPISCOPAL ALARMS IN

ENGLAND-BISHOP HALL'S EPISCOPACY BY

DIVINE RIGHT-THE SHORT PARLIAMENT-THE SECOND "BISHOPS' WAR WITH THE SCOTS-CALLING OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT.

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THE Scots had duly held their second General Assembly, as authorized by the Pacification of Birks. It met at Edinburgh, with David Dickson as Moderator, and sat from the 12th to the 30th of August, 1639. Ostensibly it discussed matters de novo; but in reality it reasserted and confirmed all the decisions of the Glasgow Assembly of 1638. The Parliament promised at the Pacification had also met, with no Prelates in it, but only the nobles, and representatives of the lairds, and of the burghs. Thwarted, however, at every step by the King's Commissioner, Traquair, this Parliament (Aug. 31-Nov. 14) had not been able to do much. Its most important act was the nomination of a committee of twentytwo of its number to watch proceedings till June 2, 1640, the day to which it stood prorogued. Still, in the main, Scotland was at ease. She had swept away her Bishops, and was able to rejoice once more in an apparatus of simple Presbyterianism.

EPISCOPAL ALARMS IN ENGLAND: BISHOP HALL'S EPISCOPACY BY DIVINE RIGHT.

In England the prevalent feeling continued to be that of sympathy with the Scots. To this feeling, however, there were some exceptions. More particularly among the English clergy, and among those laymen who had an affection for the

existing forms and constitution of the Church of England, there was a sense of danger and provocation. There was both danger and provocation in the proximity of a kirk so zealous in its assertion of anti-Episcopal principles as that of the Scots, and viewed with such ominous interest by a large body of the English people. It might not be great matter of regret, so far as the Scots were themselves concerned, that they had modelled their jagged little portion of the island to their own fashion, and rejected the benefits of a Liturgy and the order of Bishops! But had not the success of the Scots been a blow to the cause of Episcopacy generally? Was not the Church of England challenged and menaced, and was not some demonstration necessary to set that Church right both with her own members and with the world at large? If the Scots must be let go, should they not be let go execrated and excommunicated, rather than with the honours of victory?

These feelings found a spokesman in that Dr. Joseph Hall, bishop of Exeter, of whom we have already had glimpses in this History. Known in his youth as "the English Persius," on account of his coarsish but masculine metrical satires, and afterwards styled "the English Seneca," on account of his more numerous prose-writings, this Prelate had hitherto been in greater favour with the Puritans than most of his brethren. He was regarded as a Prelate of the old Calvinistic, rather than of the Laudian, school. He had even been in conflict with Laud, while Laud was rising into the ascendancy. Of late, however, he had been approximating to Laud: I should even say that he had been toadying Laud in secret. I have seen disagreeable private letters of information written by him to Laud respecting nests of Sectaries in London whom it would be well to extirpate; and my distinct impression is that, in his conduct generally, and even in his writings, when carefully examined, there will be found a meaner element than our literary dilettanti and antiquaries have been able to discern in so celebrated a bishop. Now, at all events, in his sixty-sixth year, he

came forward in a way that was to give a marked character to the whole remainder of his life.

The circumstances are these:-The second General Assembly of the Scots had published their Acts. Hall, in his palace at Exeter, had procured a copy of them, and had been reading with indignation the stuff put forth by "these ignorant factionists." He is so moved that, the very next day (Sept. 28), he writes to Laud at Lambeth. As the reconquest of Scotland to the true Church by the sword was not now to be hoped, might not means be taken, he asks, at least to counteract the mischievous nonsense which the Scots were propagating? What, for example, if his Grace were to advise his Majesty to call a General Synod of the bishops, doctors, and other dignitaries "of the whole three kingdoms" to discuss the "schismatical points"? Would not the effect be, if not "chokingly to convince" the Scottish schismatics, at least to "hiss them out of countenance"? To this suggestion Laud, after consulting the King, replies that there are strong reasons of State against the calling of any such Synod, but that Hall's zeal is to be commended, and that, if he himself were to employ his well-known powers in a written confutation of the Scottish schismatics, the result might be little less authoritative. Hall is a little taken aback by the honour so proposed to him, and he intimates (Oct. 18) that it would be more comfortable for him to be associated in the work with a select jury of other bishops and divines. Might not Laud himself, if his Grace's leisure would allow him, appear at the head of "the learned squadron," together with Morton of Durham and Davenant of Salisbury for England, Primate Usher and bishops Bedell and Lesley for Ireland, and some of the exiled Scottish bishops for Scotland? Laud having, in his reply, objected to this plan, on account of "the danger of variance," Hall does at length undertake the work assigned to him, on condition that he shall have the benefit of Laud's private

1 The originals of this and the following letters of Hall referred to in the

text, together with Laud's replies, are in the State Paper Office.

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