publication of incessant controversial pamphlets on political and ethical subjects. In September 1645 he moved into a larger house, in the Barbican, where, after the battle of Naseby, he generously gave a home to his wife's now bankrupt family; here Mr. Powell died in January 1647, and the father of Milton two months later. Another change of residence took the poet, in the autumn of the same year, to High Holborn. In these years the majority of his sonnets were written; he was living in the most studious retirement, little affected by public events. But in March 1649, the republican Council of State offered him the post of Latin Secretary, and he at once accepted it, perhaps incauti

ously, since his eyesight was already failing. His conduct in this office was stained with fanaticism and violence, and his physical faculties were taxed to their extreme limit. This is the period of Milton's furious controversies with Salmasius and others. In 1652 his wife died, and he had now become completely blind, his last rays of eyesight wasted on such ignoble raillery as the Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (1650). In November 1656 Milton married his . second wife, Catherine Woodcock, his "late espoused saint," in whom "love, sweetness, goodness shined." We know little else concerning her, and she died in childbirth in February 1658. Through all these years, the isolation of Milton is very remarkable; he had few friends, and almost his only intimate at this time was the Puritan poet, Andrew Marvell, who, in 1657, was appointed to assist official work; he had probably for a long while helped him unofficially. now living in a house in Petty France, whence, in May 1660, he fled to a friend in Bartholomew Close, where he lay in hiding for six months in danger of his life. It used to be supposed that Milton had been a great factor in Commonwealth politics; this idea is now exploded, and "it is probable that he owed his immunity to his insignificance and his harmlessness." After having remained for some time shadowed by the Serjeant-at-arms, Milton had two of his books burned by the hangman, and was then discharged on the 15th of December 1660. Up to this time, Milton had lived in easy circumstances, but he now sank into what was almost poverty. After several changes of residence, he settled in 1662 into a little new

John Milton

at Petworth

him in his Milton was

VOL. III.

B

Cavalier Lyrists

house in Bunhill Row, where he lived until his death. Here "an ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found John Milton in a small chamber, hung with rusty. green, sitting in an elbow chair, and dressed neatly in black; pale, but not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty, and with chalk-stones." He had always a garden, in

every change of house, and I would walk for several hours in it each day. In February 1663 he married a third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, who perhaps helped the old man to cope with his three graceless and unruly daughters. Deborah, the youngest of these, was his amanuensis, and is supposed to have written Paradise Lost from his dictation. The main composition of that poem occupied, it is believed, from 1658 to 1663. When the plague broke out in 1665, Milton retired to the village of Chalfont St. Giles, and there he placed in the hands of Ellwood the finished MS. of Paradise Lost, which was not published until 1667. He had yet nine years more to live, and much of eternal value to compose. But his life was extremely uneventful. He had begun Paradise Regained before he returned from Chalfont both it and even the Samson Agonistes had been completed by September 1667. They were published together in 1671, and the Poems, in a second and enlarged edition, in 1673. In the last seven years of his life Milton wrote no more poetry. His health gradually failed, but "he would be very cheerful even in his gout fits, and sing." He died on Sunday, November 8, 1674, and was buried in the chancel of St. Giles, Cripplegate. In 1790 his tomb was profaned, the coffin broken open, and the bones dispersed by the parish authorities.

John Milton

St. Giles, and there is every reason to suppose that

Other lyrics there were less imperishable than Milton's, yet excellent in their way, and vastly more popular than those. Almost without exception, such lyrics were the work of non-professional authorssoldiers, clergymen, or college wits-thrown off in the heat of youth, and given first to the world posthumously, by the piety of some friend. Of the leading lyrists of the earlier Cavalier group of the reign of Charles I., WILLIAM HABINGTON was the only one who certainly

published his poems in his lifetime. The forerunner of them all, and potentially the greatest, was THOMAS CAREW, who as early as 1620

Engraved by Faithorne for the "History of Britain," 1670, probably after the crayon portrait at Bayfordbury.

verse

See frontispiece to this volume.

was probably writing those radiant songs and "raptures" which were not printed until twenty years later. To an amalgam of Carew and Donne (whose poems, also, were first published posthumously, in 1633) most of the fashionable poetry written in England between 1630 and 1660 may be attributed. Carew invented a species of love-poetry which exactly suited the temper of the time. It was a continuation of the old Elizabethan pastoral, but more personal, more ardent, more coarse, and more virile. He was the frankest of hedonists, and his glowing praise of woman has genuine erotic force. In technical respects, the flexibility and solidity of his

was remarkable, and, though he greatly admired Donne, he was able to avoid many of Donne's worst faults. Carew cultivated the graces of a courtier; he was a Tibullus holding the post of sewer-in-ordinary to King Charles I. His sensuality, therefore, is always sophisticated and well-bred, and he is the father of the whole family of gallant gentlemen, a little the worse for wine, wine, who chirruped under Celia's window down to the very close of the century. Indeed, to tell

the truth, what began with Carew may be said to have closed with

Congreve.

Thomas Carew (1594?-1644?) was one of the eleven children of Sir Matthew Carew, Master in Chancery, and of his wife, Alice Ingpenny, Lady Rivers. Very little is definitely known of this poet's career, but he was born, probably in 1594, at West Wickham, in Kent. In June 1608, he entered Merton College, Oxford, and the Middle Temple in January 1611. He did little at law, and in 1613 was sent, as an attaché, to the English ambassador at Venice, Sir Dudley Carleton; to whom, in 1616, we find him acting as secretary at the Hague. He was very shortly dismissed for misconduct, and returning to London, fell into vagrant and debauched habits. In 1619, however, he was permitted to accompany Lord Herbert of Cherbury on an embassy to France, where he remained, perhaps, until 1624. After his return to England, he seems to have ingratiated himself with the court, and in 1628, he was appointed gentleman of the privy-chamber, and

Thomas Carew

at Windsor Castle

sewer (or taster of the royal dishes) to the king. A scandalous story, preserved by Sir John Percival, shows that Carew possessed readiness and tact in the office of a courtier. He lived a very

unseemly life almost to the last, but, falling into "sickness and agony," was just in time to redeem his faults by a public repentance on his death-bed. This, however, came so late, that John Hales, of Eton (1584-1656), who was attending him, "told him he should have his prayers, but would by no means give him either the sacrament or absolution." It is believed that Carew came up from West Horsley to King Street, Westminster, when he felt he was dying, and that Hales visited him in those lodgings. There, too, he probably died, perhaps in 1644. He published the masque of Coelum Britanicum in 1634, and Poems in 1640. Carew had many friends among the Cavalier poets of