Page:Cousins's Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.djvu/284

 272 Dictionary of English Literature

King who perished at sea. Arcades and Comus are masques set to music by Henry Lawes, having for their motives respectively family affection and maiden purity. Had he written nothing else these would have given him a place among the immortals. In 1638 he completed his education by a period of travel in France and Italy, where he visited Grotius at Paris, and Galileo at Florence. The news of impending troubles in Church and State brought him home the following year, and with his return may be said to close the first of three well-marked divisions into which his life falls. These may be called (i) the period of preparation and of the early poems; (2) the period of controversy, and of the prose writings; and (3) the period of retirement and of the later poems. Soon after his return M. settled hi London, and employed himself in teaching his nephews, Edward and John Phillips, turning over in his mind at the same time various subjects as the possible theme for the great poem which, as the chief object of his life, he looked forward to writing. But he was soon to be called away to far other matters, and to be plunged into the controversies and practical business which were to absorb his energies for the next 20 years. The works of this period fall into three classes (i) those directed against Episcopacy, in cluding Reformation of Church Discipline in England (1641), and his answers to the writings of Bishop Hall (q.v.), and in defence of Smectymnuus (see under Calamy) ; (2) those relating to divorce, in cluding The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), and The Four Chief Places of Scripture which treat of Marriage (1645); and (3) those on political and miscellaneous questions, including the Trac tate on Education, Areopagitica, A Speech for the Liberty of Un licensed Printing (1644) (his greatest prose work), Eikonoklastes, an answer to the Eikon Basilike of Dr. Gauden (q.v.}, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649), in defence of the execution of Charles I., which led to the furious controversy with Salmasius, the writing of Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (1650), the second Defensio (1654), which carried his name over Europe, and The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth, written on the eve of the Restoration. In 1643 M. had m. Mary Powell, the dau. of an Oxfordshire cavalier, a girl of 17, who soon found her new life as the companion of an austere poet, absorbed in severe study, too abrupt a change from the gay society to which she had been accustomed, and in a month returned to her father's house on a visit. When the time fixed for rejoining her husband arrived, she showed no dis position to do so, upon which he began to aim at a divorce, and to advocate in the works above mentioned " unfitness and contrariety of mind " as a valid ground for it, views which incurred for him much notoriety and unpopularity. A reconciliation, however, followed in 1645, and three dau. were born of the marriage. In 1649 the reputation of M. as a Latinist led to his appointment as Latin or Foreign Sec. to the Council of State, in the duties of which he was, after his sight began to fail, assisted by A. Mar veil (q.v.) and others, and which he retained until the Restoration. In 1652 his wife d., and four years later he entered into a second marriage with Katharine Woodcock, who d. in child-birth in the following year. To her memory he dedicated one of the most touching of his sonnets. At the Restoration he was, of course, deprived of his office, and had