nt. With the
practical insight which never deserted him Milton saw clearly the meaning
of the news. His cordial reception in Italy, so chary of praise to anything
not Italian, had reawakened in Milton the old desire to write an epic which
England would "not willingly let die"; but at thought of the conflict for
human freedom all his dreams were flung to the winds. He gave up his
travels and literary ambitions and hurried to England. "For I thought it
base," he says, "to be traveling at my ease for intellectual culture while
my fellow-countrymen at home were fighting for liberty."

Then for nearly twenty years the poet of great achievement and still
greater promise disappears. We hear no more songs, but only the prose
denunciations and arguments which are as remarkable as his poetry. In all
our literature there is nothing more worthy of the Puritan spirit than this
laying aside of personal ambitions in order to join in the struggle for
human liberty. In his best known sonnet, "On His Blindness," which reflects
his grief, not at darkness, but at his abandoned dreams, we catch the
sublime spirit of this renunciation.

Milton's opportunity to serve came in the crisis of 1649. The king had been
sent to the scaffold, paying the penalty of his own treachery, and England
sat shivering at its own deed, like a child or a Russian peasant who in
sudden passion resists unbearable brutality and then is afraid of the
consequences. Two weeks of anxiety, of terror and silence followed; then
appeared Milton's _Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_. To England it was like
the coming of a strong man, not only to protect the child, but to justify
his blow for liberty. Kings no less than people are subject to the eternal
principle of law; the divine right of a people to defend and protect
themselves,--that was the mighty argument which calmed a people's dread and
proclaimed that a new man and a new principle had arisen in England. Milton
was called to be Secretary for Foreign Tongues in the new government; and
for the next few years, until the end of the Commonwealth, there were two
leaders in England, Cromwell the man of action, Milton the man of thought.
It is doubtful to which of the two humanity owes most for its emancipation
from the tyranny of kings and prelates.

Two things of personal interest deserve mention in this period of Milton's
life, his marriage and his blindness. In 1643 he married Mary Powell, a
shallow, pleasure-loving girl,