Churchyard, a
very different place indeed from Forest Hill, Shotover, by Oxford, Mary
Powell's dear country home. They were together barely a month when
Mary Powell, on report of her father's illness, had leave to revisit
him, being given permission to absent herself from her husband's side
from mid-August till Michaelmas. She did not return at Michaelmas; nor
for some two years was there a reconciliation between the bride and
groom of a month. During those two years Milton published his
pamphlet, _On the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce_, begun while his
few-weeks-old bride was still with him. In this pamphlet he states
with violence his opinion that a husband should be permitted to put
away his wife "for lack of a fit and matchable conversation," which
would point to very slender agreement between the girl of seventeen and
the poet of thirty-four. This was that Mary Powell, who afterwards
bore him four children, who died in childbirth with the youngest,
Deborah (of the _Diary)_, and who is consecrated in one of the
loveliest and most poignant of English sonnets.

Methought I saw my late-espoused Saint
Brought to me like Alkestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.
Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the Old Law did save;
And such, as yet once more, I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But oh! as to embrace me she inclined,
I waked; she fled; and Day brought back my Night.

It is a far cry from the woman so enshrined to the child of seventeen
years who was without "fit and matchable conversation" for her
irritable, intolerant poet-husband.

A good many serious writers have conjectured and wondered over this
little tragedy of Milton's young married life: but since all must needs
be conjecture one is obliged to say that Miss Manning, with her gift of
delicate imagination and exquisite writing, has conjectured more
excellently than the historians. She does not "play the sedulous ape"
to Milton or Mary Powell: but if one could imagine a gentle and tender
Boswell to these two, then Miss Manning has well proved her aptitude
for the place. Of Mary Powell sh