ncludes in this division of his work the
Divorce pamphlets, the tractate _Of Education_, and the _Areopagitica_,
as dealing with the "three material questions" (so he calls them) of
domestic liberty, namely, "the conditions of the conjugal tie, the
education of the children, and the free publication of the thoughts."

It seems a strange conception of domestic liberty which makes it rest on
a threefold support--divorce at will, an unrestrained printing-press, and
the encyclopaedic education of polyglot children. But the truth is that
Milton's classification is an after-thought. The pamphlets that he names
were all written by him much about the same time, between 1643 and 1645;
but the true history of their origin is more interesting and less
symmetrical than the later invented scheme of classification. The Divorce
pamphlets were written because Milton was unhappily married. The
_Areopagitica_ was written because his heterodox views concerning
marriage had brought him into collision with the Presbyterian censors of
the press. His treatise on education was written because he had
undertaken the education of his own nephews, and had become deeply
interested in that question. In all three his own experience is the first
motive; in all three that experience is concealed beneath a formidable
array of general considerations, dogmatically propounded.

The case is the same with regard to the pamphlets that treat of religious
and civil liberty; they are not only occasional, but intensely personal,
even in their origins. The earliest of them, the five ecclesiastical
pamphlets of the year 1641, deal with a question which had been of
intimate concern to Milton ever since the beginning of his Cambridge
days. The celebrated controversy with Salmasius and his abettors,
concerning the death of King Charles, is a gladiatorial combat from which
every element save the personal is often absent. In these bouts offensive
biography and defensive autobiography serve for sword and shield. This
personal character of the prose writings, while it has repelled some
readers interested mainly in the questions discussed, has attracted
others who are interested chiefly in the writer. A rich harvest of
personal allusion has been gathered from the controversial treatises, and
perhaps, even now, the field has not been gleaned to the last ear. It is
worthy of remark, for instance, how Milton's pre-occupation with the
themes which he had already pondered, and