ared for him till his death in 1674.

During this last period of his life Milton composed and published his
_major_ poems,--Paradise Lost, 1667, Paradise Regained, and Samson
Agonistes, 1671. For Paradise Lost he received from his publisher five
pounds in cash, with promise of five pounds when thirteen hundred copies
should have been sold, and of two more payments, each of the same sum,
when two more editions of the same size should have been disposed of.

The last years of his life Milton appears to have spent in comparative
comfort. His three daughters had gone out to learn trades. It seems he
had given them no education. It may be they showed no desire or aptitude
for instruction. Far more probably, however, he took no interest in their
education. His ideal of womanhood, as may be gathered from numerous
passages in his poems, is as far as possible removed from the modern
conception of sexual equality as to opportunity for education and for
training to self-determination. He shared in this respect the views that
prevailed during his day in all classes of society, and he maintained
these views as a parent no less than as the poet of Paradise.

Besides the poems named above as produced during this last period of his
life, Milton published also in these years several prose works, which
have now little value except as showing the bent and occupation of his
mind. Among these may be named a small Latin Grammar, written in English,
which he had composed long before, and a History of Britain to the Norman
Conquest.

Though the immediate sale of Paradise Lost was not large, according to
our ideas, it was yet sufficient to indicate a very respectable interest
in the reading public of the day. We must remember that it appeared in
the corrupt time of the Restoration, when the prevailing literary fashion
was wholly adverse to seriousness and ideality. The age was spiritually
degenerate. Milton himself considered that he lived "an age too late."
The great poem had no royal or noble sponsors to give it vogue; yet it
made its way. By no means had all minds become frivolous. The minor poems
had been published by themselves in 1645. These had always had their
readers. The prose pamphlets of the secretary for foreign tongues were,
at least by a small class of observant persons, known to be the work of
the author of Comus and Lycidas. There were not wanting men to take a
sympathetic interest in the fate of the poet in his retirement, a