so I took a house of sufficient size in
the city; and there with no small delight I resumed my intermitted
studies; cheerfully leaving the event of public affairs, first to
God, and then to those to whom the people had committed that
task."

But this was before the convocation of the Long Parliament. When it had
met,

"Perceiving that the true way to liberty followed on from these
beginnings, inasmuch also as I had so prepared myself from my
youth that, above all things, I could not be ignorant what is of
Divine and what of human right, I resolved, though I was then
meditating certain other matters, to transfer into this struggle
all my genius and all the strength of my industry."

Milton's note-books, to be referred to in another place, prove that he
did not even then cease to meditate themes for poetry, but practically
he for eighteen years ceased to be a poet.

There is no doubt something grating and unwelcome in the descent of the
scholar from regions of serene culture to fierce political and religious
broils. But to regret with Pattison that Milton should, at this crisis
of the State, have turned aside from poetry to controversy is to regret
that "Paradise Lost" should exist. Such a work could not have proceeded
from one indifferent to the public weal, and if Milton had been capable
of forgetting the citizen in the man of letters we may be sure that "a
little grain of conscience" would ere long have "made him sour." It is
sheer literary fanaticism to speak with Pattison of "the prostitution of
genius to political party." Milton is as much the idealist in his prose
as in his verse; and although in his pamphlets he sides entirely with
one of the two great parties in the State, it is not as its instrument,
but as its prophet and monitor. He himself tells us that controversy is
highly repugnant to him.

"I trust to make it manifest with what small willingness I endure
to interrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than these, and leave a
calm and pleasing solitariness, fed with cheerful and confident
thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse
disputes, put from beholding the bright countenance of truth in
the quiet and still air of delightful studies, to come in to the
dim reflection of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk."

But he felt that if he allowed such motives to prevail with him, it
w