if he could at this time have had his way, for the most
moral of men was bent on assuming a direct antagonism to conventional
morality. He had maintained that marriage ought to be dissolved for mere
incompatibility; his case must have seemed much stronger now that
incompatibility had produced desertion. He was not the man to shrink
from acting on his opinion when the fit season seemed to him to have
arrived; and in the summer of 1645 he was openly paying his addresses to
"a very handsome and witty gentlewoman, one of Dr. Davis's daughters."
Considering the consequences to the female partner to the contract, it
is clear that Miss Davis could not be expected to entertain Milton's
proposals unless her affection for him was very strong indeed. It is
equally clear that he cannot be acquitted of selfishness in urging his
suit unless he was quite sure of this, and his own heart also was deeply
interested. An event was about to occur which seems to prove that these
conditions were wanting.

Nearly two years have passed since we have heard of Mary Milton, who has
been living with her parents in Oxfordshire. Her position as a nominal
wife must have been most uncomfortable, but there is no indication of
any effort on her part to alter it, until the Civil War was virtually
terminated by the Battle of Naseby, June, 1645. Obstinate malignants had
then nothing to expect but fine and forfeiture, and their son-in-law's
Puritanism may have presented itself to the Powells in the light of a
merciful dispensation. Rumours of Milton's suit to Miss Davis may also
have reached them; and they would know that an illegal tie would be as
fatal to all hopes of reconciliation as a legal one. So, one day in July
or August, 1645, Milton, paying his usual call on a kinsman named
Blackborough,[3] not otherwise mentioned in his life, who lived in St.
Martin's-le-Grand Lane, where the General Post Office now stands, "was
surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making
submission and begging pardon on her knees before him." There are two
similar scenes in his writings, of which this may have formed the
groundwork, Dalila's visit to her betrayed husband in "Samson
Agonistes," and Eve's repentance in the tenth book of "Paradise Lost."
Samson replies, "Out, out, hyaena!" Eve's "lowly plight"

"in Adam wrought
Commiseration;...
As one disarmed, his anger all he lost,
And thus with peaceful words