f Greek appended, which the
worthy Marshall seems to have engraved without understanding them. The
British Museum copy in the King's Library contains an additional MS.
poem of considerable merit, in a hand which some have thought like
Milton's, but few now believe it to have been either written or
transcribed by him. It is dated 1647, but for which circumstance one
might indulge the fancy that the copy had been a gift from him to some
Italian friend, for the binding is Italian, and the book must have seen
Italy.

Milton was now to learn what he afterwards taught, that "they also serve
who only stand and wait." He had challenged obloquy in vindication of
what he deemed right: the cross actually laid upon him was to fill his
house with inimical and uncongenial dependants on his bounty and
protection. The overthrow of the Royalist cause was utterly ruinous to
the Powells. All went to wreck on the surrender of Oxford in June, 1646.
The family estate was only saved from sequestration by a friendly
neighbour taking possession of it under cover of his rights as creditor;
the family mansion was occupied by the Parliamentarians, and the
household stuff sold to the harpies that followed in their train; the
"malignant's" timber went to rebuild the good town of Banbury. It was
impossible for the Powells to remain in Oxfordshire, and Milton opened
his doors to them as freely as though there had never been any
estrangement. Father, mother, several sons and daughters came to dwell
in a house already full of pupils, with what inconvenience from want of
room and disquiet from clashing opinions may be conjectured. "Those whom
the mere necessity of neighbourhood, or something else of a useless
kind," he says to Dati, "has closely conjoined with me, whether by
accident or the tie of law, they are the persons who sit daily in my
company, weary me, nay, by heaven, almost plague me to death whenever
they are jointly in the humour for it." Milton's readiness to receive
the mother, deemed the chief instigator of her daughter's "frowardness,"
may have been partly due to the situation of the latter, who gave him a
daughter on July 29, 1646. In January, 1647, Mr. Powell died, leaving
his affairs in dire confusion. Two months afterwards Milton's father
followed him at the age of eighty-four, partly cognisant, we will hope,
of the gift he had bestowed on his country in his son. It was probably
owing to the consequent improvement in Milton's circumst