h of an imaginary phantom has never been successful
with women,--there are innumerable proofs of that; and the ascetic
moralist is even less interesting. A character combined out of the
two--and this to some extent was Milton's--is singularly likely to meet
with painful failure; with a failure the more painful, that it could
never anticipate or explain it. Possibly he was absorbed in an austere
self-conscious excellence: it may never have occurred to him that a
lady might prefer the trivial detail of daily happiness.

Milton's own view of the matter he has explained to us in his book on
divorce; and it is a very odd one. His complaint was that his wife
would not talk. What he wished in marriage was "an intimate and
speaking help": he encountered "a mute and spiritless mate." One of
his principal incitements to the "pious necessity of divorcing" was an
unusual deficiency in household conversation. A certain loquacity in
their wives has been the complaint of various eminent men; but his
domestic affliction was a different one. The "ready and reviving
associate," whom he had hoped to find, appeared to be a "coinhabiting
mischief," who was sullen, and perhaps seemed bored and tired. And at
times he is disposed to cast the blame of his misfortune on the
uninstructive nature of youthful virtue. The "soberest and best
governed men," he says, "are least practiced in these affairs," are not
very well aware that "the bashful muteness" of a young lady "may
ofttimes hide all the unliveliness and natural sloth which is really
unfit for conversation," and are rather in too great haste to "light
the nuptial torch": whereas those "who have lived most loosely, by
reason of their bold accustoming, prove most successful in their
matches; because their wild affections, unsettling at will have been as
so many divorces to teach them experience." And he rather wishes to
infer that the virtuous man should, in case of mischance, have his
resource of divorce likewise.

In truth, Milton's book on divorce--though only containing principles
which he continued to believe long after he had any personal reasons
for wishing to do so--was clearly suggested at first by the unusual
phenomena of his first marriage. His wife began by not speaking to
him, and finished by running away from him. Accordingly, like most
books which spring out of personal circumstances, his treatises on this
subject have a frankness and a mastery of detail which othe