ion
of the episcopal bench.

At Whitsuntide, in the year 1643, having reached his thirty-fifth
year, he married Mary Powell, a young lady of good extraction in the
county of Oxford. In 1644 he wrote his "Areopagitica, a speech for the
liberty of unlicensed printing." This we are to consider in the light
of an oral pleading, or regular oration, for he tells us expressly
[Def. 2] that he wrote it "ad justae orationis modum." It is the finest
specimen extant of generous scorn. And very remarkable it is, that
Milton, who broke the ground on this great theme, has exhausted the
arguments which bear upon it. He opened the subject: he closed it. And
were there no other monument of his patriotism and his genius, for
this alone he would deserve to be held in perpetual veneration. In the
following year, 1645, was published the first collection of his early
poems; with his sanction, undoubtedly, but probably not upon his
suggestion. The times were too full of anxiety to allow of much
encouragement to polite literature; at no period were there fewer
readers of poetry. And for himself in particular, with the exception
of a few sonnets, it is probable that he composed as little as others
read, for the next ten years; so great were his political exertions.

[Illustration: Oliver Cromwell visits Milton.]

In 1649, soon after King Charles was put to death, the Council of
State resolved to use the Latin tongue in their international
concerns, instead of French. The office of Latin Secretary, therefore,
was created, and bestowed upon Milton. His hours from henceforth must
have been pretty well occupied by official labors. He was one of the
most prominent men in his party, a close friend to Cromwell, who
frequently visited him; and his advice was sought on all questions of
importance. Yet at this time he undertook a service to the state, more
invidious, and perhaps more perilous, than any in which his politics
ever involved him. On the very day of the king's execution, and even
below the scaffold, had been sold the earliest copies of a work
admirably fitted to shake the new government, and for the sensation
which it produced at the time, and the lasting controversy which it
has engendered, one of the most remarkable known in literary history.
This was the "Eikon Basilike, or Royal Image," professing to be a
series of meditations drawn up by the late king, on the leading events
from the very beginning of the national troubles. Appearing a