Masson's Life of John Milton [pp. 382-394]

~92 MASSON'S LIFL' OF JOliN MILTON. [April,
Church, and to so many of my fellow Christians, in a crisis of so much
danger: I therefore determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which
I was engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to this one important object." Of course the presumption is that
he was busy with his pen, that his talents and industry were actually devoted to the interests of the great cause of civil and religious liberty. He
specifies also the principal woH~s upon which he was engaged, but he remarKs in this connection that after liis defense of Smectymnuus, he "was
actively employed in refuting any answers that appeared." Evidently we
are warranted in crediting to hiin works, or controversial pamphlets, which
he has not seen reason to specify individually. To this elass of literature
the two pamphlets from which we have quoted evidently belong.
This second volume of ~Iiltoa's Life introduces us to one of the most
exciting and momentous periods of English history, and conducts us from
the Scotch Protest against Episcopacy, in 1639, to 4~e opening of the
Westminster Assembly in 1643. It is full of events of cpic grandeur and
of dramatic interest. Years seem crowded into days, and two nations,
more or less kindred in language and political and religious sympathies,
passed from a cond~tion of suppressed indignation and whispered apprehension, to that positicn in which they could feaHessly assert their liberties,
unawed by the aame, the prestige or the military resources of their despotic
King. Great events and great ch aracte~s pass in review before us. The
attitude of Presbyterian Scotland, firm as her own Grampians against the
daring or the subtle assaults of Episcopal innovation-the humiliation of
the defeated monarch, compelled to call a Parliament, the one power in
England which could traverse and defeat his arbitrary projects-the bold
impeachment of Strafford and the impressive scenes of his trial to which
three Kingdoms were parties, and on the issue of which the fate of English liberty seemed to depend-the terrible retribution which overtakes
that arch-innovator, Archbishop Laud, and sends him to the Tower, on
his way to the scaffold-the successftil dem~nd for the eoncession of Parliamentary rights, and triennnial assemblies-the rupture between the
King and Commons, hun~ied on by his own rash attempt to arrest obnoxious members-U~e Episcopal Controversy, in wh~ch the pen gave place
to the statute, and the stetute to the sword-the ~1emorable League of
England and Scotland, into vA~ich were inftised the sympathies as well as
the daring nad deflrn~ce of the heroes of d~e Covenant the outburst of religious fervor, when closed pulpits were thrown open and padlocked lips
were loosed-the sponfeneous and unprecedented patriotism of London
train-bands and rust~c yeomen, with men like Pain%x and Ilampden stepping forward to be her leaders-all these events, and others scarcely less
memorable, sweeping before us in rapid succeesion, seem almost to epitomize the history of centuries in less than a lustrum.