We have seen "Comus" and "Lycidas" arise at another's bidding, we shall see a casual remark beget "Paradise Regained." He never attempts to utter his deepest religious convictions until caught by the contagious enthusiasm of a revolution.

If any incident in his life could ever have compelled him to speak or die it must have been the humiliating issue of his matrimonial adventure.

To be cast off after a month's trial like an unsatisfactory servant, to forfeit the hope of sympathy and companionship which had allured him into the married state, to forfeit it, unless the law could be altered, for ever! The feelings of any sensitive man must find some sort of expression in such an emergency.

At another period what Milton learned in suffering would no doubt have been taught in song.

But pamphlets were then the order of the day, and Milton's "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," in its first edition, is as much the outpouring of an overburdened heart as any poem could have been.