The good mother had misty, prophetic visions of what this flight might be,
and had ceased to counsel her son against the sin of idleness. But she did
not live to see her prophecies confirmed, for in this time of peace and
love, when the vibrant air was filled with hope, she passed Beyond.

Long years after, John Milton exclaimed, "Oh! Why could she not have lived
to know!" And the poignant grief of this son, then a man in years (with
his thirtieth birthday well behind), turned on the thought that he had
disappointed Her--the mother who had loved him into being.

* * * * *

Milton's woes began with his marriage--they have given rise to nearly as
much discussion as his poetry. In his "Defensio Secunda," he tells, with a
touch of pride, of the absolute innocency that continued until his
thirty-fifth year. When we consider how his combined innocence and
ignorance plunged him into a sudden marriage with a bit of pink-and-white
protoplasm, aged seventeen, we can not but regret that he had not devoted
a little of his valuable time to a study of femininity. And in some way we
think of Thackeray, when he was being shown the marvelous works of a
certain amateur artist. "Look at that! look at that!" cried the zealous
guide, "and he never had a lesson in art in his life!"

Thackeray adjusted his glasses, looked at the picture carefully, sighed
and said, "What a pity he didn't have just a little good instruction!"

Milton the student, versed in abstractions and full of learned lore, went
up the Thames seeking a little needed rest. Five miles from Oxford lived
an ebb-tide aristocratic family by the name of Powell. Milton had long
known this family, and, it seems, decided to tarry with them a day or so.