Mr. Powell's ability to pay interest, but, on the other hand, must have
equally impaired Milton's ability to exact it; for the Powells were
Cavaliers, and the Parliament's writ would run but lamely in loyal
Oxfordshire. Whether Milton went down on this eventful Whitsuntide in
the capacity of a creditor cannot now be known; and a like uncertainty
envelops the precise manner of the metamorphosis of Mary Powell into
Mary Milton. The maiden of seventeen may have charmed him by her
contrast to the damsels of the metropolis, she may have shielded him
from some peril, such as might easily beset him within five miles of the
Royalist headquarters, she may have won his heart while pleading for her
harassed father; he may have fancied hers a mind he could mould to
perfect symmetry and deck with every accomplishment, as the Gods
fashioned and decorated Pandora. Milton also seems to imply that his, or
his bride's, better judgment was partly overcome by "the persuasion of
friends, that acquaintance, as it increases, will amend all." It is
possible, too, that he had long been intimate with his debtor's family,
and that Mary had previously made an impression upon him. If not, his
was the most preposterously precipitate of poets' marriages; for a month
after leaving home he presented a mistress to his astounded nephews and
housekeeper. The newly-wedded pair were accompanied or quickly followed
by a bevy of the bride's friends and relatives, who danced and sang and
feasted for a week in the quiet Puritan house, then departed--and after
a few weeks Milton finds himself moved to compose his tract on the
"Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce."

How many weeks? The story seemed a straightforward one until Professor
Masson remarked what had before escaped attention. According to
Phillips, an inmate of the house at the period--"By that time she had
for a month, or thereabouts, led a philosophical life (after having been
used to a great house, and much company and joviality), her friends,