in a house already full of pupils, with what inconvenience from want of
room and disquiet from clashing opinions may be conjectured. "Those whom
the mere necessity of neighbourhood, or something else of a useless
kind," he says to Dati, "has closely conjoined with me, whether by
accident or the tie of law, they are the persons who sit daily in my
company, weary me, nay, by heaven, almost plague me to death whenever
they are jointly in the humour for it." Milton's readiness to receive
the mother, deemed the chief instigator of her daughter's "frowardness,"
may have been partly due to the situation of the latter, who gave him a
daughter on July 29, 1646. In January, 1647, Mr. Powell died, leaving
his affairs in dire confusion. Two months afterwards Milton's father
followed him at the age of eighty-four, partly cognisant, we will hope,
of the gift he had bestowed on his country in his son. It was probably
owing to the consequent improvement in Milton's circumstances that he
about this time gave up his pupils, except his nephews, and removed to a
smaller house in High Holborn, not since identified; the Powells also
removing to another dwelling. "No one," he says of himself at this
period, "ever saw me going about, no one ever saw me asking anything
among my friends, or stationed at the doors of the Court with a
petitioner's face. I kept myself almost entirely at home, managing on my
own resources, though in this civil tumult they were often in great part
kept from me, and contriving, though burdened with taxes in the main
rather oppressive, to lead my frugal life." The traces of his literary
activity at this time are few--preparations for a history of England,
published long afterwards, an ode, a sonnet, correspondence with Dati,
some not very successful versions of the Psalms. He seems to have been
partly engaged in preparing the treatise on Christian Doctrine, which
was fortunately reserved for a serener day. In undertaking it at this
period he was missing a great opportunity. He might have been the
apostle of toleration in England, as Roger Williams had been in America.