theory of woman's inferiority and of a wife's duty of strict subjection to
her husband; a few weeks after the marriage she fled to her family and
refused to return. Thereupon, with characteristic egoism, Milton put forth
a series of pamphlets on divorce, arguing, contrary to English law, and
with great scandal to the public, that mere incompatibility of temper was
adequate ground for separation. He even proceeded so far as to make
proposals of marriage to another woman. But after two years and the ruin of
the royalist cause his wife made unconditional submission, which Milton
accepted, and he also received and supported her whole family in his house.
Meanwhile his divorce pamphlets had led to the best of his prose writings.
He had published the pamphlets without the license of Parliament, then
required for all books, and a suit was begun against him. He replied with
'Areopagitica,' an, eloquent and noble argument against the licensing
system and in favor of freedom of publication within the widest possible
limits. (The name is an allusion to the condemnation of the works of
Protagoras by the Athenian Areopagus.) In the stress of public affairs the
attack on him was dropped, but the book remains, a deathless plea for
individual liberty.

Now at last Milton was drawn into active public life. The execution of the
King by the extreme Puritan minority excited an outburst of indignation not
only in England but throughout Europe. Milton, rising to the occasion,
defended the act in a pamphlet, thereby beginning a paper controversy,
chiefly with the Dutch scholar Salmasius, which lasted for several years.
By 1652 it had resulted in the loss of Milton's eyesight, previously
over-strained by his studies--a sacrifice in which he gloried but which
lovers of poetry must always regret, especially since the controversy
largely consisted, according to the custom of the time, in a disgusting
exchange of personal scurrilities. Milton's championship of the existing
government, however, together with his scholarship, had at once secured for