faculty avenged itself; for when he did turn to poetry, his strength
was gone from him. The period is chiefly marked, by sonnets, not many,
one in a year, or thereabouts. That _On the religious memory of Mrs.
Catherine Thomson_, in 1646, is the lowest point touched by Milton in
poetry, for his metrical psalms do not deserve the name.

The sonnet, or Elegy on Mrs. Catherine Thomson in the form of a
sonnet, though in poetical merit not distinguishable from the
average religious verse of the Caroline age, has an interest for the
biographer. It breathes a holy calm that is in sharp contrast with the
angry virulence of the pamphlets, which were being written at this
very time by the same pen. Amid his intemperate denunciations of
his political and ecclesiastical foes, it seems that Milton did not
inwardly forfeit the peace which passeth all understanding. He had
formerly said himself (_Doctrine and Disc._), "nothing more than
disturbance of mind suspends us from approaching to God." Now, out of
all the clamour and the bitterness of the battle of the sects, he can
retire and be alone with his heavenly aspirations, which have lost
none of their ardour by having laid aside all their sectarianism. His
genius has forsaken him, but his soul still glows with the fervour
of devotion. And even of this sonnet we may say what Ellis says of
Catullus, that Milton never ceases to be a poet, even when his words
are most prosaic.

The sonnet (xv.) _On the Lord-General Fairfax, at the siege of
Colchester_, written in 1648, is again a manifesto of the writer's
political feelings, nobly uttered, and investing party with a
patriotic dignity not unworthy of the man, Milton. It is a hortatory
lyric, a trumpet-call to his party in the moment of victory to
remember the duties which that victory imposed upon them. It is not