In the composition of the work Milton aims at veracity, brevity, and readableness. His fondness for the legendary incidents leads him to include them, but always with some critical remark to indicate that they are not to be accepted naïvely. Though he is influenced by modern writers, particularly Holinshed, Camden, and Buchanan, he goes back to the original authorities-the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Laws, Bede, the medieval chroniclers, etc. -as no English historian had done before him, and exhibits a very modern sense of the need of weighing their respective values. His critical and scholarly point of view has won the admiration of such a distinguished contemporary historian as Professor Sir Charles Firth,21 who finds that Masson has greatly underestimated the originality of Milton's work.

But Milton could not write either history or poetry without a fundamentally ethical and philosophic bias. We accordingly find him emphasizing throughout, the relation between national morality and national prosperity, as when he attributes the ease of the Norman conquest to the corruption of the English, which had "fitted them for servitude." He often has his eye on contemporary affairs as he analyzes the causes of failure or success in the past; to him a chief value of the study of history is to be found in the lessons which it holds for the modern statesman. As originally written, Book III of the History contained a long digression, apropos of the state of Britain when the Romans left it, on the parallel confusion which attended the close of the civil wars in 1648. This was excised by the censor and separately published in 1681 as Mr. John Milton's Character of the Long Parliament 21 Milton as a Historian.

and the Assembly of Divines. Personal and political prejudice is revealed in his description of the warrior queen Boadicea as "a distracted woman with a mad crew at her heels," in his unsympathetic treatment of the evangelization of Britain under Augustine, and in his deliberate refusal to go into the details of ecclesiastical history.22

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE (1655-1660?)

The details of the composition of Milton's great theological work De Doctrina Christiana are not so clear as in the case of The History of Britain. The statement of Phillips indicates that he returned to it in 1655; Milton himself describes in the preface the collection of the materials from Scripture of which it is composed and the reading of books of divinity in preparation for it as a work which began in his youth. There is, finally, evidence in the preserved manuscript (see below) that the work stood complete by about 1661.

1823 and it was pubIts earlier history is

This manuscript came to light in lished for the first time in 1825. most interesting. After Milton's death the document was in the hands of a young Oxford graduate, Daniel Skinner, who had served as the last of the poet's literary and scholarly assistants. Quite possibly Milton had himself delivered it with instructions for its publication. At any rate Skinner recopied the first half of it and sent the

22 The original edition of 1670 was reprinted without change in 1677 and 1695. Toland's text, published in 1698, contained several insertions not found in the first three editions. He apparently used a copy of the 1670 volume annotated by Milton's hand. See Glicksman, The Editions of Milton's "History of Britain."

whole to the Dutch publisher Elzevir to be printed. Being warned, however, that his responsibility for the publication of such a work would mean the death of his own political ambitions Skinner had the document returned to him. It subsequently found its way into the Public Records office were it lay forgotten until its discovery by the Keeper, Robert Lemon. The work of deciphering, translating, and editing it was entrusted by the command. of George IV to Bishop Charles Sumner. Its appearance occasioned Macaulay's famous essay on Milton in 1825. The second half of the manuscript, which represents the original draft, is in the hand of one of Milton's amanuenses whose name we know 23 and whose work for the poet can be traced in every dictated document which has been preserved from the years 1657 to 1661. He was evidently a trained scribe whom Milton regularly employed until the fall of his fortunes at the Restoration compelled him to do with more casual assistance.

It is easy to see why the work remained unpublished in Milton's lifetime. He had conceived it in the enthusiasm of the Commonwealth period, when religious belief was in a state of flux and there seemed to be a hope that mankind could be united in a program of liberal Christianity such as Milton desired. Propaganda was actually on foot in Europe, headed by Milton's friend James Durie, for bringing the Protestant sects together in a community of belief and action. The De Doctrina, written in Latin so that the leaders of European thought might read it and addressed to Christian churches everywhere, was perhaps intended to furnish the reasoned theological basis of

23 It was Jeremie Picard. See Hanford, The Rosenbach Müton Documents.

this new religious unity. With the Restoration all immediate expectation of the fulfillment of the plan (at least so far as England was concerned) came to an end. There was, besides, the actual personal danger involved in publishing the work. Milton's hope of safety depended on his silence, and the De Doctrina was a piece of daring heresy. Milton's insistence on man's free will and his practical denial of predestination were in direct contradiction to the chief tenets of orthodox Calvinism; his treatment of the person of Christ as far inferior to God and his conversion of the Holy Ghost into little more than a figure of speech indicated Arian sympathies which were anathema to all the dominant Christian creeds. repudiation, finally, of all forms and organizations of worship except those simple ones prescribed by Scripture renewed the Puritan indictment against Anglicanism, now reëstablished and enforced as the state religion. As if to add gratuitously to the offenses of the work against established doctrine Milton introduces a statement in favor of divorce and demonstrates that even polygamy is not prohibited by divine law.

The

The chief virtue of the work in Milton's eyes was that its principles were derived solely from Scripture. Its main bulk consists of quotations and references from the Bible, arranged under appropriate headings, with a generalized statement of the doctrine which each group of them supports. Of course Milton could not have arrived at these formulations without a wide acquaintance with the varieties of Christian thought and he enters into elaborate discussions of many of the controverted points of theological history. But his infallible test for the acceptance or rejection of a doctrine is its conformity with God's own

word as recorded in the inspired writings of the Old and New Testaments.

The peculiarities of Milton's theological ideas will be treated more fully in the discussion of the intellectual background of Paradise Lost. The De Doctrina reads like a doctrinal commentary on that work and can be ignored by no thorough student. Milton has, however, deliberately avoided in his poem, especially in the more dangerous issues, the clear and uncompromising precision of his statements in the prose. The De Doctrina is written in a coldly intellectual style, terse and logical, without the slightest touch of eloquence. The document is the steely framework of Milton's intellectual system, deliberately stripped of all the elements of personality, color, and passion which invested his customary vision of the world. His rigid will and the years of logical training at Cambridge are responsible for his ability to accomplish such a result.

LATER ECCLESIASTICAL PAMPHLETS

The troublous times which followed the death of Cromwell in 1658 brought a renewal of pamphlet activity in Milton. Occupied though he was with calmer scholarly tasks and already launched on the composition of Paradise Lost he could not fail, now that public affairs were again in a state of flux, to endeavor to exert an influence. His method is the old one of memorials to Parliament in his private capacity of citizen.

Politically Milton had been, through the Protectorate, a staunch Cromwellian. But he never assented to Cromwell's policy of maintaining a modified church establish