One seeks in vain to learn if the unhappy wife of Milton ever read her husband’s bitter tracts.  It is probable she never did, and would not have comprehended their import if she had; and it is still more likely that she never came to realize that she was wedded to the greatest man of the age.  A truce was patched up, on the bankruptcy of her father, and she came back penitent, and was taken into favor.  Not only did she come back, but she brought her family; and the ravenous Royalists consumed the substance of the spiritual and ascetic Puritan.

Had Milton then died, it is probable that the gladsome widow would have been consoled and married again very shortly, just as did the widows of Van Dyck and Rubens—­not knowing that to have been the wife of a king was honor enough for one woman.

But after fifteen years of domestic “neglect,” during which she doubtless benefited her husband by stirring in him a noble discontent, she passed from earth; and it was left for John Milton to repeat twice more his marital venture, with a similar result.  And in this, Fate sends back a fact that leers like Mephistopheles, by way of answer to Milton’s pamphlets on divorce:  Why should the State grant a divorce, when great men refuse to learn by experience, and, given the opportunity, only repeat the blunders they have already made?

* * * * *

God in His goodness has in certain instances sent great men angels of light for assistants—­mates who could comprehend and sympathize with their ideals.  But it is expecting too much to suppose that Nature can look out for such a trifle as that the right man should marry the right woman.  Nature possibly never considered a time-contract, and she is a careless jade, anyway.  She moves blindly along with never a thought for the individual.

Audubon the naturalist records that one-third of all birds hatched tumble out of the nest before they can fly, and once on the ground the parent birds are unable either to warm, feed or protect them.

Read the lives of the Great Men who have lived during the past three thousand years, and listen closely, and you will hear the wild wail of neglected and unappreciated wives.  A woman can forgive a beating, but to be forgotten—­never.  She hates, by instinct, an austere and self-contained character.  Dignity and pride repel her; preoccupation keeps her aloof; concentration on an idea is unforgivable.

The wife of Tolstoy seeking to have her husband adjudged insane is not a rare instance in the lives of thinkers.  To think thoughts that are different from the thoughts one’s neighbors think is surely good reason why the man should be looked after.  Recently we have had evidence that the wife of Victor Hugo regarded the author of “Les Miserables” with suspicion, and at one time actually made preparations to let him enjoy his exile alone—­she would go back to Paris and enjoy life as every one should.  At Guernsey there was no society!