Charles I. fell before the storm.  His was a losing cause from the day he erected his standard at Nottingham, in 1642, to that on which, after his noble bearing on the scaffold, the masked executioner held up his head and cried out, “This is the head of a traitor.”

With a fearful consistency the Commons voted soon after to abolish monarchy and the upper house, and on their new seal inscribed, “On the first year of freedom by God’s blessing restored, 1648.”  The dispassionate historian of the present day must condemn both parties; and yet, out of this fierce travail of the nation, English constitutional liberty was born.

CROMWELL.—­The power which the parliament, under the dictation of the army, had so furiously wielded, passed into the hands of Cromwell, a mighty man, warrior, statesman, and fanatic, who mastered the crew, seized the helm, and guided the ship of State as she drove furiously before the wind.  He became lord protector, a king in everything but the name.  We need not enter into an analysis of these parties:  the history is better known than any other part of the English annals, and almost every reader becomes a partisan.  Cromwell, the greatest man of his age, was still a creature of the age, and was led by the violence of circumstances to do many things questionable and even wicked, but with little premeditation:  like Rienzi and Napoleon, his sudden elevation fostered an ambition which robbed him of the stern purpose and pure motives of his earlier career.

The establishment of the commonwealth seemed at first to assure the people’s liberty; but it was only in seeming, and as the sequel shows, they liked the rule of the lord protector less than that of the unfortunate king; for, ten years after the beheading of Charles I., they restored the monarchy in the person of his son, Charles.

Such, very briefly and in mere outline, was the political situation.  And now to return to Milton:  It is claimed that of all the elements of these troublous times, he was the literary type, and this may be demonstrated—­

   I. By observing his personal characteristics and political
   appointments;

   II.  By the study of his prose works; and

   III.  By analyzing his poems.

BIRTH AND EARLY WORKS.—­John Milton was born on the 9th of December, 1608, in London.  His grandfather, John Mylton, was a Papist, who disinherited his son, the poet’s father, for becoming a Church-of-England man.  His mother was a gentlewoman.  Milton was born just in time to grow up with the civil troubles.  When the outburst came in 1642, he was thirty-four years old, a solemn, cold, studious, thoughtful, and dogmatic Puritan.  In 1624 he entered Christ College, Cambridge, where, from his delicate and beautiful face and shy airs, he was called the “Lady of the College.”  It is said that he left the university on account of peculiar views in theology and politics; but eight years after, in 1632, he took his degree as master of arts.  Meanwhile, in December, 1629, he had celebrated his twenty-first birthday, when the Star of Bethlehem was coming into the ascendant, with that pealing, organ-like hymn, “On the Eve of Christ’s Nativity”—­the worthiest poetic tribute ever laid by man, along with the gold, frankincense, and myrrh of the Eastern sages, at the feet of the Infant God: