Time went on, the King’s cause was all but hopeless.  Many a cavalier had lost all in his defense, among them those of Mary Milton’s family.  Driven from their home, knowing hardly where to turn for shelter, they bethought them of Mary’s slighted husband.  He was on the winning side, and a man of growing importance.  Beneath his roof Mary at least would be safe.

The poor little runaway wife, we may believe, was afraid to face her angry husband.  But helped both by his friends and her own a meeting was arranged.  Milton had a friend to whose house he often went, and in this house his wife was hid one day when the poet came to pay a visit.  While Milton waited for his friend he was surprised, for when the door opened there came from the adjoining room, not his friend, but “one whom he thought to have never seen more.”  Mary his wife came to him, and sinking upon her knees before him begged to be forgiven.  Long after, in his great poem, Milton seems to describe the scene when he makes Adam cry out to Eve after the Fall, “Out of my sight, thou serpent!  That name best befits thee.”

                “But Eve,
    Not so repulsed, with tears that ceased not flowing,
    And tresses all disordered, at his feet
    Fell humble, and, embracing them, besought
    His peace; and thus proceeded in her plaint: 
        ’Forsake me not thus, Adam!  Witness, Heaven,
    What love sincere, and reverence in my heart
    I bear thee, and unweeting have offended,
    Unhappily deceived!  Thy suppliant
    I beg, and clasp thy knees.  Bereave me not,
    Whereon I live, thy gentle looks, thy aid,
    Thy counsel in this uttermost distress,
    My only strength and stay.  Forlorn of thee,
    Whither shall I betake me? where subsist? 
    While yet we live, scarce one short hour perhaps,
    Between us two let there be peace.’
    . . . . . . . 
    She ended weeping; and her lowly plight,
    Immovable till peace obtained from fault
    Acknowledged and deplored, in Adam wrought
    Commiseration.  Soon his heart relented
    Towards her, his life so late and sole delight,
    Now at his feet submissive in distress,
    Creature so fair his reconcilement seeking,
    His counsel, whom she had displeased, his aid;
    As one disarmed, his anger all he lost,
    And thus with peaceful words upraised her soon.”

Milton thus took back to his home his wandering wife and not her only, but also her father, mother, and homeless brothers and sisters.  So although he had moved to a larger house, it was now full to overflowing, for besides all this Royalist family he had living with him his pupils and his own old father.

Chapter LVIII MILTON—­DARKNESS AND DEATH

AND now for twenty years the pen of Milton was used, not for poetry, but for prose.  The poet became a politician.  Victory was still uncertain, and Milton poured out book after book in support of the Puritan cause.  These books are full of wrath and scorn and all the bitter passion of the time.  They have hardly a place in true literature, so we may pass them over glad that Milton found it possible to spend his bitterness in prose and leave his poetry what it is.