of our day--and his wife had brought him
3000 l., could not live within his means. His children were numerous,
and, belonging as he did to the cavalier party, his house was
conducted with the careless hospitality of a royalist gentleman.
Twenty years before he had begun borrowing, and among other
persons had had recourse to the prosperous and saving scrivener of
Bread-street. He was already mortgaged to the Miltons, father and
sons, more deeply than his estate had any prospect of paying, which
was perhaps the reason why he found no difficulty in promising a
portion of 1000 l. with his daughter. Milton, with a poet's want
of caution, or indifference to money, and with a lofty masculine
disregard of the temper and character of the girl he asked to share
his life, came home with his bride in triumph, and held feasting in
celebration of his hasty and ill-considered choice. It was a beginning
of sorrows to him. Hitherto, up to his thirty-fifth year, independent
master of leisure and the delights of literature, his years had passed
without a check or a shadow. From this day forward domestic misery,
the importunities of business, the clamour of controversy, crowned by
the crushing calamity of blindness, were to be his portion for more
than thirty years.
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