And at an earlier
age his poems, candidly pure from the lascivious inuendoes of his
contemporaries, have preserved the record of the rapid impression of
the momentary passage of beauty upon his susceptible mind. Once, at
twenty, he was set all on flame by the casual meeting, in one of his
walks in the suburbs of London, with a damsel whom he never saw again.
Again, sonnets III. to V. tell how he fell before the new type of
foreign beauty which crossed his path at Bologna. A similar surprise
of his fancy at the expense of his judgment seems to have happened on
the present occasion of his visit to Shotover. There is no evidence
that Mary Powell was handsome, and we may be sure that it would
have been mentioned if she had been. But she had youth, and country
freshness; her "unliveliness and natural sloth unfit for conversation"
passed as "the bashful muteness of a virgin;" and if a doubt intruded
that he was being too hasty, Milton may have thought that a girl of
seventeen could be moulded at pleasure.
He was too soon undeceived. His dream of married happiness barely
lasted out the honeymoon. He found that he had mated himself to a
clod of earth, who not only was not now, but had not the capacity
of becoming, a helpmeet for him.
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