No notice was taken
of this appeal, as there was far other work on hand, and no particular
pressure from without in the direction of Milton's suit. Divorce for
incompatibility of temper remained his private crotchet, or obtained
converts only among his fellow-sufferers, who, however numerous, did
not form a body important enough to enforce by clamour their demand
for relief.
Milton was not very well pleased to find that the Parliament had no
ear for the bitter cry of distress wrung from their ardent admirer and
staunch adherent. Accordingly, in 1645, in dedicating the last of
the divorce pamphlets, which, he entitled _Tetrachordon_, to the
Parliament, he concluded with a threat, "If the law make not a
timely provision, let the law, as reason is, bear the censure of the
consequences."
This threat he was prepared to put in execution, and did, in 1645, as
Phillips tells us, contemplate a union, which could not have been a
marriage, with another woman. He was able at this time to find some
part of that solace of conversation which his wife failed to give him,
among his female acquaintance. Especially we find him at home in the
house of one of the Parliamentary women, the Lady Margaret Ley, a lady
"of great wit and ingenuity," the "honoured Margaret" of Sonnet x.
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