" (_Reason of Church Government_.)
After the death of his father, being now more at ease in his
circumstances, he gave up taking pupils, and quitted the large house
in Barbican for a smaller in High Holborn, opening backwards into
Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. This removal was about Michaelmas, 1647.
During this period, 1639--1649, while his interests were engaged by
the all-absorbing events of the civil strife, he wrote no poetry,
or none deserving the name. All artists have intervals of
non-productiveness, usually caused by exhaustion. This was not
Milton's case. His genius was not his master, nor could it pass, like
that of Leonardo da Vinci, unmoved through the most tragic scenes. He
deliberately suspended it at the call of what he believed to be duty
to his country. His unrivalled power of expression was placed at the
service of a passionate political conviction. This prostitution of
faculty avenged itself; for when he did turn to poetry, his strength
was gone from him. The period is chiefly marked, by sonnets, not many,
one in a year, or thereabouts. That _On the religious memory of Mrs.
Catherine Thomson_, in 1646, is the lowest point touched by Milton in
poetry, for his metrical psalms do not deserve the name.
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