A show is kept up of his school-keeping, but with doubtful success; for in 1647 we learn that “he left his great house in Barbican, and betook himself to a smaller in High Holborn, among those that open back into Lincoln’s Inn Fields;” but there is no poem-making of importance (save one or two wondrous Sonnets) now, or again, until he is virtually an old man. _The Royal Tragedy._ Meantime the tide of war is flowing back and forth over England and engrossing all hopes and fears. The poor King is one while a captive of the Scots, and again a captive of the Parliamentary forces, and is hustled from palace to castle. What shall be done with the royal prisoner? There are thousands who have fought against him who would have been most glad of his escape; but there are others--weary of his doublings--who have vowed that this son of Baal shall go to his doom and bite the dust. Finally, and quickly too (for events move with railroad speed), his trial comes--the trial of a King. A strange event for these English, who have venerated and feared and idolized so many kings and queens of so many royal lines. How the Royalist verse-makers must have fumed and raved! Milton, then just turned of forty, was, as I have said, living near High Holborn; the King was eight years his senior--was in custody at St. James’s, a short way above Piccadilly. He brought to the trial all his kingly dignity, and wore it unflinchingly--refusing to recognize the jurisdiction of the Parliament, cuddling always obstinately that poor figment of the divine right of kings--which even then Milton, down in his Holborn garden, was sharpening his pen to undermine and destroy.