These lodgings were too small, and he took a garden-house in Aldersgate-street, situated at the end of an entry, that he might avoid the noise and disturbance of the street. To his nephews he here added a few more pupils, the sons of his most intimate friends. This house was large and commodious, affording room for his library and furniture. Here he commenced his career of pure authorship, all he did having public reform and improvement for its object. Here he wrote, as a fitting commencement, a treatise Of Reformation, to assist the Puritans against the bishops, as he deemed the Puritans deficient in learning for the defense of the great principles they were contending for. That Milton would turn out a stern reformer of church matters, might be clearly seen from a passage in his Lycidas, written before he was twenty-nine years old. In this he is said even to anticipate the execution of Laud. The passage is curious: "How well could I have spared for thee, young swain. Enow of such as for their bellies' sake Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold? Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest; Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else the least That to the faithful herdman's art belongs! What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw; The hungry sheep look up and are not fed, But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Dayly devours apace, and nothing said; But that two-handed engine at the door Stands ready to smite once, and smites no more." Here he next wrote his treatise, Of Practical Episcopacy, in defense of the Smectymneans, against Archbishop Usher; then, Reasons of Church Government, urged against Prelacy. In this work he revealed to his readers his plans for a great poem--the Paradise Lost; which only was deferred till the advocacy which the times demanded of him should be completed. Here he finished the controversy, by his _Apology for Smectymnus_, in 1642; and in 1643 married Mary Powell, and saw her desert him at the instigation of her time-serving family. This led to his writings of Divorce. These were followed by a Treatise of Education; and, finally, by his famous _Areopagitica_--altogether an extraordinary mass of labor to proceed from the private abode of a poor vaporing schoolmaster! It was in this house, on the approach of the troops of Prince Rupert to the capital in 1642, soon after the battle of Edge Hill, that Milton placed in imagination, if not in actual ink, his proudly deprecatory sonnet: