Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, Vol. 1 (of 2)Howitt, William
History
Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Howitt, William
Literary landmarks -- Great Britain; Poets, English -- Homes and haunts
But the time of the Restoration was approaching, and Milton began to
retrace his steps toward the city, by much the same regular stages as he
had left it. After secreting himself in Bartholomew-close till the storm
had blown over, and his pardon was signed, he once more took a house in
Holborn, near Red Lion Fields; and thence removed to Jewin-street, near
Aldersgate. All these places have been rebuilt, and no house of Milton
is now to be found in these thickly-populated parts. People have often
wondered why Milton always showed such a preference for the city. There
are many reasons. In the first place, he was born and brought up till
his seventeenth year in it; the associations of youth form strong
attractions. In the second, as Dr. Johnson considerately tells us,
Aldersgate-street and the like were not then so much out of the world as
now. Besides this, after the Restoration, it would be far more
agreeable to Milton to be at some distance from the West End, where
cavaliers and courtiers were now flaunting with newly-revived insolence;
and nothing but taunts, insults, and the hearing of strange and most
odious doings, could have awaited him. Here Milton married his third and
last wife, Elizabeth Minshull, of a good family in Cheshire, with whom
he seems to have lived in great affection; so much so, that he wished to
leave her all that was left him of his property.
From Jewin-street he made his last remove, as to his London residences,
into Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields. Bunhill Fields were probably, in
those days, open, and airy, and quiet; at present, with the exception of
the Artillery Ground itself, and the thickly-populated burial-ground
which contains the bones of Bunyan and De Foe, the whole of that
neighborhood is covered with a dense mass of modern houses. Artillery
Walk, Bunhill Fields, is no longer to be found. The nearest approach
that you get, even to the name, is Artillery Place, Bunhill Row, which
is merely a row of new houses adjoining the Artillery Ground, and a new
church, which has been erected in that busy, ordinary, and dingy street,
still called Bunhill Row. Besides an Art of Logic, his Treatise on True
Religion, Heresie, Schism, Toleration, and what best means _may be used
against the growth of Popery_; his Familiar Letters in Latin; and a
translation of a Latin Declaration of the Poles in favor of John III.,
their heroic sovereign--the last two published in the last year of his
life; his residence in Bunhill Fields was made remarkable by the
publication of Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes.
He left, moreover, in manuscript, a Brief History of Muscovy, and of
other less known Countries lying Eastward of Russia as far as Cathay,
which was published in 1682, and his System of Theology, which was long
supposed to have perished, but has been recovered and published of late
years, much to the scandal of the orthodox.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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