After her return the union produced three daughters and a short-lived son. Whether these were motivated in part by the three-year sojourn of his young wife, Mary Powell, with her Royalist parents is disputed. Four tracts on marriage and divorce (1643 –1645) argue that God instituted marriage for mutual help and companionship in both spiritual and domestic life and that God's laws should be interpreted by the rule of charity. Areopagitica (1644), credited with a part in the founding principles of the American republic, opposes prepublication licensing of books and urges that truth seeking requires the freedom of a well-instructed conscience. Of Education (1644) proposes a curriculum 'to repair the ruins of our first parents' ( CPW 2:366) through biblical and classical works in their original languages and the direct observation of nature and technology. Five tracts promoting religious reformation appeared in 1641 –1642. Milton's major prose concerns religious, political, and domestic liberty.

In 1652 he became blind but continued his work for the Commonwealth government, with assistance from Andrew Marvell, who also helped obtain his release from imprisonment after the Restoration. In 1649, after the parliamentary victory, Milton was appointed secretary for foreign tongues by the Council of State and asked to defend the execution of Charles I he produced Eikonoklastes (The image-breaker), arguing that the king is not above the rule of law. In 1638 –1639 Milton traveled in Europe, met members of the Florentine Academies, visited Galileo Galilei, 'a prisner to the Inquisition' ( CPW 2:538), and shipped music books from Venice but hearing that 'my fellow-citizens at home were fighting for liberty' ( CPW 4.1:619), he returned to write on behalf of the religious and political reformation of England. and set the affections in right tune' ( CPW 1:816 –817).

of power beside the office of a pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of vertu, and publick civility. His conscience prevented him from becoming a clergyman in the Church of England under the repressive Archbishop William Laud, and his talent and his 'great taskmaster' (Sonnet 7) led him to poetry, 'the inspired guift of God. England's epic poet and champion of civil and religious liberties was born in London on 9 December 1608, entered Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1625, and earned his M.A.

The major works john milton