ith them, good, earnest, sensible, homely people?
Samuel Butler has enumerated some of those who were dedicating their time
and thought to politics at this important crisis:--

The oyster-women locked their fish up,
And trudged away to cry "No Bishop":
The mouse-trap men laid save-alls by,
And 'gainst ev'l counsellors did cry;
Botchers left old cloaths in the lurch,
And fell to turn and patch the Church;
Some cried the Covenant, instead
Of pudding-pies and ginger-bread,
And some for brooms, old boots and shoes,
Bawled out to purge the Common-house:
Instead of kitchen-stuff, some cry
A gospel-preaching ministry;
And some for old shirts, coats or cloak,
No surplices nor service-book;
A strange harmonious inclination
Of all degrees to reformation.

But what was Milton doing in this malodorous and noisy assembly? Might he
not with all confidence have left the Church to the oyster-women, and the
State to the mouse-trap men? The company that he kept with them ruined
his manners; he had to speak loud in order to be heard, to speak broad in
order to be respected; and so (bitterest thought of all!) he lost
something of that sweet reasonableness which is a poet's proper grace.

The answer to this strain of criticism is to be found in the study of
Milton's works, poetry and prose--and perhaps best in the poetry. We
could not have had anything at all like _Paradise Lost_ from a dainty,
shy poet-scholar; nor anything half so great. The greatest men hold their
power on this tenure, that they shall not husband it because the occasion
that presents itself, although worthy of high effort, is not answerable
to the refinement of their tastes. Milton, it is too often forgotten, was
an Englishman. He held the privilege and the trust not cheap. When God
intends some new and great epoch in human history, "what does he then,"
this poet exultantly asks, "but reveal himself to his servants, and, as
his manner is, first to his Englishmen?" To his chief work in poetry he
was instigated by patriotic motives. "I applied myself," he says, "to
that resolution which Ariosto followed against the persuasions of Bembo,
to fix all the industry and art I could unite to the adorning of my
native tongue, not to make verbal curiosity the end (that were a toilsome
vanity), but to be an interpreter and relater of the best and sagest
things among mine own citizens throughout this island in the mother
dialect."

There is p