“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642centiousness he points proudly to his temperament and explains (as he did in Prolusion
VI to his college mates) his admittedly uncommon ideal of masculine chastity:
A certaine nicenesse of nature, an honest haughtinesse, and self-esteem either of what
I was, or what I might be, (which let envie call pride) and lastly that modesty, [which]... kept me still above those low descents of minde, beneath which he must deject
and plunge himself, that can agree to salable and unlawfull prostitutions.... Thus also
I argu’d to my selfe; that if unchastity in a woman whom Saint Paul termes the glory
of man, be such a scandall and dishonour, then certainly in a man who is both the
image and glory of God, it must, though commonly not so thought, be much more
deflouring and dishonourable.^87
The bourgeois Milton is quick to insist that his comfortable economic situation
allows him the freedom and privileges of a gentleman:
This I cannot omit without ingratitude to that providence above, who hath ever bred
me up in plenty, although my life hath not bin unexpensive in learning, and voyaging
about, so long as it shall please him to lend mee what he hath hitherto thought good,
which is anough to serve me in all honest and liberall occasions, and something over
besides. (929)So he need not seek a lectureship (a post often held by Puritan ministers), which the
Confuter assumes he wants, and can scornfully reject the ordination that post would
demand: “I am... as farre distant from a Lecturer, as the meerest Laick, for any
consecrating hand of a Prelat that shall ever touch me” (931). Nor need he make his
fortune by marrying a rich widow as the Confuter alleges, but instead aligns himself
with those “who both in prudence and elegance of spirit would choose a virgin of
mean fortunes honestly bred, before the wealthiest widow” (929). Now settled in
his own house, Milton was perhaps giving some thought to marriage, and thinking
where to find a likely virgin.
Milton reaffirms in this self-portrait his primary identification as poet, and affirms
a direct connection between that poetic role and his present service to God, church,
and country. The high poet must write out of wide experience, and can only make
his poem out of the values and virtues he has cultivated within himself:
He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things,
ought him selfe to bee a true Poem, that is, a composition, and patterne of the best
and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroick men, or fa-
mous Cities, unlesse he have in himselfe the experience and the practice of all that
which is praise-worthy. (890)Over the next months England drifted toward war, despite a flurry of messages
between the king at York and the parliament at Westminster seeking to resolve