“Domestic or Personal Liberty” 1642–1645on different behalfs. One time above the rest, he [Milton] making the usual visit [to
his relative Blackborough], the Wife was ready in another Room, and on a sudden he
was surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making Submis-
sion and begging Pardon on her Knees before him; he might probably at first make
some shew of aversion and rejection; but partly his own generous nature, more in-
clinable to Reconciliation than to perseverance in Anger and Revenge; and partly the
strong intercession of Friends on both sides, soon brought him to an Act of Oblivion,
and a firm League of Peace for the future. (EL 66–7)However it happened, there was a reconciliation. With his big new house and
expanding school, Milton needed a wife and Miss Davis was “averse” to whatever
irregular proposal he may have made. The attraction Milton initially felt toward
Mary was perhaps rekindled, and he no doubt hoped that she, now three years
older, would prove more conformable to his ways and more conversable. Mary
stayed with Isabel Webber, the mother-in-law of Milton’s brother Christopher,
until the new house in the Barbican was ready. There the couple would make a
fresh start.
“To Know, to Utter, to Argue Freely According
to Conscience”
The name Milton gave to his most considered statement on marriage, divorce, and
gender, Tetrachordon, signifies the four strings of a Greek lyre that, sounded together
properly, make a harmonious chord. This tract largely avoids the heated rhetoric
and the personal animus of the other divorce tracts: by his manner and tone Milton
presents himself here as a learned scholar addressing other scholars. The untranslated
Greek epigraph from Euripides’s Medea on the title page specifically invites such an
audience: “For if thou bring strange wisdom unto dullards / Useless thou shalt be
counted as not wise / And if thy fame outshine those heretofore / Held wise, thou
shalt be odious in men’s eyes.”^116 In the preface Milton presents himself as citizen–
adviser to the parliament and casts its members as part of his learned audience,
reminding them that “in the right reformation of a Common-wealth” domestic
suffering should be addressed first (CPW II, 585). He retells yet once more the story
of his engagement with the topic of divorce, thanking parliament profusely for
protecting him from the “rash vulgar” and from his vociferous clerical critics, Palmer,
Featley, and others. He excoriates those critics for meeting his pleas for a reasoned
answer to his argument with “undervaluing silence,” or “a rayling word or two”
(583), noting that such treatment threatens all learning: if “his diligence, his learn-
ing, his elocution... shall be turn’d now to a disadvantage and suspicion against
him... why are men bred up with such care and expence to a life of perpetual
studies” (584)