“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649officers, and Levellers together again in the common cause. Milton was some kind
of republican at this juncture, but in his own terms. He was prepared to support,
now as later, such government structures as seemed necessary to create and preserve
the new state and those freedoms of religion and thought he cared most about. The
tract’s rhetoric and political theory are discussed on pages 229–35.
“My Labors... Have Hardly Been in Vain”
The publication of Milton’s Poems late in 1645 and of the Tenure in February, 1649,
were for Milton crucial gestures of self-presentation in the public arena. With the
first, he introduced himself formally to a cultivated English readership as a notable
English poet. With the second, he took on, unasked, quite another role, that of
polemic defender of the revolution and theorist of the new republic. As he indi-
cated in The Reason of Church-governement, he turned from one role to the other, in
response to what he thought God and the times required of him in particular cir-
cumstances.
In the final months of 1645 Milton evidently decided – perhaps in response to
Moseley’s invitation – that it was time to fulfill the covenant he had made with his
countrymen three years earlier, to produce poetry that might “imbreed and cherish
in a great people the seeds of vertu, and publick civility.”^126 If he could not yet
produce the great national epic, he would offer something on account. The mo-
ment would have seemed auspicious to collect and publish most of the poems he
had thus far written, and to resume the long-postponed work of his right hand: the
leisure and peace needed for poetry might be hoped for now, as the fortunes of war
shifted to parliament’s side and his marriage was mended. The title of the small
octavo calls attention to its scope, claims authorial sanction and supervision, and
emphasizes Milton’s association with Henry Lawes: Poems of Mr. John Milton, Both
English and Latin, Compos’d at several times. Printed by his true Copies. The Songs were
set in Musick by Mr. Henry Lawes Gentleman of the Kings Chappel, and one of his
Maiesties Private Musick (1645).
But what kind of poet does this volume introduce? It has been seen by some as a
bid for respectability, in which Milton sought to distance himself from his recent
polemics and to associate his book with contemporary Cavalier collections.^127 The
prefatory matter invites such a reading, but that is chiefly the work of the bookseller
Humphrey Moseley, whose publications sought to create a gallery of courtly poets,
using much the same title-page format and associating many of them with the court
musician Henry Lawes.^128 Moseley’s presentation of Milton is fraught with ambi-
guities. He allows that readers may prefer “more trivial Airs” than Milton’s, whom
he properly places in the tradition of “our famous Spencer.”^129 He also commis-
sioned, and to Milton’s dismay used as frontispiece, William Marshall’s notoriously
distorted engraved portrait of Milton, which claims to represent him at age 21 but