“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649prompted Milton to offer his prose works to other repositories; he inscribed one
such volume, “To the most learned man, Patrick Young [the Keeper of the King’s
Library], John Milton sends these works... content with a few such readers.”^70
That winter John Hall, a member of the Hartlib circle, sought Hartlib’s advice
about corresponding with and gaining an introduction to Milton, “who is here said
to be the author of that excellent discourse of Education you were pleased to im-
part”; but Milton apparently did not encourage this relationship.^71
On March 15, 1647 Milton buried his own father in the church of St Giles,
Cripplegate. He was at least 84 and still able to read without glasses,^72 though his
son was already experiencing serious vision problems. Milton inherited a “moder-
ate patrimony” from his father, including a house on Bread Street.^73 Soon after, on
April 20, 1647, Milton answered a letter from his Florentine friend Carlo Dati
(three previous letters from Dati had gone astray), and entrusted it to George
Thomason or his apprentice as they left for Italy to buy books.^74 In, for him, unu-
sually direct language though without naming names, Milton indicates the emo-
tional strains caused by the ubiquitous Powell entourage, the several recent deaths
(Diodati, his father, Alexander Gil, Catharine Thomason), the absence of congenial
friends like the Italian academicians, and more generally, by the continuing danger
to life, property, and literature in a nation torn by civil war. The letter is suffused
with nostalgia for the literary leisure he enjoyed in Italy, now sadly lost:
Soon an even heavier mood creeps over me, a mood in which I am accustomed often
to bewail my lot, to lament that those whom perhaps proximity or some unprofitable
tie has bound to me, whether by accident or by law, those, commendable in no other
way, daily sit beside me, weary me – even exhaust me, in fact – as often as they please;
whereas those whom character, temperament, interests had so finely united are now
nearly all grudged me by death or most hostile distance and are for the most part so
quickly torn from my sight that I am forced to live in almost perpetual solitude....
Since I returned home, there has been an additional reason for silence in the ex-
tremely turbulent state of our Britain, which quickly compelled me to turn my mind
from my studies to protecting life and property in any way I could. Do you think
there can be any safe retreat for literary leisure among so many civil battles, so much
slaughter, flight, and pillaging of goods? (CPW II, 762–4)This distress over domestic and civil tumults he offers as a tacit excuse for writing
little poetry during these years; it seems a sufficient explanation. But he has pub-
lished his Poems, he reports proudly to Dati, promising him the Latin section and
begging his Florentine friends to indulge him for the anti-papal satire in some po-
ems.^75
The patrimony from his father and the prospect of the Powells’ departure al-
lowed Milton to close his little academy and seek a smaller house where he could
again live the life of a scholar and poet. In early 1647 he may well have supposed
that the conflicts would soon be settled on terms that would restore the king with