Note 174 — CANTO THE THIRD.[169]
Reading edition
Milton's first wife ran away from him within the first month. If she had not, what would John Milton have done?
[Mary Powell did not "run away," but at the end of the honeymoon obtained her husband's consent to visit her family at Shotover, "upon a promise of returning at Michaelmas." "And in the mean while his studies went on very vigorously; and his chief diversion, after the business of the day, was now and then in an evening to visit the Lady Margaret Lee.... This lady, being a woman of excellent wit and understanding, had a particular honour for our author, and took great delight in his conversation; as likewise did her husband, Captain Hobson." See, too, his sonnet "To the Lady Margaret Ley."—The Life of Milton (by Thomas Newton, D.D.), Paradise Regained, ed. (Baskerville), 1758, pp. xvii., xviii.]