MILTON, a town of the county of Kent, in the hundred of Toltintrough and lathe of Aylesford, twenty-three miles from London. It stands on the bank of the Thames, and forms the eastern part of the town of Gravesend. It is a thriving place, partly owing to being visited for bathing, as the river salts with the flood tide. It has some fortifications constructed to defend the passage of the river. The population amounted in 1801 to 2056, in 1811 to 2470, in 1821 to 2769, and in 1831 to 4348.

Milton, or Milton-Royal, a town of the county of Kent, in the hundred of Milton and lathe of Scray, forty miles from London. It stands at the head of a navigable creek, in a swampy situation between Seltingbourne and the river Thames. It has a corporation governed by a portreeve; has a market on Saturday, and is principally known for the excellence of the oysters bred there. The population amounted in 1 ’ 801 to 1622, in 1811 to 1746, in 1821 to 2012, and in 1831 to 2223.
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John Milton, the immortal author of Paradise Lost and, excepting Shakspeare, the greatest of the English poets, was born at his father’s house in Bread Street London, on the 9th, and baptized on the 20th of December 1608. Milton was by birth a gentleman, being descended from the proprietors of Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate in the times of York and Lancaster. The grandfather of the poet was underranger of the forest of Shotover, near Halton,.and, being a zealous Catholic, disinherited his son because he had forsaken the faith of his ancestors. The father was educated as a gentleman, and became a member of Christ Church College, Oxford, where he probably imbibed those opinions which led him to change his religion, and thereby to incur disinherison. Being thus deprived of his patrimony, the father of the poet had recourse for his support to the profession of scrivener, in the practice of which he proved so successful, that he was enabled to give his children the advantages of a liberal education, and at length to retire with comfort into the country. He appears to have been an accomplished scholar, a man of refined taste, and a great proficient in music, a circumstance to which allusion is made by his son in his beautiful poem Ad Patrem. ^[1. The lines above referred to are the following, which strike us as being exceedingly beautiful: Nec tu perge, precor, sacras contemnere Musas; Nec vanas inopesque puta, quarum ipse peritus Munere, mille sonos numeros componis ad aptos; Millibus et vocem modulis variare canoram Doctus Arionii merito sis nominis haeres. Nor you affect to scorn the Aonian choir, thessed by their smiles, and glowing with their fire. You! who by them inspired, with art profound, Can wield the magic of proportioned sound: Through thousand tones can teach the voice to stray, And wind to harmony its mazy way,— Arion’s tuneful heir. ] He married a gentlewoman of the name of Caston, of a Welsh family, by whom he had two sons and a daughter. Christopher, the second son, was educated for the bar, and adhered to the royal cause, which at one time brought him into trouble; but soon after the accession of James II. he was rewarded with a knighthood, and appointed one of the barons of Exchequer. Anne, the only daughter, married a gentleman of the name of Philips, who rose to be secondary' in the crown-office, and had by him two sons, John and Edward, who were educated by the poet.

It is to be lamented that so little information has reached us respecting the early life of our immortal poet. We know not for what profession his father had destined him, though it is certain that it was not the law; and we are equally in the dark regarding other matters connected with his early years. His education, however, was liberal, and the care with which it was conducted evinces the discernment and solicitude of his father. He had the benefit both of private and public tuition. His first instructor was Thomas Young, a puritan minister of Essex, who appears to have gained the affections of his pupil, and to have deserved the testimony which the latter has borne to his merits in an elegy and two Latin epistles. At what period this connection began or ended has not been ascertained. It seems probable that Young continued in his office until the time when, on account of his religious opinions, he withdrew to the continent, and became chaplain to the British merchants resident at Hamburg. Milton was then sent to St Paul’s school, at that time under the direction of Dr

Gill, and remained some time at that seminary, distinguishing himself by almost incredible progress, and giving numerous indications of that gigantic intellect, the energies of which afterwards more fully developed themselves. Being thus initiated in several languages, and having already tasted the sweets of philosophy, he was, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, removed to Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he entered as a pensioner, on the 12th of February 1624. He was committed to the tuition of Mr Chappell, the reputed author of The Whole Duty of Man, and afterwards successively provost of Trinity College, Dublin, dean of Cashel, and bishop of Cork and Ross.

At the time when he entered the university he was eminently skilled in the Latin language, and, by annexing dates to his first compositions, he has afforded us the means of estimating his early proficiency. At fifteen he translated or versified two Psalms (the 114th and 136th), which he thought worthy of publication, and in which may be discerned the dawning of real genius. This is still more apparent in his poem On the Death of a Fair Infant, which displays equal vigour and sensibility. Many of his elegies appear; to have been written in his eighteenth year; and from them it is evident that he had then read the Roman authors with critical discernment. Indeed, Milton was the first Englishman who, after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classical elegance. If any exceptions can be made, they are few in number. Haddon and Ascham, the pride of Elizabeth’s reign, however they succeeded in prose, no sooner attempt verses than they provoke derision. Not many persons will, therefore, be inclined to agree with Johnson, that “the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many, and particularly by his contemporary Cowley.” Milton is not only the most learned of modern poets, but his writings show him to have been a man even from his very childhood; and hence Politian, Tasso, Cowley, Voltaire, Pope, and others, who have written poetical pieces of merit at an early age, must all bow to him as to a superior spirit. He also attracted particular notice by his academical exercises, some of which were published by him in his more mature years, as well as by several poems, both Latin and English, upon occasional subjects. Although his chief object seems to have been the cultivation of his poetical talents, he neglected no department of literature, and, by his persevering application, became “inured and seasoned betimes with the best and elegantest authors of the learned tongues.”

He continued seven years at Cambridge, where he took both the usual degrees; that of bachelor in 1628, and that of master of arts in 1632. Of his conduct, and the treatment which he experienced in his college, much has been asserted, and but little proved. That “he left the university with no kindness for its institution,” may be admitted even [7:15:87] on the suspicious authority of Johnson. But if such a feeling existed in his mind, it must, from Johnson’s own statement, have been produced “by the injudicious severity of his governors,” and not the result of his “own captious perverseness,” as the surly biographer has uncharitably insinuated. That Milton “obtained no fellowship, is,” he tells ns, “certain; but the unkindness with which he was treated was not merely negative. I am ashamed to relate,” he adds, “what I fear is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either university that suffered the public indignity of corporal correction.” Surely, injustice on the one hand, and personal outrage on the other, were not the most likely or natural means to beget “kindness” for the institution where such wrongs had been suffered. In the violence of controversial hostility, it was also objected to Milton that he had been expelled, or, to use the words of his original accuser, “vomited, after an inordinate and riotous youth, out of the university.” But even Johnson admits that the charge “was apparently not true,” and it is now quite certain that it was altogether false. Some time after taking his degree in arts, he left the university, and returned to his father’s house at Horton, near Colebrook, in Berkshire. During his residence at Horton, he frequently visited London; and this circumstance, added to a reflection on the university, contained in the first of his elegies to Charles Diodati, written about the same time, was afterwards made the occasion of charging him with having been expelled from Cambridge for some misdemeanour, or with having left it in discontent because he could not obtain preferment; relinquishing his academical studies that he might spend his time in London, frequenting the playhouses, or keeping company with lewd women. Some lines in the same composition have often been cited or referred to as giving countenance to, if not altogether proving, this imputation.^[2. The whole support of the accusation preferred against Milton’s college life is rested upon the following passage of the elegy-addressed to Diodati: Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum; Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor: Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles Quam male Phoebicois convenit ille locus! Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo. Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates, Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi; Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemve récuse, Laetus et exilii conditione fruor. From these lines both Johnson and Warton infer that he had incurred rustication, or a temporary removal from Cambridge, with perhaps the loss of a term. The words vetiti laris, and afterwards exilium, which is twice used in reference to himself, scarcely admit of any other interpretation. But the supposition of any immoral irregularity is excluded by many considerations. Had he been conscious of having justly incurred censure and punishment, he would never have said u Laetus et exilii conditione fruor.” Besides, the same poem which mentions his exile, proves that it was not perpetual; for it concludes with a resolution of returning to Cambridge. His declaration that he is weary of enduring “the threats of a rigorous master, and something else which a temper like his can ill brook,” seems to suggest the true explanation of the difficulty. Though not chargeable with immoral irregularities, he might, upon other accounts, have become obnoxious to the governors of his college. He might have offended their prejudices by the bold avowal of his puritan opinions; or he might have wounded their pride by exposing their negligent or injudicious discharge of duty; or he might have excited their displeasure by a haughty inattention to their rules, by refusing to exchange the pleasure of banqueting on the works of Plato or of Homer, for the barren fatigue of translating a sermon, or loading his memory with cumbrous pages of scholastic theology. A mere technical breach of discipline is all that can be legitimately inferred or supposed; and, from the frankness with which he has perpetuated the fact of his exile, we may be well assured that its cauce was such as gave him no shame. - In the Apology for Smectymnuus, Milton, speaking of the universities, has afforded us the means of ascertaining his thoughts and feelings respecting these institutions. Having described many individuals of the parliament as descended from the ancient and high nobility, he adds: “Yet had they a greater danger to cope with; for being trained up in the knowledge of learning, and sent to those places which were intended to be the seed-plots of piety and the liberal arts, but were become the nurseries of superstition and empty speculation, as they were prosperous against those vices which grow upon youth out of idleness and. superfluity, so were they happy in working off the harms of their absurd studies and labours ; correcting by the clearness of their own judgment the errors of their misinstruction,· and were, as David was, wiser than their teachers. And, although their lot fell into such times, and to be bred in such places, where if they chanced to be taught any thing good, or of their own accord,had learnt it, they might see that presently untaught them by the ill example of their elders.” If Milton, when at Cambridge, was in the habit of speaking such plain truths as are contained in this passage, that “nursery of superstition and empty speculation” must have withal dealt gently by the young heretic, in inflicting on him no higher punishment than that of “rustication.” ]

Milton answered this calumny in his Second Defence, and his enemies had not the hardihood to repeat it. “Here,” says he, speaking of the university, “I passed seven years in the usual course of instruction and study, with the approbation of the good, and without any stain upon my character, till I took the degree of master of arts. After this, I did not, as this miscreant feigns, run away into Italy, but of my own accord returned to my father’s house, whither I was accompanied by the regrets of most of the fellows of the college, who showed me no common marks of friendship and esteem. On my father’s estate, where he had determined to pass the remainder of his days, I enjoyed an interval of uninterrupted leisure, which I devoted entirely to the perusal of the Greek and Roman classics; though I occasionally visited the metropolis, either for the sake of purchasing books, or of learning something new in mathematics, or in music, in which I, at that time, found a source of pleasure and amusement. In this manner I spent five years, till my mother’s death. I then became anxious to visit foreign parts, particularly Italy.” Such is his own clear and distinct statement, which has never been contradicted, or at least refuted. In regard to the lines in the epistle addressed to Diodati, it must be obvious that they would never have been published if they had been conceived to contain any allusion to transactions dishonourable to the writer; and Milton himself, speaking of his calumniator, says, “He flings out stray crimes at a venture, which he could never, though he be a serpent, suck from any thing that 1 have written” The fact seems to be, that he had too strong and settled a distaste for episcopacy to think of entering the church as a profession; and that his lofty intellect and haughty spirit disdained to submit to the petty formalities and the pedantic discipline of the college, after he had made sufficient advances in learning to be able to pursue it himself, agreeably to the dictates of his own taste and genius. 2 He conceived, indeed, “that he who would take orders, must subscribe himself slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that could not retch, he must either strain, perforce[7:15:88], or split his faith ;” wherefore he “thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing.”

During the five years which Milton spent under his father’s roof at Horton, and which may justly be regarded as the happiest of his life, he produced some of the finest specimens of his genius; as extraordinary for their copiousness and command of early fable and history, as for the harmony of their numbers, and the sublimity and purity of their conceptions. The Comus in 1634, and the Lycidas in 1637, were unquestionably written at Horton; and there is strong internal evidence to prove that the Arcades, EAllegro, and IIPenseroso, were also composed in the same rural retreat, during this season of propitious leisure. The Mask of Comus was acted before the Earl of Bridgewater, president of Wales, at Ludlow Castle, in 1634; upon which occasion the character of the lady and her two brothers were represented by Lady Alice Egerton, then about thirteen years of age, and her two brothers, Lord Brackley and the honourable Thomas Egerton, who were still younger. The story of the piece is said to have been suggested by the circumstance of Lady Alice having been separated from her company in the night, and having wandered for some time by herself in the forest of Haywood, as she was returning from a distant visit to meet her father, upon his taking possession of his presidency.

Comus,^[3. Κώμος. ] or revelry, had already been personified in a sublime passage of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus; and the jolly god had been introduced upon the English stage in a written Mask by Ben Jonson. But it was reserved for Milton to develope his form and character, to give him a lineage and an empire, and to make him the hero of one of the most exquisite dramatic poems which the genius of man has ever produced. The Comus is framed upon the model of the Italian Masque, and is certainly the noblest production of the kind which exists in any language. It is dramatic only in semblance. The finest passages are those which are lyrical in form as well as in spirit. “I should much commend the tragical part,” says Sir Henry Wotton, “if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain dorique delicacy in the songs and odes, whereunto I must plainly confess, that I have seen yet nothing parallel in our language.” It is when Milton escapes from the shackles of dialogue, and feels himself at liberty to indulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises above himself, and expatiates in celestial freedom and beauty. Then, to use the impassioned expressions of an eloquent writer,’“he seems to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy odours of nard and cassia, which the musky wings of the zephyr-scatter through the cedared valleys of the Hesperides.^[4. Edinburgh Review, vol. xlii. p. 315. ]

The Lycidas was written to commemorate the death of Mr Edward King, the son of Sir John King, secretary for Ireland in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. Young King was a great favourite at Cambridge, where his learning, piety, and talents had secured universal respect, and his untimely fate was deplored as a public loss. He perished by shipwreck in his passage from Chester to Ireland, the vessel on board of which he was having foundered in a calm sea at no great distance from land. In a collection of poems, published in 1638, Lycidas occupies the last, and (as it was no doubt intended to be) the most honourable place; but we may reasonably wonder how a production, breathing such hostility to the clergy of the Church of England, and even menacing their leader with the axe, should have been permitted to issue from the university press. The guardians of the church must surely have been slumbering at their posts; or, perhaps, this poem being only part of a collection, it was not scrutinized before it went to press. The most objectionable part of the composition is the speech assigned to St Peter, “the pilot of the Galilean Jake,” and it is also inferior in poetical merit to what precedes and follows it. But, taking the monody as a whole, it is indubitably instinct with high genius, and an effusion of the purest and most exalted poetry. The Arcades is evidently nothing more than the poetical part of an entertainment, the bulk of which consisted of prose dialogue and machinery; yet, whatever proportion it constituted of the piece, it must have imparted a value to the whole, displaying, as it does, a kindred though inferior lustre to that which irradiates the dramatic poem of Comus. E Allegro and II Penseroso first appeared in a collection of Milton’s poems published in 1645; but the precise time of their production has not been ascertained. There is reason to believe, however, that they were written at Horton, in the interval between the composition of Comus and that of Lycidas; though it is not easy to adjust the precedency between these victorious efforts of the descriptive muse. They were certainly composed in the happiest mood of the poet’s mind, when his fancy disported in glorious sunshine, and no cloud or star interposed to obstruct or darken her perceptions.

Milton, having lost his mother in 1627, when he was about twenty-nine years of age, now felt himself at liberty to carry into effect a project which he had long meditated; and having obtained his father’s concurrence, he resolved to visit foreign parts, and particularly Italy. His reason for wishing to travel in - foreign countries was, as Toland quaintly expresses it, a persuasion “that he could not better discern the pre-eminence and defects of his own country than by observing the customs and institutions of others; and that the study of never so many books, without the advantages of conversation, serves either to render a man a stupid fool or a pedant.”^[5. Life of Milton, p. 9. ] He left England in 1638, and proceeded to Paris, whence, after a short stay, he hastened to Italy, the grand object of his curiosity; and, after an absence of a year and three months, the greater part of which was spent in that classic region, he returned home through France. The only account of his travels is that furnished by himself, in his brief autobiography; and, as no one can describe Milton so well as himself, we shall give it in his own words, rather than attempt to paraphrase it, after the absurd fashion of his biographers.

“I became anxious to visit foreign parts, and particularly Italy. My father gave me his permission, and I left home with one servant. On my departure, the celebrated Henry Wotton, who had long been King James’s ambassador at Venice, gave me a signal proof of his regard, in an elegant letter which he wrote, breathing not only the warmest friendship, but containing some maxims of conduct which I found very useful in my travels.^[6. Amongst these maxims is that “Delphian oracle” of prudence which Wotton himself had been taught by his friend Alberto Scipioni. “ Signor aniicο miο, , ' said the old Roman courtier, “ i pensitri stretii, ed il visa seioliο," will go safely over the world, without offence of others, or of your own conscience. ] The noble Thomas Scudamore, King Charles’s ambassador, to whom I carried letters of recommendation, received me most courteously at Paris. His lordship gave me a card of introduction to the learned Hugo Grotius, at that time ambassador from the Queen of Sweden to the French court; whose acquaintance I anxiously desired, and to whose house! was accompanied by some of his lordship’s friends. A few days after, when I set out for Italy, he gave me letters to the English merchants on my route, that they might show me any civilities in their power.
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“Taking ship at Nice, I arrived at Genoa; and afterwards visited Leghorn, Pisa, and Florence. In the latter city, which I have always particularly esteemed for the elegance of its dialect, its genius, and its taste, I stopped about two months; when I contracted an intimacy with many persons of rank and learning, and was a constant attendant at their literary parties; a practice which prevails there, and tends so much to the diffusion of knowledge and the preservation of friendship. No time will ever abolish the agreeable recojlections which I cherish of Jacob Gaddi,^[7. The historical painter. ] Carolo Dati,^[8. A Florentine nobleman, author of an Essay on the Discoveries of Galileo, and of Lives of the Ancient Fathers^ ] Frescobaldo, Cultellero, Bono-mathai, Clementillo, Francisco, and many others. From Florence I went to Sienna, thence to Rome; where, after I had spent about two months in viewing the antiquities of that renowned city, where I experienced the most friendly attentions from Lucas Holstein,^[9. The librarian of the Vatican. ] and other learned and ingenious men, I continued my route to Naples. There I was introduced, by a certain recluse with whom I had travelled from Rome, to John Baptista Manso, marquis of Villa, a nobleman of distinguished rank and authority, to whom Torquato Tasso, the illustrious poet, inscribed his book on Friendship.^[10. This nobleman composed a Latin distich, which he addressed to Milton: Ut mens forma, decor, facies mos; si pietas sic, Non Anglus, verum, hercle, Angelus ipse fores. ] During my stay, he gave me singular proofs of his regard; he himself conducted me round the city, and to the palace of the viceroy; and more than once paid me a visit at my lodgings. On my departure, he gravely apologised for not having shown me more civility, which he said he had been restrained from doing, because I had spoken with so little reserve on matters of religion.

“When I was preparing to pass over into Sicily and Greece, the melancholy intelligence which I received of the civil commotions in England, made me alter my purpose; for I thought it base to be travelling for amusement abroad, while my fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home. While I was on my way back to Rome, some merchants informed me that the English Jesuits had formed a plot against me, if I returned to Rome, because I had spoken too freely of religion; for it was a rule which I laid down to myself in those places, never to be the first to begin any conversation on religion; but if any questions were put to me concerning my faith, to declare it without any reserve or fear. I nevertheless returned to Rome. I took no steps to conceal either my person or my character; and for about the space of two months I again openly defended, as I had done before, the reformed religion, in the very metropolis of Popery.

“By the favour of God I got back to Florence, where I was received with as much affection as if I had returned to my native country; there I stopped as many months as I had done before, except that I made an excursion of a few days to Lucca, and crossing the Apennines, passed through Bologna and Ferrara to Venice. After I had spent a month in surveying the curiosities of this city, and had put on board a ship the books which I had collected in Italy, I proceeded through Verona ând Milan, and along the Leman Lake to Geneva.

“The mention of this city brings to my recollection the slandering More,^[11. The Clamor Regli Sanguinis ad Coelum to which the Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano (whence the above passage is extracted) was the answer, is now known to have been written by Peter du Moulin; but having been published by Alexander Morus or More, it was at first supposed to have been the production of that individual. ] and makes me again call the Deity to witness, that in all those places where vice meets with so little discouragement, and is practised with so little shame, I never once deviated from the paths of integrity and virtue; and perpetually reflected, that, although my conduct might escape the notice of men, it would not elude the inspection of God. At Geneva I held daily conferences with John Diodati, the learned professor of theology.

“Then, pursuing my former route through France, I returned to my native country, after an absence of about one year and three months, at the time when Charles, having broken the peace, was renewing what is called the Episcopal war with the Scots; in which the royalists being routed in the first encounter, and the English being universally and justly disaffected, the necessity of his affairs at last obliged him to convene a parliament.”^[12. Prose Works, edited by Fletcher, pp. 993, 99G. ]

Upon his return to England, Milton, it seems, could discover no way in which he might directly serve the cause of the people. He was not formed for participating in the rough and fierce encounters of the field; he wanted both the means and the connections necessary to enable him to take any share in the management of public affairs; and the time had not yet arrived, in the development of the drama, when the part which alone he was eminently qualified to sustain could be brought upon the stage. He therefore hired a house in St Bride’s Church-yard, and renewed his literary pursuits, calmly awaiting the issue of the contest, which he trusted “to the wise conduct of Providence, and to the courage of the people.” Here he consented to receive as pupils his two nephews, John and Edward Philips; and subsequently, yielding to the importunities of some intimate friends, he added to their number. Finding his apartments too small, he now took a house in Aldersgate Street, where he received more boys, and instructed them in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, with its dialects, as well as in mathematics, cosmography, history, and some modern languages, particularly French and Italian. “This,” says Dr Johnson, “is the period of his life from which all his biographers seem to shrink. They are unwilling that Milton should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but since it cannot be denied that he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and another that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning and virtue; and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to excuse an act which no wise man will consider as in itself disgraceful. His father was alive; his allowance was not ample; and he supplied its deficiencies by an honest and useful employment.”^[13. The strong good sense of these observations contrasts forcibly with the unwieldy “merriment” of Johnson “on great promises and small performance; on the man who hastens home, because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism in a private hoarding-school.” The sneer contained in these words is characteristic only of the writer by whom they are employed, and whose bad feeling towards the author of Paradise Lost shows itself on so many occasions. Milton’s “patriotism,” as we shall soon find, was not so volatile as to evaporate even under the hardest trials of adversity; and he will be honoured and revered for his steady and consistent attachment to liberty, long after the rhetorical exaggerations of his enemies have sunk into merited oblivion. ] Milton, in his little’circle of scholars, was usefully if not splendidly employed; and no man of sense can suppose that, whilst he was occupied in promoting[7:15:90] the highest interests of some of his species, he was degrading himself in the estimation of the rest.

Toland has described the nature of the education which he aimed at bestowing upon his pupils, and which involved a great innovation upon the established practice. In this, as in many other respects, Milton appears to have been greatly in advance of his age. His purpose was to teach something more solid than the common literature of the schools; to expand the faculties and to inform the judgments of his pupils, by combining the knowledge of things with that of words, instead of subjecting them to the irksome and comparatively useless task of acquiring the mere knowledge of words, without any adequate conception of those ideas or objects of which they are the representatives. Not content with those books which are commonly used in the schools, he placed in the hands of his disciples such ancient works as were capable of affording information in various departments of science; and “a formidable list” is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, which were read in Aldersgate Street, by youth between fifteen and sixteen years of age. That he perhaps attempted to do more than any degree of diligence or industry could accomplish, may be admitted without impeaching the soundness of the principle upon which he proceeded; and although “nobody can be taught faster than he can learn,” yet it is at least equally certain, that some teachers can make young men learn much faster than others, and that, in general, the comparative progress of the pupil is a pretty fair measure of the diligence and skill of the master. He set his pupils an example of close application and spare diet; indeed abstinence was one of his favourite virtues, which he practised invariably through life; and the only indulgence which he allowed himself was passing a day of temperate festivity once in three weeks or a month.^[14. This day was allotted to the society of some young and gay friends; according to Johnson, it was usually spent “with some gay gentlemen of Gray’s Inn.” But, as Dr Symmons observes, the gay men of the puritan age were mere babies in excess, compared with the revellers of that which succeeded it, when the profligacy of a shameless court spread like a contagion throughout the land, tainting life and manners as well as literature with a debasing immorality; and when modesty and temperance were hooted out of countenance by wild riot and obstreperous vice. ] “One part of his system,” says Johnson, “deserves general imitation. He was careful to instruct his scholars in religion. Every Sunday was spent upon theology, of which he dictated a short system, gathered from the writers that were then fashionable in the Dutch universities.”

But whilst Milton’s occupation as a teacher preserved his familiarity with the Greek and Roman authors, it precluded him from discharging what he conceived to be his duties as a citizen, and defeated the patriotic object which had recalled him from the shores of Sicily and Greece. From his first acquaintance with the struggles of his country, he had determined to devote himself to her service; and the time seemed,now to have arrived for carrying his purpose into effect. Conscious of his own strength, and sensible that genius, armed with knowledge, would prove-a more powerful auxiliary to the popular cause than if he had carried ten battalions into the field, he decided in favour of the pen against the sword, and took his position on ground whence no adversary was able to dislodge him.

The long parliament, representing a nation alarmed and irritated by many flagrant abuses of power, had now assembled, and evidently possessed a strong sympathy with the public feeling. The king’s violent conduct to former parliament's, in imprisoning refractory members, one of whom had died under the length and rigour of his confinement; his unconstitutional attempts to govern by prerogative alone; his arbitrary exactions in violation of all law; and the severe sentences with which his council and his courts abetted and enforced his reckless despotism; these and many other causes had concurred in alienating the affections of all orders of the community, and preparing their minds for resistance and innovations. The leaders of the church party imitated the despotic policy of the court; and their rigorous persecution of the puritans, offensive alike to the feelings of the humane and the common sense of the enlightened, excited against them the fears of the good and the jealousies of the wise. The power of the episcopal courts had been everywhere urged into unusual activity by the superintendence and incitement of the high commission; and almost every diocese had witnessed scenes of rigour similar to those which had at once disgraced and exasperated the capital.^[15. Symmons’s Life of Milton, p. 215. ] There were not wanting in the church some men of learning and piety; at this unfortunate crisis she could boast, amongst her prelates, of a Williams, a Davenant, a Hall, and an Usher; but at their head was placced the domineering and intolerant Laud, a man of narrow views, unrelenting zeal, and abject superstition, who, unrestrained by any considerations of prudence, took care on every occasion to magnify the regal authority, and sought by all possible means to extend that tyranny which supported his own.^[16. Hume, in his character of Archbishop Laud, has thrown in some softening shades of colour, by representing him as “virtuous” and “disinterested,” a man of violent prejudices and imperious temper, yet of upright intentions and honest purposes. The historian admits, however, that he led the king “into a conduct which proved fatal to himself and to his kingdom and that “all his measures tended to a most popish state of ceremonies in worship, and tyranny and intolerance in behaviour.” But Mrs Hutchison has been more particular in her description of Laud’s arbitrary and tyrannical policy. “The payment of civil obedience to the king and the laws of the land satisfied not,” says that incomparable woman; “if any durst dispute his impositions in the worship of God, he was presently reckoned among the seditious and disturbers of the public peace, and accordingly persecuted; if any were grieved at the dishonesty of the kingdom, or the griping of the poor, or the unjust oppressions of the subject by a thousand ways, invented to maintain the riots of the courtiers, and the swarms of needy Scots the king had brought in to devour like locusts the plenty of this land, he was a puritan; if any, out of mere morality or civil honesty, discountenanced the abominations of those days, he was a puritan, however he conformed to their superstitious worship; if any showed favour to any godly, honest persons, kept them company, relieved them in want, or protected them in violent or unjust oppression, he was a puritan; if any gentleman in his country maintained the good laws of the land, or stood up for any public interest, for good order or government, he was a puritan; in short, all that crossed the views of the needy courtiers, the proud encroaching priests, the thievish projectors, the lewd nobility and gentry, whoever was zealous for God’s glory or worship, &c. were puritans; and if puritans, then enemies to the king and his government, seditious, factious, hypocrites, ambitious disturbers of the public peace, and, finally, the pest of the kingdom.” “As such,” she adds, “they not only made them the sport of the pulpit, which was become but a more solemn sort of stage; but everystage, and every table, and every puppet-play, belched forth profane scoffs upon them; the drunkards made them their songs; all fiddlers and mimics learned to abuse them, as finding it a most gameful way of fooling.” (Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, vol. i. pp. 122, 123, 124.) ]

Milton, a diligent and attentive observer of all that was passing around him, having discerned in the church the source of much of the political and social evil which had assumed so frightful an aspect, as well as the grand engine of oppression in the hands of the king, now came to the resolution of taking an active part in the rude conflict of affairs. The moment was propitious for an assault upon the prelacy. The parliament had impeached the bigoted and persecuting primate; they ι had rescued his victims from their dungeons[7:15:91], recalled his exiles to behold his fall, released the press from its “horrid silence,” and permitted it to pour out its long-imprisoned vengeance on the heads of the oppressor and his followers. “The rigour of the parliament,” says Milton, “had begun to humble the pride of the bishops. As long as the liberty of speech was no longer subject to control, all mouths began to be opened against the bishops; some complained of the vices of the individuals, others of those of the order. They said it was unjust that they alone should differ from all other reformed churches, and particularly the word of God. This awakened all my attention and my zeal: I saw that a way was opening for the establishment of real liberty; that the foundation was laying for the deliverance of man from the yoke of slavery and superstition; that the principles of religion, which were the first objects of my care, would exert a salutary influence on the manners and constitution of the republic; and as I had from my youth studied the distinctions between religious and civil rights, I perceived that, if I ever wished to be of use, I ought at least not to be wanting to my country, to the church, and to so many of my fellow Christians, in a crisis of so much danger. I therefore determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which I was engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to this one important object.” Influenced by these views, Milton emerged from his solitude, and took up his weapon for his country.^[17. It was not from moral cowardice, as Johnston has insinuated, that Milton preferred the pen to the sword, the closet to the field. “I did not,” says he in his Defensio Secunda, “for any other reason decline the dangers of war, than that I might in another way, with much more efficacy, and with not less danger to myself, render assistance to my countrymen, and discover a mind neither shrinking from adverse fortune, nor actuated by any improper fear of calumny or of death. Since, from my childhood, I had been devoted to the more liberal studies, and was always more powerful in my intellect than in my body, avoiding the labours of the camp, in which any robust common soldier would have surpassed me, I betook myself to those weapons which I could wield with the most effect; and I conceived that I was acting wisely when I thus brought my better and more valuable faculties, those which constituted my principal strength and consequence, to the assistance of my country and her honourable cause.” Can any one read this without assenting to its justice, or admiring the motives which determined the choice of the immortal writer? ]

In 1641 appeared the first of his works, which was entitled, Of Reformation touching Church Government in England, and the Causes that have hitherto hindered it. This treatise consists of two books, the object of which is to demonstrate the proposition that prelacy is essentially inimical to civil liberty. In the opinion of the author, the reformation in the church had not proceeded to the proper extent; and the suspension of its progress he attributes principally to its prelates, “who, though they had renounced the pope, yet hugged the popedom, and shared the authority among themselves.” He declares, with impressive solemnity, that wherever, in this book, he has laid open the faults and blemishes of fathers, martyrs, or Christian emperors, he has done so “neither out of malice, nor list to speak evil, nor any vain glory, but of mere necessity to vindicate the spotless truth from an ignominious bondage.” In prosecution of this grand object he displays a profundity of learning, a vigour of réasoning, an earnestness of purpose, an impassioned eloquence of style, and a comprehensive grasp of his subject, which must ever excite admiration; indeed, the work is throughout one continued strain of wisdom and eloquence. The bishops, of course, receive no quarter at his hands. He tears the veil of hypocrisy from their hearts; exposes their worldly-mindedness and love of pelf and power; and having animadverted on the conduct of the prelacy in former times, he pourtrays, with unsparing severity, its character in his own,^[18. Here is the process for transforming a modern into a primitive bishop. “He that will mould a modern bishop into a primitive, but yield him to be elected by the popular voice, undiocesed, unrevenued, unlorded, and leave him nothing but brotherly equality, matchless temperance, frequent fasting, incessant prayer and preaching, continual watchings and labours in his ministry; which, what a rich booty it would be, what a plump endowment to the many-benefice-gaping mouth of a prelate, what a relish it would give to his canary-sucking and swan-eating palate, let old Bishop Mountain judge for me.” {Ρrose Works, p. 6.) ] reproving the unconcern with which the bishops extorted large incomes from the nation, as well as the profligacy with which they expended their revenues, and contending that prelacy is one of those forms of evil which are “the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.” To this and other attacks from the pens of puritan writers, Hall, bishop of Norwich, replied in An Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament', and about the same time Usher, archbishop of Armagh, published The Apostolical Institution of Episcopacy. In answer to these able and learned works, Milton wrote two pieces, one of them entitled Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and the other, The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy. ^[19. In this book, he discovers, not with ostentatious exultation, but with calm confidence, his high opinion of his own powers; and promises to undertake something, which may prove both useful and honourable to his country. “This,” says he, “is not to be obtained but by devout prayer to the Eternal Spirit, that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. To this must be added, industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and genecpus arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compass’d, I refuse not to sustain this expectation.” What can be more noble or more affecting than the aspiration here breathed out, in prophetic announcement of the imperishable monument which he was destined to raise, and upon which his name and fame were to be written in characters of unextinguishable glory! It seems to have moved even the obduracy of Johnson. “From a promise like this,” says he, “at once fervid, pious, and rational, might be expected the Paradise Lost.” ] He had now entered fairly into this great controversy, and he was not disposed to shrink from the labour or the responsibility of carrying it on. “When two bishops of superior distinction,” he observes, “vindicated their privileges against some principal ministers, I thought that, on those topics, to the consideration of which I was led solely by my love of truth, and my reverence for Christianity, I should probably not write worse than those who were contending only for their own emoluments and usurpations.” Nor did he form an erroneous or exaggerated estimate of his own powers. These productions of Milton, distinguished by vigour, acuteness, and erudition, were unquestionably the most able, eloquent, and learned on the puritan side of the controversy. But the publication which appears to have attracted most attention at the time was a pamphlet, the joint production of five presbyterian divines, under the appellation of Smectymnuus, a word formed from the initial letters of the name of the authors.^[20. Stephen Marshal, Edward Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcommen, and William Spurstow. ] To this production Bishop Hall replied in a Defence of the Remonstrance ; andMilton’s formidable pen, again employed in opposition to the prelates, produced Animadversions on the Remonstrant’s Defence, a work which is thrown into the ι form of a dialogue between the remonstrant and his antagonist, who answers him. “Why this close and succinct manner was rather to be chosen,” says the author, “this was the reason; chiefly that the ingenious reader, without further amusing himself in the labyrinth of controversial antiquity, may come to the speediest way to see the truth vindicated, and sophistry taken short at the first bound.” In this production the replies are always severe, frequently jocose; and there prevails throughout[7:15:92] the piece a sort of grim smile of derision, which sharpens and aggravates the severity. These various publications were written in the course of one year, 1641, when their author was only thirty-three years of age, and occupied with the fatiguing duties of an instructor of youth; a circumstance which cannot fail to excite wonder at the unwearied industry, the ready application of various knowledge, and the exuberant fertility of mind, which are displayed in their composition.

In the beginning of 1642, the Animadversions, which are unquestionably personal and offensive, elicited a reply that was supposed to emanate from a son of the insulted bishop, and appeared under the title of a Modest Confutation of a Slanderous and Scurrilous Libel. If this reply had been published with its author’s name, the motive would probably have atoned with Milton for its virulence. But the publication was anonymous; and in it Milton was not only treated with contumely and insult, but assailed with enormous falsehoods, random accusations, and the most rancorous personal vituperation. He was, however, “dauntless, defiant, and, when insulted, fierce.” In his Apology for Smectymnuus, the result of this accumulated provocation, he proved himself a match for his adversaries even at their own weapons, and, what is of more importance, successfully vindicated his character from the foul imputations which had been cast upon it. On this occasion, there was every excuse for the warmth of Milton’s reply, and the unscrupulous vigour with which he poured his overwhelming sarcasms on his assailants. He had been accused of lewdness and sensuality; other crimes had been darkly hinted at; and his fellow Christians had been called upon “to stone the miscreant to death.” Besides, he knew that others were partakers of his adversary’s sins; that the latter was but the organ or mouthpiece of the episcopal order; and that, in the most bitter and malignant aspersions of his character, his reviler had their approbation and concurrence. This naturally turned the edge .of his weapon against the bishops, to whom he never misses an opportunity of expressing his hostility. In fact, it was as much out of his power to alter or soften the style in which he wrote, as to dissolve the groundwork of nature which God has created in him. It was the full reflection of his very soul, whatever might be the state of its emotions; a mirror which showed the various workings of that great and glorious spirit with which God had endowed him. In noticing the charge, that he had been “vomited out of the university,” he keenly remarks, “Of small practice were the physician who could not judge, by what she and her sister have of long time vomited, that the worser stuff she strongly keeps in her stomach, but the better she is ever keeking at, and queasy; she vomits now out of sickness; but before it be well with her, she must vomit with strong physick.” The picture he draws of the university-men is marked with equal severity. “What with truanting and debauchery,” says he, “what with false grounds, and the weakness of natural faculties in many of them, perhaps there would be found among them as many unsolid and corrupted judgments, both in doctrine and life, as in any other two corporations of the like bigness. This is undoubted, that if any carpenter, smith, or weaver, were such a bungler in his trade, as the greater number of them are in their profession, he would starve for any custom; and should he exercise his manufacture as little as they do their talents, he would forget his art; or, should he mistake his tools as they do theirs, he would mar all the work he took in hand.”^[21. Prose Works, p. 92. ]

Dr Synιmons, with the natural bias of a churchman, thinks that “the learning of Usher, and the wit of Hall, preponderated in the contest;” and that this, he says, “seems to have been felt not only by the Smectymnuan divines, but by Milton himself.” As to the former part of this judgment, it is matter of opinion and taste, in regard to which different men will come to different conclusions; though, if the balance of learning and wit was on the side of the prelates, the balance of genius and eloquence was decidedly on that of the puritans. Nor, on the other hand, have we been able to discover any indications which would lead us to infer that Mil ton was really sensible of the “preponderance” here somewhat gratuitously ascribed to his opponents. So far from this, there is evidence to show that his conviction was directly the contrary of that here imputed to him. From a just confidence in his own powers, he assumes and maintains throughout a tone of lofty superiority, and vindicates his title to pre-eminence, by the unrivalled ability and eloquence with which he repulses the assaults of his adversaries, and defends what he believes to be the cause of truth and of God. And the impression made by his writings was commensurate with their power. When he first directed his attention to the evils growing out of the church, there was a strong public feeling against it; but that feeling was vague, and, wanting direction, was expending itself in useless declamation. Milton, and those who laboured with him in the same cause, turned it into a definite channel, and rendered it productive o’f great and important results.^[22. In December 1640, a petition was presented to the House of Commons, signed by fifteen thousand citizens of London, praying the legislature to suppress the archbishops and bishops. Early in 1641, a bill was passed by the Commons, “to restrain bishops, and others in holy orders, from intermeddling in secular affairs it was sent up to the Lords on the 1st of May, and having met with great opposition, was finally rejected. A bill was now introduced, and by a large majority read a second time in the Commons, “for the utter abolishing and taking away of all archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and commissaries, deans, deans and chapters, chanters, canons, and other under officers, out of the church of England.” On the 5th of February 1642, this bill passed the House of Lords, and on the 14th of the same month it received the royal assent. So rapid was the progression of that cause, to the advancement of which Milton had devoted his commanding talents and eloquence. By one fell blow the hierarchy was levelled with the dust. ] We may admire the abilities of Usher and of Hall, and even admit, with Dr Symmons, that if the church, at this crisis, could have been upheld, it would have been supported by these prelates; but the evils growing out of the system were too great, the abuses and corruptions were too gross, the tyranny exercised was too flagrant and exasperating, to be shielded or upheld by any talents, especially when laid bare, in all their hideous deformity, by the unsparing hand of so formidable an adversary as Milton.

We come now to an event in Milton’s life which had a material influence on his domestic comfort, and gave a new direction to his literary labours. This was his marriage, in 1648, to Mary, eldest daughter of Mr Richard Powell, of Forest Hill, near Shotover, in Oxfordshire. His choice seems to have been the suggestion of fancy alone, and its consequences were such as might have beeiï expected from so imprudent a connection. The lady was brought to London by her husband, who placed her at the head of his frugal establishment, and expected, no doubt, to enjoy all the delights of conjugal happiness. But in this he was destined to be cruelly disappointed. The lady, who was of a royalist family, and accustomed to the affluent hospitality of her father’s house, appears to have bad no relish for the pleasures of spare diet and hard study; for, as Philips relates, “having for a month led a philosophic life, after [7:15:93] having been used at home to a great house, and much company and joviality, her friends, possibly by her own desire, made earnest suit to have her company the remaining part of the summer; which was granted, upon a promise of her return at Michaelmas.” The time fixed arrived, but the lady did not appear, and Milton wrote a letter urging her immediate return. The letter remained unanswered, and several others which followed were treated in the same manner. Incensed at such conduct, her husband at length despatched a messenger to her father’s house, with instructions to bring her to London. But this also failed. The messenger was rudely dismissed, and the wife remained with her friends. The prosperous fortunes of the king, whose forces had defeated those of the parliament under Fairfax and Waller, probably emboldened the Powells, who were cavaliers, to take this mode of breaking off the alliance. Such, at least, is the conjecture of Dr Symmons.

Milton was not of a temper to submit patiently to injustice aggravated by insult. He resolved to repudiate his wife, upon the grounds of disobedience and desertion; and to justify this step to the world, he published, in 1644; The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, which he inscribed to the parliament. This treatise was soon followed by the Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce ; and, next year, by Tetrachordon and Colasterion, the last being a reply to an anonymous antagonist. In these writings, he argued the question with very great ingenuity,^[23. The treatises on divorce are equal to any which Milton ever wrote. Every page is strewed with felicities, and shines with a lustre unsurpassed by himself on happier though perhaps not more interesting themes. He makes out a strong case, and fights with arguments which are not easily to be repelled. The whole context of the Holy Scriptures, the laws of the first Christian emperors, the opinions of some of the most eminent amongst the early reformers, and a projected statute of Edward VI., are adduced by him for the purpose of demonstrating, that, by the laws of God, and by the inferences of the most virtuous and enlightened men, the power of divorce ought not to be rigidly restricted to those causes which render the nuptial state unfruitful, or which taint it with a spurious offspring. Regarding mutual support and comfort as the principal object of this union, he maintains, that whatever defrauds it of these ends, essentially vitiates the contract, and must necessarily justify its dissolution. And, upon the assumption that marriage is nothing more than a mere contract,’this reasoning appears to be unanswerable. ] but made few converts, and even incurred the censure of a body whom he had sought to propitiate. No sooner had they appeared than the fury of the presbyterian clergy was kindled against the author. Unmindful of the recent and important services which he had rendered them, they now assailed him, from the pulpit and the press, with violent and acrimonions hostility. They even endeavoured to make the legislature the instrument of their vengeance, and actually caused him to be summoned before the House of Lords. But from that tribunal he was honourably dismissed; and all that the Presbyterians gained by their ill-timed zeal was the loss of an able friend, and the excitement of a dangerous enemy. Milton was now irrevocably alienated from their cause. He had discovered that these pretended’zealots of liberty sought only their own aggrandisement, and the power of imposing upon others that very yoke which they had themselves been unable to bear.

Milton certainly entertained the opinions he professed; and, to evince his consciousness of freedom, he proceeded to pay his addresses to a beautiful and accomplished young woman, the daughter of a Dr Davis, who seems to have entertained his suit. This alarmed his wife and her relations, who, finding that Milton was not an unresisting sufferer of injuries, now became anxious for a reconciliation; and they were probably the more sincere in their desire, that, from the desperate situation of the royal cause, which had been ruined by the decisive battle of Naseby, they began to be sensible that they might need his protection. The plan for the accomplishment of their purposes was conceived and executed with successful ingenuity. Combining with Milton’s friends, who concurred in the wish for a reconciliation, they watched his visits; and, when he was in the house of a relation, they stationed his wife in an inner apartment, with instructions to appear at the proper time, and to implore his pardon on her knees. The lady enacted her part to admiration, throwing herself at his feet, confessing her fault, and with tears entreating his forgiveness. For a moment Milton appeared to be inexorable; but his firmness soon gave way, and yielding to the impulse of his own generous nature, he raised her from the ground, consented to forget the past, and took her home to his bosom and affections. Nor was this all. He extended his placability to those who had been the abettors, if not the instigators, of his wife’s desertion; and receiving her father and her brothers under his roof, he supported them by the fruits of his labours in their day of danger and distress. In this asylum they remained until, by his influence and exertions, the question respecting their property was adjusted with the government in the year 1647.

The same year, 1644, which saw Milton immersed in the controversy about divorce, beheld him also imparting to the world his ideas on the subject of education, and defending, with matchless power, the freedom of the press. His Tractate on Education is addressed to Mr Samuel Hartlib, to whom Sir William Petty afterwards inscribed one of his early works, and who was equally distinguished for his learning and public spirit. Its object is to demonstrate the folly of devoting seven or eight years of the life of youth to the “scraping together of so much miserable Latin and Greek as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one ;” and also to show that it is practicable to initiate young students into science and language by the same process, making a knowledge of things the immediate result of an acquaintance with words. Milton did not, like some ignorant modern innovators, propose to discard the study of the classics from his plan of education. What he aimed at was far more rational; namely, to economize the expenditure of time, and to combine die learning of languages with the acquisition of some knowledge of logic, rhetoric, ethics, politics, law, theology, criticism, composition, and the elements of the physical sciences, thus rendering the one, as it were, administrative to the other. The plan, as sketched by Milton himself, is perhaps constructed upon too magnificent a scale; indeed it is not a scheme for private individuals to attempt to carry into effect; but an enlightened government, with the vast collegiate resources of England at its disposal, might, without injuring existing establishments, erect in every county an academical institution, as the platform of a system which is unquestionably based upon solid principles. All the recent improvements in education, which can properly be considered as such, more particularly the attempts which have been partially made to combine with the study of the classics the acquisition of useful knowledge, are to a certain extent a practical recognition of the soundness of those principles; and there can be little doubt, we think, that time and experience will show the propriety, if not the necessity, of carrying this combination farther, and rendering it closer and more intimate than has yet been judged expedient by the instructors of youth, a class of men who, however willing to teach, are commonly slow to learn.

But, in point, ability, and eloquence, the Tractate on Education, with all its merits, was surpassed by another composition produced about the same time, and addressed [7:15:94] to the parliament under the title of Areopagitica i or a Speech for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing. The Presbyterians, it appears, on rising into power, speedily forgot the principles which they had professed in adversity; and, declaring against unlimited toleration, discovered, by their readiness to abridge the rights of others, that their tenderness was only for their own. The press was too powerful an engine not to be seized by these selfish monopolists of liberty. Intolerance had now changed its garb and denomination; instead of a cassock and lawn sleeves, it appeared in the plainer attire of a Geneva gown and band; but the essential spirit remained the same. Hence, the very men who had so indignantly complained of restraints on the press, when imposed by the church, lost no time in subjecting it to the most rigorous censorship when it passed into their own hands. They accordingly revived the imprimatur of the Star-chamber, and expurgated every book of every word and phrase which accorded not with their taste, or jarred with their peculiar notions. Against this monstrous grievance, the offspring of tyranny and apostacy, Milton advanced as the champion of free discussion; and never was a good cause more powerfully defended. The Areopagitica is, beyond all doubt, one of his finest and noblest compositions; admirable in style, irresistible in reasoning, and unsurpassed in eloquence.^[24. Some men love to be singular, and thus think themselves original. Sir Egerton Brydges alleges, that as soon as Milton descended from his poetic throne, to take part in the “coarse conflict of practical affairs,” the happv delirium of glorious genius subsided into a cold and harsh stagnation of all that was eloquent and generous. {Life, p. 66.) Now this writer had either read the Speech for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing, or he had not. If he had read it, what are we to think of his judgment as a critic? If he had not, what becomes of his fidelity as a biographer? In 1738, when the freedom of the press was considered in danger, Thomson, author of the Seasons, published an octavo edition of this discourse; and, at such a time, he could not possibly have rendered a more acceptable service, as it contains all that can be urged in favour of that species of liberty, without which there is no security for any other. Milton was the first man in this country who asserted the unlimited right of free discussion; the subject called forth all his powers; he viewed it in all its aspects and bearings; he anticipated and refuted the arguments by which his positions might be controverted; and so admirably did he perform his task, that he left almost nothing to be added by others. ] In fact, its arguments, which are individually strong, derive so much force from their mutual support in a close and advantageous array, as imperiously to compel conviction. But this splendid effort, in which Milton appears to have concentrated all the powers of his great mind, proved unavailing. The Presbyterians were too sensible of the utility of a censorship to be moved by any thing that could be advanced against it, and the powerful reasoning of the Areopagitica was urged in vain. If the parliament, however, remained obdurate, the impression produced on individual minds was strong and lasting. Gilbert Mabbot, oné of the licensers, resigned his situation, defending his conduct and motives from the work in question; and Cromwell was so moved by it, that during his protectorate he abolished the censorship of the press.

In 1645, Milton prepared an edition of his miscellaneous poems in English, Latin, and Italian, which appeared with the author’s name, and a preface by the publisher, Humphrey Moseley. The principal pieces in this collection have already been incidentally noticed; the novelties consist chiefly of sonnets, in which, more perhaps than in any of his other compositions, the peculiar character of Milton is displayed. These remarkable poems have been undervalued by critics who have not understood their real nature. They have neither epigrammatic point nor antithetical contrasts. There is none of the-refined ingenuity of Filiaja in thought; none of the hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style. They are simple but majestic records of the feelings of the poet, expressed with as little apparent effort or elaboration as if they had been set down in his diary. A victory, an unexpected attack upon the city, a momentary fit of exultation or depression, a jest thrown out against one of his own books, a dream that for a moment restored to him the vision of that beautiful face over which the grave had heaped its undistinguishing mould, all led him to musings which spontaneously arranged themselves in verse. Hence the sonnets are more or less striking, according as the occasions out of which theysprung are more or less interesting. That which he wrote “when the assault was intended to the city,” and thosè addressed to Cyriac Skinner, Fairfax, Vane, and Cromwell, are preeminent for loftiness and vigour, and animated with a great and mighty spirit. In fact, they are, almost without exception, dignified by a sobriety, yet greatness, of mind, to which we know not where to look for a parallel. Unity of sentiment and severity of style are the characteristics of them all. In the finishing of such short poems, which solicit ornament from variety of thought, on the indispensable condition of perfect subordination, greater accuracy and elegance might perhaps be expected. But they are all conceived and executed in a grand, broad style, with a freedom and boldness of hand which always bespeaks a master of the art. Like a small statue from the chisel of Lysippus, or a miniature from the pencil of Michel Angelo, they demonstrate that the idea of greatness may be excited in our minds by the least of those works on which genius has stamped its magical impression.^[25. Edinburgh Review, vol. xlii. p. 324. Symmous’s Life of Milton, p. 272. ]

In 1646, the wife of Milton gave birth to her first child, a daughter, baptized by the name of Anne, who appears to have been lame from her early infancy; and, in the following year, his father died, whilst the Powells left him to return to their former residence in the country. At this period, says Toland, “he revived his academic institution of some young gentlemen, with a design, perhaps, of putting in practice the model of education lately published by himself; yet this course was of no long continuance, for he was to have been, in 1647, made adjutantgeneral to Sir William Waller, but that the new-modelling of the army, and Sir William turning cat-in-pan, this design was frustrated.” In 1648, Milton’s second daughter, Mary, was born; and sqpn afterwards the course of public events introduced him to an honourable and important office in the state.

The political occurrences of this period, in as far as these were connected with the personal history of Milton, have been briefly and lucidly described by Dr Symmons. The victory of Naseby, gained on the 14th of June 1645, by the army under Fairfax and Cromwell, may be considered as having terminated the contest between the king and the parliament. From this time the unhappy monarch was, in truth, in the hands of his enemies, and passed several months in a species of captivity at Oxford. In April 1646, he fled to the army of the Scots before Newark, under the command of the Earl of Leven, by whom he was detained as a prisoner; anel not long afterwards he was delivered to the commissioners of the parliament, and by them conducted to Holdenby House in Northamptonshire. Here he remained until June 1647, when he was seized by the army, and, after some removals, settled at Hampton Court. At this crisis, an opportunity was presented him of recovering his fallen fortunes and replacing himself upon the throne. Cromwell and Ireton, uncertain of the result of the contest with the Presbyterians, and apprehensive of a junction between the latter and the royalists, now offered to reinstate him in his kingly dignity, upon certain conditions[7:15:95], which they stipulated in behalf of themselves and their friends. But the infatuated monarchs rejected the proffers of fortune, and, by his haughtiness, fluctuation, and duplicity, gave mortal offence to the only individuals who had the power to save him. Even at Carisbrooke Castle, where he was confined on his flight from Hampton Court, fortune seemed again disposed to redress her past wrongs, and to give him back by treaty a large portion of what had been ravished from him by force of arms. But his fatal obstinacy repulsed her advances, and this, added to his perfidy, sealed his doom. He refused with scorn the proposals of the army, thinking to prevail by means of the different factions, and to regain by policy what he had lost in fight. All hopes of accommodation had thus vanished. The nation was torn in pieces by contending factions, each desirous to employ the kingas an instrument for attaining its own objects. How to dispose of him now became the only question, and it was speedily decided. The army demanded his death, which its leaders deemed indispensable to their own safety; the Presbyterians in the parliament, who would have joined the king against the army, were seized and committed to prison; the unfortunate monarch, after the semblance of a legal trial, was condemned to suffer death; and on the 30th of January 1648-49, he was executed, in pursuance of the sentence passed upon him, for having “traitorously and maliciously imagined and contrived the enslaving or destroying of the English nation.”

Hitherto Milton had remained an inactive spectator of events ;- he had taken no part in the controversy in which the king, the parliament, and the army were engaged; and he had been in no way accessory to the king’s death. Now, however, his services were required in behalf of those who had been principally concerned in that distressing transaction; and, in February 1648-49, he published The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in which he attempted to prove “that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any who have the power, to call to account a tyrant or wicked king, and, after due conviction, to depose and put him to death, if the ordinary magistrate have neglected or denied to do it.” This work, he tells us, “was written rather to tranquillize the minds of men, than to discuss any part of the question respecting Charles,’’ the discussion of which belonged to the magistrate and not to him, and which had already received its final determination. He also disclaims having directed his argument or persuasion against Charles personally; contenting himself with proving, by the testimony of many of the most eminent divines, “what course of conduct might lawfully be observed towards tyrants in general.” The subject, in fact, is discussed without any taint of virulence or acrimony, with much force of reasoning, and a considerable but not an ostentatious display of learning. That kings and magistrates are amenable to the laws, and may be punished for the violation of them, is argued from the origin and constitution of society, from the authority of the Jewish scriptures, from that of the most eminent Christian divines, and from the practice of all civilized nations; and the author has unquestionably demonstrated, that the responsibility of kings to a human tribunal is a doctrine which has not been considered as incompatible with Christian theology. If this were not so, then the doctrine that tyrants may lawfully be resisted, could no longer be maintained; for, to make resistance lawful in any circumstances, the tyrant who abuses his power and tramples down the rights and liberties of the people, must first of all be held to be responsible, not to God only, but to the nation whose laws he has violated. But it may, nevertheless, be doubted whether the authorities produced by Milton support, to its full extent, the assertion in the title of this work, “that it is lawful for any who have the power to call to account a tyrant;” even although the assertion be somewhat qualified by the subsequent words, “and, after due conviction, to depose and put him to death.” It is much more easy to establish the responsibility of tyrants generally, than either to define its limits, or to fix the jurisdiction by which * it may be rendered effectual.

Milton’s next work was Observations upon th¢ Articles of Peace between Ormond and the Irish Rebels, signed at Kilkenny on the 17th of January 1648-49. One of the principal causes of the king’s misfortunes and ruin was his supposed connection with the Irish Catholics; and the treaty concluded with them by his representative, at the time here mentioned, served to confirm public prepossession on the subject. The rebellion in Ireland had been distinguished by circumstances of peculiar atrocity, all evincing the power of long-continued oppression to debase and unhumanize the hearts of men. Mercy seemed to have fled from the earth; cruelty exhausted its horrid and sickening refinements; enormities, which admit not of description, were perpetrated; all ordinary ties were disregarded; no voice was listened to. save that of revenge. Never, even in the annals of servile wars, had the wild passions of infuriated slaves rioted in more indiscriminate slaughter. Yet in the massacre itself the king had no participation; it was the terrible, but not necessary nor foreseen consequence of the revolt; and Charles can only be held as having been accessory to the rising, by considering his sanction as implied in that of the queen, and from the circumstance that the leaders of the insurrection everywhere professed to act under the royal authority. But, in the first place, so grave an imputation should not be made on grounds of constructive probability alone; and, secondly, it seems to be now admitted on all hands that the king’s commission, pretended by O’Neale, was a forgery of his own. The opportunity, however, was too favourable to be neglected by Mil ton; and he found little difficulty in exciting indignation against the articles of a peace which, abandoning the English and Protestant cause in Ireland, permitted its enemies to exult in the success of their sanguinary vengeance.

Milton now retired for a time from the field of political warfare, and, reverting to the more peaceful occupations of literature, composed four books of a History of England, which he intended to consecrate to the honour of his native country. But the prosecution of this undertaking was suspended by an event which formed a remarkable epoch in the life of the poet; namely, his appointment as Latin secretary to the council of state. His profound knowledge of the Latin language, in which the council had determined to carry on all their correspondence with foreign nations, and the elegance of his style, added to his extensive knowledge of history, and other qualifications, pointed him out to the sagacity of the council as a person eminently fitted for such an office; and, accordingly, without even a suspicion of the preferment intended for him, he was invited to enter into the service of the state. The appointment was made on the loth March 1649, and he immediately applied himself to the duties of his new avocation. It has been suggested, with some appearance of probability, that he must have been indebted for this preferment either to the younger Vane or to Bradshaw, who were members of the council, and who have been made the subjects, both in prose and in verse, of his eloquent and poetic panegyric. But if the preference was, in the first instance, the suggestion of friendship, it was afterwards proved by the event to have been the dictate of wisdom. The hand of the Latin secretary most ably concurred with the spirit of the executive council; and during his continuance in office, which was prolonged till the Restoration, the state papers in his department may be regarded as models of diplomatic composition. Amongst the correspondence of Milton, [7:15:96] during the protectorate of Cromwell, were a series of letters addressed to the kings of France, Denmark, and Sweden, relative to the persecution of the Vaudois, which might be cited in proof of what has just been stated. The official instruments were no doubt faithful to the general purposes of the man who then governed England; but they also exhibit much of the liberal and benevolent spirit of the secretary; and, by their dignified yet conciliating tone, strong reasoning, and persuasive eloquence, they deserve to be classed amongst the ablest compositions of the kind to be found in any language. Nor was it merely in conducting the correspondence of the state with foreign powers that Milton’s ministerial agency was employed. It appears to have been used by the council in all cases which related to foreigners, and to have been nearly of an equal extent with that of the modern secretary of state for the foreign department. But his pen was not confined to the writing of government despatches or official correspondence.

Soon after the king’s death, a book, purporting to have been written by the “royal martyr” himself, appeared, under the title of EIK∩N BAΣIΛIKH, or Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings, and made a powerful impression upon the public mind, to the disadvantage of the republican cause. The fate of the unhappy Charles had very generally excited strong feelings of sympathy. He appeared to have been the victim of an ambitious and sanguinary faction; and, whilst his faults were generously buried in his grave, his virtues were aggrandised by pity for his misfortunes, and honoured with exaggerated commendation. Hence the appearance of a work, professedly by his own hand, in which he is represented in the constant exercise of prayer, asserting the integrity of his motives before the great Searcher of Hearts, and urging a fervent appeal from the injustice and cruelty of man to the justice and clemency of God, was eminently calculated to agitate the public mind in his favour, and to make every tongue vibrate in execration of his enemies. To counteract the effect of this popular production, which threatened to become alarmingly great, the council determined to avail itself of the abilities of its new secretary, and delegated to Milton the task of contending with the Eikon Basilike. This he performed with singular ability, in his ^Ε,ικοvοκ ∖ αστ ’ ης, or Image-breaker, the title prefixed to this refutation of the reputed work of royal authorship, and which may be regarded as one of the most finished and powerful of his controversial productions. There does not appear to have been any order in council directing him to write this answer; but his own words are full and express as to the direction he had received. “A book appeared soon after,” says he, “which was ascribed to the king, and contained the most invidious charges against the parliament. I was ordered to answer it, and opposed the Iconoclast to the Ikon.” It is certain that the royalists depended greatly on the effect which they expected to be produced by the Eikon Basiliké ; forty-seven editions of it were circulated in England, and forty-eight thousand five hundred copies are said to have been sold. Milton, therefore, felt that the peace and safety of the commonwealth were at stake, and having entered into his subject with his usual ardour, he completed his task with even more than his ordinary success.

The genuineness of the Eikon long remained a matter of controversy; but all doubt upon this subject has for some time been set at rest. It is now certain that the use of the king’s name was a fraud, and that the real author of the book was Gauden, bishop of Exeter. This has been established by evidence so convincing and conclusive, that the question may be considered as definitively settled.^[26. See on this subject, Who Wrote Ikon Basiliké? by Dr Christopher Wordsworth, London, 1824; and more especially a most masterly discussion of the same question in the Edinburgh Review (vol. xliv. p. 1, et seq ) by Sir James Mackintosh, one of the ablest and most conclusive pieces of historical reasoning and investigation to be found in modern literature. ] From several passages in the Iconoclast, it is evident that Milton strongly suspected the Eikon to have been the production of some “idle and pedantic” churchman; but it seems to have been his policy to permit the imposture to pass, and to deal with the work as if it had been the genuine effusion of the royal personage whose name it bears. Pressing closely on his antagonist, and tracing him step by step, he either exposes the fallacy of his reasonings, or the falsehood of his assertions, or the hollowness of his professions, or the convenient speciousness of his devotions. He discovers a quickness which never misses an advantage, and a keenness of remark which carries an irresistible edge. In argument and in style the Iconoclast is equally masterly, being at once compressed and energetic, perspicuous and elegant. It is a work, indeed, which cannot be read by any man, whose reason is not wholly under the dominion of prejudice, without producing a conviction unfavourable to the royal party; and it justly· merited the honourable distinction conferred upon it by royalist vengeance, of burning in the same flames with the Defence of the People of England. ^[27. Dr Johnson, who misses no opportunity of libelling the character of Milton, accuses him of having interpolated “the book called Ikon Basiliké, by inserting a prayer taken from Sidney’s Arcadia, and imputing it to the king.” One would have thought that the very severity with which Milton, in one passage of his work, has animadverted on the king for having adopted this prayer, and given it, with a few immaterial alterations, as his own to the bishop who attended him on the scaffold, might have saved his memory from the imputation of an act at once so scandalous and so paltry. But, fortunately, we possess the most satisfactory evidence of his entire exemption from the dishonest meanness imputed to him. It was by Royston, who is said to have received the manuscript from the king, and not by Du Gard, the printer of the parliament, that the edition of the E kon was printed in which the controverted prayer originally appeared; and, surely, Royston’s royalist press was remote from the suspicion of any contact with Milton or his supposed accomplice Bradshaw. Yet with this fact staring him in the face, Dr Johnson admitted the calumny, which the infamous Lauder had revived, and attempted to affix on the name of Milton the stigma of forgery. The first edition of the Eìkon Basihké, to which this prayer, called “a prayer in time of captivity,” is attached, was printed for R. Royston, at the Angel in Ivy-lane; a fact which utterly annihilates the charge, whilst it proves the “malice” in which if originated. “Faction,” says Johnson, “seldom leaves a man innocent, however it might find him.” The maxim is not only true, but its truth has been exemplified by its author, whose guilt, in this particular, Dr Symmons has unanswerably exposed. (See Life of Milton, pp. 328, 329, et seq.) This is no new charge. It was originally broached by Lauder in his publication entitled King Charles Vindicated from the charge of Plagiarism brought against him by Milton, and Milton himself convicted of Forgery and a Gross Imposition on the Public, which appeared in 1754, some time after his forgeries in regard to the Paradise Lost had been detected and exposed by Dr Douglas, and after he had publicly confessed his guilt in a penitential letter addressed to that eminent person. The dog returned to his vomit again, and invented this new falsehood in the hope of attracting some attention by a fabrication which it might be difficult to refute. But he was deceived in his expectation. The “unspecious falsehood” failed to obtain that degree of regard which was requisite to render it of any use to the author; yet, “with a notable and hardy contempt of truth,” it was afterwards revived by Johnson, “the great literary patron of Lauder,” and his accomplice in the infamous but abortive attempt to blast the reputation of Milton. (Symmons ’ Life of Milton, App. pp. 627, 628.) ] The Iconoclastes was first printed in 1649; a second edition of it appeared in the following year; and, in 1652, it was again published in London by Du Gard, in a French translation. It received two answers; one with the title of E/χων ακ ∖ αστος, or the Image Unbroken, in 1651; and the other, called Vindiciae Carolinae, in 1692.
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We may mention here, that on his appointment to the office of Latin secretary, Milton removed, in the first instance, to a lodging in the house of one Thompson, atChar-ing-cross, and afterwards to apartments in Scotland Yard, where his wife gave birth to her third child, a son, who died in infancy, on the 16th of March 1650. And in 1652 he shifted his residence to Petty France, where, till the period of the Restoration, he occupied a handsome house, opening into St James’s Park, and adjoining to the mansion of Lord Scudamore.

But, wherever his dwelling-place might be, he was destined to enjoy no respite from labour. No sooner had he finished his masterly reply to the posthumous work (as it was then generally considered) of King Charles, than he was again called upon to enter the lists as the assertor of the commonwealth of England; but he was now to be opposed to a more formidable antagonist, and to contend on a far more ample field. His refutation of the Eikon had been confined almost within the limits of his own country. But in the contest in which he was about to engage, the powers of his mind were to be exhibited to Europe at large, and the whole family of civilized nations were to witness his victory or defeat. Charles II. was at this time protected by the states of Holland, and being anxious to appeal to the world against the execution of his father, as well as to blend his own with the general cause of kings, he employed Claudius Salmasius, or Claude de Saumaise, then an honorary professor in the university of Leyden, to write a defence of the late king and of monarchy. This man, who was famed for his learning, and held a high rank amongst the most eminent scholars of that age, bad already distinguished himself by the publication of a book in defence of civil and religious liberty; and, as the reward of his exertions, he had received the grant of a pension from the republic of Holland. It would have been well for Salmasius had he been content to enjoy the advantages of his lot in the bosom of tranquillity, and had he refused to tarnish his reputation, belie his principles, and compromise his peace, at the solicitation of an intriguing and profligate prince. But when a king sued to be his client, and the cause of sovereigns claimed the support of his pen, his vanity overmastered every other consideration; in an inauspicious hour he undertook the defence of prelacy, monarchy, and Charles I.; and, in virtue of this engagement, he produced his Defensio Regia pro Carolo Primo ad Caroluιn Secundum, which made its appearance before the close of the year 1649.

This book, taken as a whole, greatly disappointed the expectations of the learned. With the tenacious memory, the quick combination, and the acute microscopic vision, of the scholar and the critic, its author was destitute of that grasp and comprehension of mind which are requisite for the discussion of complex political systems. Throughout the whole of the Royal Defence there is a pervading littleness, of which the reader is soon rendered painfully sensible. Its author, like Martha, is troubled about many things, and seems overwhelmed with trifles. Etymology is frequently substituted for argument; quotations are accumulated without judgment or felicity; and his materials are put together without method, unassorted and unarranged. Still, the Royal Defence is by no means a contemptible production. It amasses nearly all that can be collected on the subject; in its management it is sometimes skilful, as in its execution it is occasionally happy; and it presents us with arguments which are often subtle and generally specious. “But the circumstance which will principally recommend this work of Salmasius’s to a numerous party in the present day,” observes Dr Symmons, “is the vivid recollection which it forcibly awakes, of some of the political writings Mr Burke. The same dark arsenal of language seems to have supplied the artillery which, in the seventeenth century, was aimed at the government of England, and in the close of the eighteenth at that of France; and many of those doctrines which disgust us with their naked deformity in the Leyden professor, have been withdrawn from our detestation under an embroidered and sparkling veil by the hand of the British politician. When Salmasius calls upon the monarchs, and indeed upon all the well-instituted republics, or, in other words, the regular governments of Europe, to extirpate the fanatic and parricide English, the pests and the monsters of Britain, we must necessarily be reminded of Mr Burke’s crusading zeal against the revolutionists of France, and be persuaded that he blows the trumpet bequeathed to him by the antagonist of Milton, and sullied with the venal breath which was once purchased by Charles. Unquestionable resemblance is to be discovered in the Royal Defence to those pieces of Mr Burke’s which respect the French revolution; and if the former were to be translated, the English reader would be less struck with the novelty of the latter, and more disposed to assent to what was asserted by the wise man more than three thousand years ago, that ‘ there is now no new thing under the sun.’”^[28. Sy mmons’Life of Milton, pp. 357, 858, 359. ] On the causes of this resemblance we shall not venture to offer any opinion. Similar thoughts might be suggested by similar subjects; the same passions, however excited, might naturally rush into the same channel of intemperate expression; or the discursive mind of Burke might range even the moors of Salmasius to batten on their coarse produce, and, finding them replenished with bitter springs, might be induced to draw from them supplies to feed the luxuriancy of his own invective.

But whatever might be the intrinsic merit of the Royal Defence, it derived importance from the name of Salmasius; and the appeal being made to all Europe, especially to crowned heads, it was not likely to be without its effect. The council of state immediately perceived the necessity of replying to it, and it was accordingly resolved “that Mr Milton do prepare something in answer to the book of Salmasius, and when he hath done it, bring it to the council.” This entry is dated the 8th January 1649- 50; and there is another, dated the 23d of December 1650, in which it is ordered “that Mr Mil ton do print the treatise which he hath written, in answer to a late book written by Salmasius, against the proceedings of the commonwealth.” By this time his sight had become greatly impaired, and he was forewarned by his physicians that the total loss of it would be the infallible result of his labour; but, undeterred by this prediction,^[29. “I would not,” says he, “have listened to the voice even of Esculapius himself, from the shrine of Epidaurus, in.preference to the suggestions of the heavenly monitor within my breast; my resolution was unshaken, though the alternative was either the loss of my sight or the desertion of my duty.” “I considered,” he adds, “that many had purchased a less good by a greater evil, the meed of glory by the loss of life; but that I might procure a great good by a little suffering; that though T am blind, I might still discharge the most honourable duties, the performance of which, as it is something more durable than glory, ought to be an object of superior admiration and esteem.” (Second Defence, Prose Works, p. 927∙) ] and unrestrained by bad health, which allowed him to compose only at intervals, with hourly interruptions, he persevered in the work which he had undertaken, and produced, early in 1651, that noble acquittal of his engagement to the council, the Defensio pro Populo An g lie ano contra Claudii Salmasii Defensionem Regiam. This work more than answered the expectations which were entertained of it. Indeed the triumph of Milton was decisive, and the humiliation of his adversary complete. It would be difficult even for its greatest admirer[7:15:98] to speak of this masterly composition in terms of too high commendation. “If happily,” says Dr Symmons, “it had been less embittered with personal invective, and had withdrawn the two immediate combatants to a greater distance from our sight; if it had excluded every light and sportive sally from its pages, it would have approached very nearly to perfection, and would have formed one of the most able and satisfactory, the most eloquent and splendid, defences of truth and liberality against sophistry and despotism, which has ever been exhibited to the world.” Its diction is pure, spirited, and harmonious;^[30. Hobbes, speaking of the combatants, declares himself unable to decide whose language was best, or whose arguments were worst. Johnson thinks that “Milton’s periods are smoother, neater, and more pointed.” As to the arguments of Salmasius, it is a strong presumption against them, that Hobbes, with all his acuteness, added to his known partiality for despotism, could find nothing to say in their favour. ] the language of Cicero is upon the author’s tongue, “winged with red lightning and impetuous rage ;” and through this appropriate medium are conveyed strong argument, manly sentiment, comprehensive erudition, and profound wisdom, relieved at intervals by sallies of excursive fancy. By the laws of God, either written in the heart of man or made the subject of immediate revelation, and by the testimony of all history, sacred and profane, the Defence of the People of England shows that political power properly emanates from the people, that for their benefit it must be exercised, that for their good it may rightfully be resumed. With reference to the point more immediately at issue, the author asserts the ancient genealogy of English freedom, and traces it from its British origin, through its Saxon and Norman lineage, down to the establishment of the commonwealth. During the whole of this period he proves that the existence of the ultimate sovereignty of the people was established by solemn acts, or by acknowledgment in compacts; and, from the Saxon times, he demonstrates the existence of a supreme legislative assembly, by which the conduct of the executive was controlled, and to which the chief magistrate was responsible. He is unquestionably too severe in his treatment of Charles, and we are fatigued with the perpetual recurrence of invective against his antagonist; but the one was provoked by exaggerated praise, and the other may find some excuse in the abusive and insolent language with which the government and people of England had been assailed. He condescended to fight the adversary with his own weapons, and answered a fool according to his folly.

The Defence of the People of England was received and read with universal applause and admiration; and, whilst the production of his opponent crept languidly through a confined circulation, it passed rapidly through several impressions,^[31. The author of the Clamor Regiì Sanguinis ad Ccelum, which called forth the Second Defence, says, “Of what the execrable Milton has spitefully elaborated to ruin the reputation of the deceased king, and to destroy the hereditary succession to the crown, there are so many editions, that I am uncertain to which of these I should refer my readers.” ] was translated into foreign languages, and occupied a large space in the public mind. Even Christina, queen of Sweden, is said to have commended it openly, although, from her rank and character, she could scarcely be supposed to have any great favour for its doctrines. The result of the contest was peculiarly affecting to the feelings and unfavourable to the interests of Salmasius. The Swedish queen frowned upon him as a pernicious parasite; the states of Holland suppressed his work, as one calculated to promote tyranny; and the numerous enemies whom his want of moderation had excited, exulted openly in his fall. It has been asserted that the various mortifications which he experienced on this occasion proved eventually fatal to his life; and it is not improbable that wounded pride and vanity might prove injurious to health, and accelerate the crisis of dissolution. He retired from the court of Stockholm in September 1651, and the following year died at Spa in Germany, just after he had completed a most virulent reply to his opponent, on whose devoted head he accumulated every crime which his malignity could invent, and heaped every opprobrious epithet which a copious vocabulary of abuse could supply. It is stated by Toland, and repeated by others on his authority, that Milton received L.1000 from the Treasury as a reward for this great work. That he deserved recompense no one can doubt; but there is reason to believe that Toland had been misinformed; for, in the Second Defence, published three years afterwards, he declares that he had “not been made one penny richer” by the publications he had undertaken for the service of the country.^[32. Tuque scito illas “opimitates” atque “opes,” quas mihi exprobras, non attigisse, neque eo nomine, quo maxime accusas, obolo factum ditiorem. ] He received the thanks of the council “for his good services,” which they seem to have duly appreciated; but the terms in which these are conveyed seem to indicate that this was the only acknowledgment.^[33. Dr Symmons conjectures that the munificence of the council might have been posterior to the date of the Second Defence, or that the passage may be regarded as not sufficiently explicit to be admitted against the positive assertion of Toland, coinciding with the general character of the republican government. But, in the first place, as three years confessedly elapsed without the council bestowing on him any special pecuniary recompense, it is scarcely probable that they would do so at a posterior date; secondly, the assertion of Milton is as positive as that of Toland, to which it is in direct opposition; and, thirdly, as secretary of the council, he was a public servant, all of whose energies were fairly exigible for the service of the state. ] His best reward, however, was the triumphant success with which he vindicated the people of England, and annihilated the presumptuous foreigner who had been hired to calumniate them.

In 1652, Milton, having removed from his lodgings in Whitehall to a house opening into St James’s Park, lost his wife in child-bed, and was left with three motherless daughters, in domestic solitude, and in a state of almost total blindness. The prediction of his physicians had been but too fatally verified. His sight, naturally weak, had for several years been declining; and the composition of his last great work had completed its extinction. In the course of this honourable labour he lost entirely the vision of one eye; that of the other soon afterwards closed; and “for the book of knowledge fair” he was “presented with an universal blank of Nature’s works.” But such was the vigour of his intellect, that, in addition to the discharge of his duties as secretary to the council, he continued his labours in defence of the commonwealth. His mind was too eager to b,e diverted from his purpose, and too strong to be subdued even by this accumulation of calamities. The precise date of his blindness, however, has not been ascertained; and equally unfixed is that of his second marriage, which appears to have taken place about two years after his entire loss of sight. The lady whom he chose on this occasion was Catherine, daughter of Captain Woodcock of Hackney, who seems to have been the object of his fondest affection. Like her predecessor, she died in child-bed within a year after her marriage, and the daughter she bore to him soon followed her to the grave.

Numerous replies to Milton’s Defence of the People of England were sent forth by the royalists, but these he left [7:15:99] to perish in their natural obscurity.^[34. The earliest of these replies, all of which were anonymous, was erroneously imputed to Bishop Bramhall. It appeared in 1651, with the strange title of Apologia pro liege cí Ρopulo Anglicano contra Joannis Polypragmìtici, alias Miltoni Angli, Defensionem destructivam, &c. ] In 1652, however, there appeared at the Hague a work entitled Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelurn adversus Parricidas Anglicanas, which, from the calumnies it heaped both upon the parliament and upon Milton himself, the latter considered as calling for a reply. The real libeller was a Frenchman of the name of Du Moulin, afterwards prebendary of Canterbury; but, fearful of avowing a production calculated to expose him to literary vengeance, he sent it in manuscript to Salmasius, by whom it was consigned, for the purpose of publication, to one Alexander Morus or More, a man of Scotch parentage, but settled in France, and at this time principal of the protestant college of Castres in Languedoc, where he had acquired some celebrity as a preacher. Morns readily undertook the honourable task proposed to him, wrote a dedication to Charles II. under the name of the printer,^[35. Adrian Ulac, in Latin Vlaccus. ] and became so mixed up with the work, that, until Du Moulin was compelled to acknowledge his production, he was generally considered as its author. But he had reason to repent bitterly the part he acted in this disgraceful action. For a brief and equivocal reputation (of which he made the most whilst it lasted), his life was embittered, and his memory covered with infamy. A terrible castigation awaited him. In 1654, Milton produced his reply, under the title of Defensio Secunda pro Populo Anglicano, contra infamem Libellum anonymum cui titulus “Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum’’

In answer to the slanders with which his adversary had attempted to overwhelm him, he found it necessary to give a sketch of many parts of his own history, and to disclose the motives and springs of action by which his conduct had been regulated; a delicate task, in the execution of which he speaks with the confidence of innocence and the unfaltering dignity of truth. On this account the work is peculiarly interesting, and has supplied his biographers with materials, which are of the more value as they cannot be obtained any where else, and their authenticity is beyond all doubt. The defensive portion of the work, therefore, is that which at present constitutes its principal interest. But at the time of its publication, the attraction consisted in its active and unsparing hostility. The character of Morus was, unhappily for himself, not proof against attack. Of a quarrelsome and overbearing temper, he was at variance with every body; whilst his uncontrolled attachment towomen involved him in adventures not calculated to reflect much credit upon a minister of the gospel. Possessing correct information as to his conduct, and resolved to use it without scruple, Milton pursues him through the opprobrious privacies of his immorality,^[36. The following epigram, commonly attributed to Milton, relates to one of the licentious amours in which Morus had been engaged :— Galli ex concubitu gravidam te, Pontia, Mori Quis bene moratam morigeramque neget? On this point of attack, Morus, in his reply, gave his antagonist an advantage, by inadvertently correcting the orthography of the girl’s name, which, he affirmed, ought to be written Bontia, and not Pontia. ] and exacts a severe vengeance for those savage insults, in the guilt of which he had become implicated as a party and an accomplice. Morus struggled to support himself by a reply, which Milton demolished in another answer; as he did also a second attempt of the same kind in a short confutation, which terminated the controversy. In the course of it the sufferings of Morus had induced him to give up the author of the publication which had brought upon him such a fearful visitation; and Du Moulin, who was then in England, felt himself to be in danger; but, for some reason or other, Milton suffered the Frenchman to escape chastise ment. It is probable enough, as Dr Symmons suggests, that, regarding Morus and his associate “as joint parties in a bond, he conceived himself to be justified in calling upon the most responsible of the two for the payment of his

But, independently of its communications respecting its illustrious author, the Second Defence contains many striking passages, and exhibits a variety of entertaining matter. It introduces to our notice many of the writer’s republican friends, as Fleetwood, Lambert, Howley, Merton, Whitelocke, Pickering, Strickland, Sydenham, Sydney, Montacute, Laurence, Fairfax, and Bradshaw; and, besides an animated address to Cromwell, in which the character of that remarkable man is ably pourtrayed, it presents us with an eloquent eulogy on Christina, queen of Sweden, in requital, as it would seem, of the praise which the daughter of the great Adolphus had so liberally bestowed on his Defence of the People of England. Of the address to Cromwell, Johnson observes, in his characteristic manner, that “Caesar, when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not more servile or more elegant flattery.” The beauty of the ’composition, indeed, has never been, and cannot be, disputed; and as to the alleged “servility,” they alone can properly judge who are capable of appreciating the wisdom of the advice which is tendered to the protector, in connection with the state of affairs at the time when Milton wrote. The Long Parliament had been dismissed; its successor, nicknamed Bare-boncs’ Parliament, had also been dissolved; and the captain-general, with his military council, found himself in possession of a kind of derelict sovereignty. On the 16th of December 1653, Cromwell was installed into the office of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, and under that title now possessed the supreme power. Some provision appears to have been made for convening a triennial parliament; but the country was torn in pieces by contending factions, and the only hope of the restoration of internal tranquillity depended on the honesty and firmness of the protector, whose wisdom and courage had already, on more than one occasion, proved the salvation of the commonwealth. Milton, whose address appears to have been composed immediately after Cromwell’s elevation, could not be unconscious of the egregious mockeries which had been practised upon the people, or insensible to the danger with which liberty was threatened by the concentration of all the powers of the state in the person of the protector; but still it was natural for him not to abandon, without extreme reluctance, the hopes which he had cherished respecting the protector’s rectitude of intention; and hence he seems desirous of urging him to a just and generous exercise of power by every motive which wise counsel or eloquent panegyric could suggest. Mil ton was not a venal parasite or a courtly flatterer. He certainly approaches the master of England with elevated sentiments, and in elegant language extols the enlightened wisdom, martial prowess, and stern integrity, by which the conduct of that fortunate soldier had hitherto been characterized; but extravagant as some of his praises may now be thought, it cannot be denied that, even in these, he discovers the quality of an erect and independent spirit.^[37. The conduct of Milton during the administration of the protector is a subject on which his enemies delight to dwell. “That an enthusiastic votary of liberty,” says Mr Macaulay, “should accept office under a military usurper, seems, no doubt, at first sight, extraordinary. The ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems to have coveted despotic power. He at first fought sincerely and manfully for the parliament, and never deserted it till it had deserted its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it was not till he found that the few members who remained after so many deaths, secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to themselves a power which they held only in trust, and to inflict on England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy. But when thus placed by violence at the head of affairs, he did not assume unlimited power. He gave the country a constitution far more perfect than any which had at that time been known to the world. He reformed the representative system in a manner which has extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For himself he demanded indeed the first place in the commonwealth; but with powers scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder or an American president. He gave parliament a voice in the appointment of ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not even reserving to himself a veto on its enactments. And he did not require that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his family.” {Edinburgh Review, vol. xlii. p. 355.) If Cromwell’s moderation had been met in a corresponding spirit, there is no reason to think that he would have overstepped the line which he had traced for himself. But when he found that his parliaments questioned the authority under which they were called together, and that he was in danger of being deprived of the limited power he had reserved to himself, then it must be acknowledged that he adopted a more arbitrary policy. In judging of the conduct of Milton, due regard must be had to the character and circumstances of the times. A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot. But, at the period in question, the violence of religious and political animosities rendered a stable and happy settlement next to impossible. The choice lay not between Cromwell and· liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an irregular manner, the foundations of an admirable system of liberty. The Stuarts, if restored, would have re-constituted the despotism which had been overthrown. That Milton, therefore, made a wise election no one can doubt who compares the history of the protectorate with that of the thirty years which succeeded it, the darkest and most disgraceful period in the annals of England. {Edinburgh Review, ubi supra.} ]
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With the Second Defence of the People of England, and the two subsequent replies to Morus, Milton closed his controversial labours. He still continued to serve his country in the character of Latin secretary; but his disapprobation of the actual state of affairs is evident from more than one of his letters; and he seems to have acquiesced in the existing evil only because it was irremediable, and inferior in degree to the calamity of a restoration. Mortified and disappointed, he now sought relief from the feelings which oppressed him by engaging in the prosecution of three great works; his History of England, of which he only completed two additional books; his Thesaurus Linguae Latinae; and his immortal epic poem of Paradise Lost. Of the History it is only necessary to remark, in addition to what has already been stated, that, prior to its publication in 1670, it was mutilated by the caprice of the licenser, who struck out one of its most spirited and brilliant passages; that the portion expurgated was printed separately in 1681; and that it was afterwards restored to its proper place in the edition of the author’s prose works published in 1738. The Thesaurus, for which he had made large collections, was never published; but the materials which he had amassed, occupying in manuscript three large folio volumes, were presented by his nephew Philips to the editors of the Cambridge Dictionary, by whom they appear to have been used in the preparation of that work for the press. « To collect a dictionary,” says Johnson, “seems a work of all others the least practicable in a state of blindness, because it depends upon perpetual and minute inspection and collation. Nor would Milton probably have begun it after he had lost his eyes; but having had it always before him, he continued it ‘ almost to his dying day.’” This work indeed appears to have formed a part of that change of literary labour in which he delighted; and it is curious in another point of view, as showing that his mind, with all its energies, could instantaneously pass from invention to compilation, from the glorious visions of fancy to the dry and sterile drudgery of mere verbal collation. As to the third object upon which his powers were at this time exerted, his immortal epic, we shall forbear adverting to it until the time of its completion and publication.

In this variety of vigorous and effective intellectual exertion did Milton employ his leisure hours during the remainder of the protectorate. He was evidently dissatisfied with the state of public affairs; but fearing lest he might aggravate existing evils by any symptom of alienation, and unwilling to break with the protector, in whom his confidence was not yet entirely destroyed, he repressed his feelings, and waited in expectation of better times. In 1655 he composed the manifesto issued by the protec tor to justify his war with Spain; and in 1657 Andrew Marvell was associated with him in the office of Latin secretary. In 1658 he published, under the title of The Cabinet Council, a manuscript of Sir Walter Raleigh’s, consisting of aphorisms on the art of government. But from this and other occupations his mind was soon called to circumstances of an afflicting and embarrassing kind.

In the September of this year, Cromwell, broken down by the cares and anxietiesof government, finished his splendid but unenviable career. He died surrounded by difficulties which even his powerful mind knew not how to surmount; suffering acutely under domestic calamity; and leaving the nation a prey to the violence of factions which his vigorous authority alone had for a time restrained. His successor in the protectorate, Richard Cromwell, was not a pilot able to weather the storm now gathering; and at the end of nine months he resigned his perilous office, descending without regret to the safe level of a private station. The council of officers then summoned the relics of the Long Parliament to re-assume the guidance of the commonwealth; but the contests between them and the army ruined the last hopes of the friends of liberty, and introduced a species of anarchy which threatened the setting up of a military despotism. The Presbyterians, taking advantage of these events, now openly avowed their disaffection to the ruling powers, and united themselves heartily with the royalists. This extraordinary conflict of parties, and the confusion which ensued, opened a field to Monk, then governor of Scotland, for the display of his inconstancy, cunning, and perfidy. Favoured by his situation, and solicited at once by the Presbyterians, the people, and the parliament, he was enabled to betray all who confided in him, to abandon his old associates to the butchery of legal vengeance, and to surrender the nation, without a single stipulation in its favour. Never was a counter-revolution effected by such accumulated dissimulation, treachery, and perfidy; never did the liberties of a nation sink under the temporary ascendency of a meaner, a baser, or a more unprincipled traitor, than the man by whom the Restoration was achieved.

Whilst these events were passing, in the space between the protector’s death and the return of Charles, the mind of Milton must have been agitated with severe disquietude. He had seen the structure of liberty which his ardent imagination had erected, dissolve like a vision into air, leaving not a trace or vestige behind. All that was good, or prognostic of good, had passed away; and he now saw nothing but the selfishness of faction triumphing over the rights and the patience of the nation, and precipitating the cause which it professed to support into irretrievable ruin. At this crisis, when England had need of him, Milton was not [7:15:101] wanting to his country. Apprehensive of returning intolerance, he published two treatises, devoted to the consideration of two opposite evils. One of these was entitled A Treatise on the Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes; and the other, Considerations touching the likeliest Means to remove Hirelings out of the Church. Both these works are written with beautiful simplicity and earnestness, and should be studied by all who wish to understand the principles of religious liberty. In the first of them, he asserts the entire liberty of conscience, and, by arguments drawn from the sacred writings, demonstrates that, in matters purely religious, the interference of the magistrate is unlawful. In the second, he allows the propriety of a maintenance for Christian ministers; but, denying the divine right, as well as the political expediency, of tithes, he contends that pastors ought to be supported by the contributions of their own immediate flocks. In short, the immortal author of the Paradise Lost here advocates what, in the language of the present day, is called the voluntary principle.^[38. “To the politician,” says Dr Symmons, “who contemplates in this country the advantages of a church establishment, and sees it in union with the most perfect toleration, or to the philosopher who discovers in the weakness of human nature the necessity of present motives to awaken exertion and to stimulate attention, the plan recommended by our author would appear to be visionary or pernicious; and we should not hesitate to condemn it, if its practicability and inoffensive consequence were not incontrovertibly established by the testimony of America. From Hudson’s Bay, with the small interruption of Canada, to the Mississippi, this immense continent beholds the religion of Jesus, unconnected with the patronage of government, subsisting in independent yet friendly communities, breathing that universal charity which constitutes its vital spirit, and offering, with its distinct yet blending tones, one grand combination of harmony to the ear of its heavenly Father.” CLìfe of ΜiUοη, p. 475.) ]

The current of national opinion was now running strongly in favour of monarchy. Harassed by the conflict of parties, and the disorders thereby occasioned, the people were in a state of mind favourable to the projects of Monk, and, regarding the restoration of the kingly power as a less evil than the frightful state of anarchy which now prevailed, were prepared to join him in setting up the old form of government. The earnest protestations of Monk, and the existence of a parliament in whi<5h the royalists formed an inconsiderable party, still supported the hopes of the republicans; but Milton, fully aware of what was passing around him, and indignant at the outrages committed by the army, discovered his serious apprehension of the general result, in a letter to a friend, dated the 20th of October 1659, in which he plainly hinted his suspicions of Monk, whom circumstances had rendered the arbiter of his country’s fate. “Unless these things, as I have above proposed,” says he, “be once settled, in my fear, which God avert, we instantly ruin; or at least become the servants of one or another single person, the secret author and fomenter of these disturbances” Almost immediately afterwards he addressed a letter to Monk, which was first published by Toland, entitled The Present Means and Brief Delineation of a Free Commonwealth ; urging him to adopt such measures as seemed best calculated to prevent the restoration of “kingship,” and put an end to civil commotion. And, after an interval of a few months, this was followed by another tract, entitled A Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free CommonweaUh, in which he employs all his eloquence in demonstrating the preference of a republican to a monarchical government, and in exposing the evils which would infallibly result from a restoration. He was accustomed to say, that “the mere trappings of a monarchy could support a commonwealth yet, in this work, as well as in his Brief Delineation, he betrays an apprehension of an unqualified appeal to the people. The realization of a püre republic he felt to be impossible; and he therefore proposed such a modification of that form of government as would, in his estimation, be a sort of mean between the two extremes of monarchy on the one hand, and a pure democracy on the other.^[39. This production was made the subject of a sportive and a serious reply. The former, a ludicrous pamphlet, affecting to issue from Harrington’s republican club, was called The Censure of the Rota upon Mr Milton’s Book; and the latter was styled The Dignity of Kingship asserted, in answer to Mr Milton’s Ready and Easy Way. ] His last effort in behalf of the republican cause was a short but very forcible commentary, entitled Brief Notes, on a loyal sermon preached by Dr Matthew Griffith, one of the late king’s chaplains; and with this, to which L’Estrange wrote a sharp reply entitled No Blind Guides, terminated the political controversies of the author of Paradise Lost.

All his hopes were now blasted. Monk having consummated his perfidy, Charles was advancing to take possession of the throne; and the Latin secretary had acted too distinguished a part in opposition to him and his family, not to be endangered by the event. He was therefore hurried from his house in Petty France, and concealed in that of a friend in Bartholomew Close, where he remained till the passing of the act of oblivion, in the exceptions of which his name was happily not included. To whom, on this emergency, he was indebted for his preservation, has frequently been inquired, and variously explained, but never fully ascertained. The most probable conjecture is, that he was saved by the intercession of his friends Andrew Marvell, Sir Thomas Clarges, and Secretary Morrice, powerfully supported by Sir William Davenant, whom, in 1651, Milton had rescued from similar peril.^[40. “The principal instrument,” says Bishop Newton, “in obtaining Milton’s pardon, was Sir William Davenant, out of gratitude for Milton having procured his release when he was taken prisoner. It was life for life. Davenant had been saved by Milton’s interest, and in return Milton was saved by Davenant’s intercession.” For the existence of Davenant’s obligation to Milton, we have the testimony of Wood {Athenae. Oxon. ii∙ 412); and for the subsequent part of the story, the evidence may be distinctly traced from Richardson to Pope, and from Pope to Betterton, the immediate client and intimate of Davenant. (Symmons’s Life of Μilton i pp. 489, 490.) ] Whilst he remained in concealment, the House of Commons, by a formal vote, condemned his two great political works, the Iconoclastes, and the Defence of the People of England, to be burned by the hands of the common hangman; the only honour which that servile and degraded body could confer upon them. On the passing of the act of oblivion, 29th August 1660, Milton came forth from his hiding-place, where he had remained nearly four months; but, though his life had been spared, he was still persecuted by his enemies. Towards the close of the same year he was in custody of the serjeant-at-arms, having probably been seized in consequence of a warrant for his apprehension issued by the House of Commons on the 16th of June; but, on the 15th of December, the house ordered him to be forthwith released on paying his fees. Milton, however, appears to have objected to the condition of his discharge; for there is an entry in the journals, dated the 17th, to the effect, that “a complaint being made that the serjeant-at-arms had demanded excessive fees for the imprisonment of Mr Milton, it be referred to the committee of privileges to examine this business, and to determine what is fit to be given to the serjeant for his fees in this case.”

On his return to society, Milton took a house in Holborn, near Red Lion Square; but this he occupied only for a short term, as, in 1662, we find him residing in Jewin Street, from which he afterwards removed to a small house in the Artillery-walk, adjoining Bunhill Fields, where he [7:15:102] continued during the remainder of his life. Whilst in Jewin Street he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull, daughter of a gentleman ’ of Cheshire. This step was rendered necessary by the undutiful conduct of his two daughters, upon whose attentions he was solely dependent for the management of his domestic concerns. His nuncupative will, which was discovered in the prerogative registry, and published by Warton, affords a glimpse into the interior of his house, and shows him to have been amiable and injured in that private scene, in which alone he has generally been considered as liable to censure, or, at least, not entitled to affection. In this will, and the papers connected with it, we find the venerable father complaining of his “unkind children,” for neglecting him because he was blind; and he was even compelled, by their injurious conduct, to appeal against them to his servants. They sold his books; combined with the maid-servant, whom they advised to cheat their father in her marketings; and otherwise acted a most unnatural part A wife was therefore necessary to rescue him from such undutiful, not to say dangerous, hands; and in the lady whom his friendly physician, Dr Paget, selected for him, he appears to have obtained such a helpmate as his circumstances required. About the time of his marriage he published a short treatise on the Accidence of Grammar ; and, in the same year, he printed another manuscript of Raleigh’s entitled Aphorisms of State.

Soon after his establishment in Jewin Street, Ellwood the Quaker was introduced to his acquaintance by Dr Paget. For some years, his daughters, whom he had taught to read Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and French, as well as their own tongue, were in the habit of reading to him such works as he desired; but when this became an irksome employment, and they complained, he released them from the task, and trusted to the kind offices of several friends, whose solicitude to minister to his comfort and enjoyment he gratefully acknowledges in some of his familiar epistles. The kindness of Dr Paget provided him with a more certain and steady resource. Eilwood, in the hope of advancing himself in classical knowledge, solicited an introduction to Milton in the character of a reader; and in this great man, conciliated by the ingenuousness of his manners and the goodness of his heart, the worthy Quaker soon found a friend as well as an instructor. To be near his illustrious friend, Ellwood took lodgings in the vicinity of Jewin Street, and every afternoon, that of Sunday excepted, read to him such Roman authors as he was desirous of hearing. From this accidental intercourse with the author of the Paradise Lost, Ellwood is raised into an object of particular interest; and, in the history of his life which he left behind him, he not only speaks with the most affectionate regard of Mil ton, from whom, he says, he uniformly experienced the kindness of a friend and the instructious of a master,^[41. Milton had a strong dislike of the English mode of pronouncing Latin. In his letter to Hartlib, he had declared that “to read Latin with an English mouth is as ill a hearing as Law French.” He therefore required that Ellwood should learn and practise the Italian pronunciation, which, he said, was necessary in conversing with foreigners. Ellwood complied with this injunction, and finally succeeded, though not without considerable difficulty, in accommodating his pronunciation to the taste of his master. When, in reading the classics, however, his tones betrayed his ignorance of what he read, Milton would, on such occasions, stop him, and explain what seemed not to be understood; thus repaying the trouble of reading with the benefit of instruction. Their intercourse, however, experienced several interruptions. ] but relates many interesting particulars respecting die literary occupations of his patron, and also gives us an insight into the unassuming and condescending character of the great poet. The following passage in his narrative fixes the date of the completion of the Paradise Lost, and also states the origin of the Paradise Regained.

“Some time before I went to Alesbury prison,^[42. He had been seized in a Quaker meeting by a party of soldiers, and, along with his associates, detained for a considerable time in a succession of prisons. ] in 1665,

I was desired by my'guardian master, Milton, to take a house for him in the neighbourhood where I dwelt, that he might get out of the city, for the safety of himself and family, the pestilence then growing hot in London. I took a pretty box for him in Giles Chalfont (in Buckinghamshire), a mile from me, of which I gave him notice; and intended to have waited on him, and seen him well settled in it, but was prevented by that imprisonment. But now being released, and returned home, I soon made a visit to him, to welcome him into the country. After some common discourses had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his; which, being brought, he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with me, and read it at my leisure; and when I had so done, to return it to him with my judgment thereupon.

“When I came home, and had set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem Paradise Lost. After I had. with the best attention, read it through, I made him another visit, and returned him his book, with due acknowledgment of the favour he had done me, in communicating it to me. He asked me how I liked it, and what I thought of it; which I modestly but freely told him: And after some further discourse about it, I pleasantly said to him, ‘ Thou hast said much here about Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found ?' He made me no answer, sate some time in a muse, then broke off that discourse, and fell upon another subject.

“After the sickness was over, and the city well cleansed and become safely habitable again, he returned thither. And when afterwards I went to wait on him there, which I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions drew me to London, he showed me his second poem, called Paradise Regained, and in a pleasant tone said to me, ∙' This is owing to you; for you put it into my head, by the question you put to me at Chalfont; which before I had not thought of.”^[43. Ellwood’s Life, pp. 134, 135. ]

It thus appears that, by the middle of the year 1666, Milton had completed his two sacred poems, having occupied in all several years in the composition of Paradise Lost, but not more than ten months in that of Paradise Regained. The latter, indeed, seems to have been begun and brought to a conclusion during his residence at Chalfont, which probably extended from June or July 1665 to March or April 1666. But it was not until the lapse of a year after their completion that he committed either of these poems to the press. His contract with Samuel Simmons the bookseller, for the copyright of Paradise Lost, is dated the 27th of April 1667, and in the course of that year was given to the world the first edition of this mighty effort of intellectual power. “It is a great wonder,” says Toland, “this piece should ever be brought to perfection, considering the many interruptions that obstructed it. His youth was spent in study, travelling, and religious controversy; his manhood was employed in affairs of state, or those of his family; and in his latter years, to speak nothing of a decaying fancy, nor of his personal troubles, he was, by reason of his blindness, obliged to write, by whatsoever hand came next, ten, or twenty, or thirty verses at a time, and consequently must trust the judgment of others, at least for the pointing and orthography.”^[44. Toland’s Life of Milton, p. 117. ] But when this immortal epic poem had, in [7:15:103] these painful and affecting circumstances, been completely prepared for the press, its birth was on the point of being intercepted by the ignorance or malice of the licenser, who had been restored with the monarchy, and whose quick nostril detected the scent of treason in the well-known simile of the sun in the first book.

As when the sun new risen Looks through the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon, In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.

Tomkyns, however, was, it seems, appeased, and the Paradise Lost saw the light unmutilated by malignity orcaprice, being born to an immortality of fame.

Much surprise and concern have been expressed at the small pecuniary benefit which the author derived from this proud display of his genius, and at the slowness with which the work laboriously won its way to public estimation. To us, who are accustomed to consider the Paradise Lost without any reference to its author or the age in which it appeared, it must certainly seem deplorable that the copyright of such a composition should be sold for the sum of five pounds, and a contingent payment, on the sale of two thousand six hundred copies, of two other equal sums, or fifteen pounds in all. But if we consider the circumstances of the times, and call to mind the prominent part which Milton had taken in defence of the regicides and republicans, we should rather be surprised at the adventurous liberality of the bookseller who would give even this small sum for the production of a man living under the heaviest frown of the restored dynasty, and who was only remembered as the associate and apologist of the men who had overthrown the monarchy. Nor have the reflections which have been made upon the slow apprehensions of the men of that age any better foundation than the strictures which have been passed upon the parsimony of the bookseller. At a time when learning and the love of reading were far from being so widely diffused as at present, the sale of the poem was, all things considered, large and rapid. At the end of two years, thirteen hundred copies had been disposed of; in five years a second edition was issued; after another interval of four years, a third was called for; and before the end of twenty years, it had passed through six editions;^[45. Milton lived to obtain the whole fifteen pounds, for which he had conditionally stipulated, on the 21st of December 1680; and his widow sold the absolute copyright, which he had bequeathed to her, for the sum of eight pounds. Twenty-three pounds was therefore the entire sum which Milton and his family received for the copyright of the Paradise Lost. It is curious enough that the instrument by which Milton conveyed this copyright to his publisher was not long ago purchased by Samuel Rogers for the sum of seventy-five or eighty pounds, thus producing to its possessor nearly four times as much as the poem did to its great author. Such is fortune and such is fame. ] “a circumstance,” says Dr Symmons, “which abundantly proves that it was not destitute of popularity before it obtained its full and final dominion over the public taste from the patronage of Somers, and still more from the criticism of Addison.” In the second edition, which was published in 1674, the author divided the seventh and the tenth book each into two, and thus changed the original distribution of his work from ten to twelve books.

Milton himself informs us that, after much deliberation, “long chusing and beginning late,” he fixed upon Paradise Lost as the subject of his epic poem; a design so comprehensive that, as Johnson observes, it could be justified only by success. At a very early period of life he appears to have had in contemplation some production in the very highest region of poetry. The idea accompanied him to Italy, where, from the example of Tasso, and the conversation of Tasso’s friend the Marquis of Villa, it took the form of a determinate purpose, and seems to have become immoveably fastened in his mind. But although he had made a covenant with his own mind to produce something which men should not willingly let die, yet a long period appears to have elapsed before his choice of a subject was finally determined; and there has been much curious inquiry, and anxious speculation, as to the circumstances by which, after long hesitation, it was at length fixed on Paradise Lost. It has been sought to detect the first spark which kindled this magnificent idea in the mind of the poet; and the sublime has been rendered ridiculous by the conceit of an overstrained ingenuity. Voltaire, on his visit to England in 1727, suggested that the original hint of Paradise Lost had been supplied by an Italian comedy called Adamo, written by Andreini, a strolling player, and stuffed with bombast, conceit, and allegory. This suggestion, however, attracted little notice at the time when it was offered. It has since been rejected with contemptuous disdain by Johnson; and we cannot think, with Dr Symmons. that it has derived any new importance from its adoption by Hayley and Warton.^[46. The Adamo opens with a chorus of angels, and one cherub speaks for the rest in the following strains: A la lira del ciel iri sia l’arco, Corde le sfere sien, note le stelle, Sien le pause e i sospir l’aure novelle, E’I tempo i tempi a misurar non parco. This, rendered into prose, reads thus: “Let the rainbow be the fiddlestick of the fiddle of heaven; let the spheres be the strings, and the stars the notes; let the winds mark the cadences; and let time carefully beat the measure.” “But,” says Voltaire, “Milton pierced through the absurdity of the performance to the hidden majesty of the subject, which being altogether unfit for the stage, yet (for the genius of Milton, and his only) might be the foundation of an epic poem and he straightway concludes that, from this “ridiculous trifle,” Milton actually “took the first hint of the noblest work which human imagination has ever attempted, and which he executed more than twenty years after.” We question much whether the “absurdity” of the player’s “performance” be not greatly outdone by that of the critic; and whether, in the competition of nonsense and extravagance, Andreini has not been eclipsed by Voltaire. ] The conception appears to have developed itself gradually. At first it appeared in a seminal state, pregnant with latent possibilities of excellence; by and by it assumed a more distinct form, striking out roots full of life, and indicative of vigorous vegetation; anon it expanded in growth, and seemed about to take the shape of one of those wild and irregular dramas, anciently called Mysteries; and at last, it towered in all its grandeur and magnificence, the mightiest production of creative genius that the human mind has ever elaborated. It is curious to reflect on the steadiness of its growth under a complication of adverse circumstances; it is deeply interesting to behold it, like a Norwegian pine, ascending to a majestic elevation beneath a dreary and inclement sky, deriving its nurture and its strength from the very rocks into the crevices of which it has struck its roots, and braving at the same moment the tempest that rages above, and the wild commotion of the elements below.

The only poem of modern times which can be compared with the Paradise Lost is the Divina Commedia. The subject of Milton in some points resembles that of Dante, but he has treated it in a very different manner. “The poetry of Mil ton,” says Mr Macaulay, “differs from that [7:15:104] of Dante, as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differ from the picture-writing of Mexico The images which Dante employs speak for themselves; they stand simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a signification which is often discernible only to the initiated. Their value depends less on what they directly represent than on what they remotely suggest.” Whatever Dante undertakes to describe, he never shrinks from describing. His details are exact, and his similes are the illustrations of a traveller. In his descriptions he specifies shape, colour, sound, smell, and taste; he counts numbers, and he measures size. And, with respect to his similes, they are introduced, not for the sake of any beauty in the objects from which they are drawn, not for the sake of any ornament which they may impart to the poem, but simply to make the meaning of the writer as clear to the reader as to himself. They are merely picture-writing translated into words. But how different from these kuriological details are the dim intimations of Milton. He has never thought of taking the dimensions of Satan, but contents himself with giving us a vague idea of vast bulk. The fiend lies stretched out, huge in length, floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth-born enemies of Jove, or to the fabulous kraken which the mariner mistakes for an island. When he turns to do battle with the angels, he towers like Teneriffe or Mount Atlas; and in height he reaches the sky. Compare with this Dante’s description of the gigantic spectre of Nimrod, with a face as large and as broad as the dome of St Peter’s at Rome, his other limbs in proportion, and his stature such that three tall Germans would in vain have attempted to reach his hair. Again, the lazar-house in the eleventh book of Paradise Lost presents the same contrast with the last ward of Malbolge in Dante. Milton avoids loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn and appalling imagery; Despair is hurrying from couch to couch in horrible mockery of the wretches on whom he bestows his unbidden attendance; and Death is brandishing his dart over them, but, notwithstanding their supplications, delaying to strike. Dante, on the other hand, is as physically precise as if he had written his description in a pest-house, whilst his ears were stunned with the moans of the dying, and his nostrils offended with the stench of the dead. Each in his own department is incomparable; and each has, wisely or fortunately, chosen a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar genius to the greatest advantage. The Divina Commedia is a personal narrative; Dante is himself the supposed witness of all that he relates.^[47. Edinburgh Review, vol. xlii. pp. 316, 317- ] The Paradise Lost is a revelation of things beheld in vision “beyond the flaming bounds of space and time,” where even “angels tremble while they gaze,” and where imagination may tire itself “without the censure of extravagance.”

Of all the poets who have introduced into their works the agency of supernatural beings, Milton is the most successful. In this respect Dante is decidedly inferior to him. Milton, it is true, has been censured for the ambitious attempt to give sensible action to the negative idea of spirit; or, in other words, for ascribing to spirits functions of which, according to our conceptions of spiritual beings, they are incapable. But is this censure well founded, or in accordance with the true principles of poetry? We think not. Spirit is something of which we have no distinct idea. We infer its existence, but we can define it only by negatives, and reason about it only by symbols. We have the name, but we have no image of the thing; and the business of poetry is with images or pictures, not with abstractions. Logicians may reason as they please; but the great mass of mankind can never feel an interest in their transcendental speculations. It is through the sensible alone that their minds can be raised to the conception of the invisible and immaterial. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry cannot be explained upon any other principle. The Persians thought it impious to exhibit the Creator under a human form; yet even they transferred to the Sun the worship which, in speculation, they considered as due only to the Supreme Intelligence. This is an inevitable consequence of the condition of humanity, when it is unenlightened by revelation. Hence it may be inferred that a poet who should affect that metaphysical accuracy for the want of which Milton is censured, would scarcely escape a disgraceful failure. His great art, indeed, consists in the very indistinctness with which he has been reproached. On the one hand, it was absolutely necessary for him to clothe his spirits with material forms; and, on the other, he had to avoid such obvious incongruities and contrarieties as neutralize even the most exquisite colouring of fancy, and destroy that illusion, or modified kind of belief, which it is the object of poetry to produce. How was this to be accomplished? It is easy to say with Johnson, that “he should have secured the consistency of his system by keeping immateriality out of sight, and seducing the reader to drop it from his thoughts.” Such “seduction” was altogether impossible. The contrary opinion had taken too full possession of the minds of men to be dislodged by the art of the poet; and the attempt to do so would infallibly have annihilated that quasi-belief which poetry requires, and which it misses entirely its object if it fails to produce. Milton, therefore, took his stand between the material and immaterial system, on the confines of the sensible and the spiritual, leaving the whole ambiguous and undefined. By so doing, he has no doubt exposed himself to the charge of inconsistency; but though philosophically in the wrong, we cannot help thinking that he was poetically in the right.^[48. Ibid. p. 320. ] Mystery is the appropriate and indispensable garment of that muse which adventures to sing of the beings and the things which belong to another world.

The spirits of Milton are as unlike those of Dante as the genius of the one poet differs from that of the other. His fiends, too, are wonderful creations. They are neither metaphysical abstractions on the one hand, nor wicked men or ugly beasts on the other. They have enough in common with humanity to be conceivable to human beings; and their characters, like their forms, are marked by a certain dim resemblance to those of men, but expanded to gigantic dimensions, and veiled in mysterious obscurity. Perhaps the gods and demons of Aeschylus may best bear a comparison with the angels and devils of Milton; and in the Prometheus of the former may be discovered a considerable resemblance to the Satan of the latter. But such comparison, if pursued, will show the superior, indeed the alltranscending, power of the English poet. Prometheus, for instance, is not sufficiently superhuman. He is too much depressed and agitated; too sensible of pain, too intolerant of misery. His resolution is not sustained by inherent energy, but seems to depend on the knowledge he possesses, that he holds the fate of his torturer in his hands, and that the hour of his deliverance will surely come. “But,” in the eloquent language of Mr Macaulay, “Satan is a creature of another sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is victorious over the extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which cannot be conceived without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and even exults. Against the sword of Michael, against the thunder of Jehovah, against the flaming lake and the marl burning with solid fire, against the [7:15:105] prospect of an eternity of uninterrupted misery, his spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its own innate energies, requiring no support from anything external, nor even from hope itself.” In regard to the personifications of Sin and Death, with the actions attributed to them, we must dissent in opinion from both Addison and Johnson. When Milton formed these personages, and blended them with the agents of his poem, he appears to have availed himself of an indisputable prerogative of his art; and if any authority were wanted to support this particular exercise of the privilege, it might be found in the sacred Scriptures. In these Sin is more than once distinctly personified; and Death is not only described as the last enemy whom the Son of God is to vanquish, but, in a sublime passage of the Apocalypse, he is invested with a specific and formidable agency, mounted on a pale horse, with all hell following in his train.^[49. Edinburgh Review, vol. xlii. pp. 321, 322. Symmons’s Life of Milton, pp. 530, 531. ]

But, without prosecuting contrasts, or entering further into details, we may observe generally, that Paradise Lost may be considered, first, with reference to the plan and arrangement of the poem; secondly, in regard to the subject, with its difficulties and advantages; thirdly, as respects the poet’s object, the ⅛Λυμιον εν μ∙Aω, or the spirit in the letter of the fable; and, lastly, as to its characteristic excellencies. The plan is remarkable for its exquisite simplicity and its unity. In the Iliad many of the books might change places without any detriment to the story. But it is not so in Paradise Lost. That poem alone really has a beginning, a middle, and an end; it possesses a totality by which it is distinguished from the ab ovo birth and parentage or straight line of history. As to the subject, again, the superiority of Paradise Lost is obvious in this respect, that, unlike the Iliad, which is a Greek poem, and languid to all but Greeks, the interest transcends the limits of a nation or race; its main excellence is attributable to Christianity, yet the interest is in fact wider than Christendom, comprehending also the Jewish and Mahommedan worlds. In Homer, the supposed importance of the subject is an after-thought of the critics; in Milton, its real importance is inseparably blended with the present condition and future destinies of man. Nor is the object of the poet unsuited to the grandeur of his design; it is

That to the height of this great argument He may assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to man.

It is to be observed, however, that his views in this respect take their colour from the great controversy of his age, namely, the origin of evil. He asserts the will, but declares for its enslavement out of an act of the will itself. Lastly, as to the execution, the language and versification are peculiar, in being more necessarily correspondent to each other than in any other poem. The connection of the sentences, and the position of the words, are exquisitely artificial; but the collocation is rather according to universal logic, or the general laws of human thoughts, emotions, and passions, than according to the more confined logic of grammar.^[50. Coleridge’s Literary Remains, vol. i. p. 17L et seq. ] Milton attempted to make the English language obey this logic as perfectly as the Latin or the Greek; to impart to it the susceptibility of diversified collocation which distinguishes the one, with something of that wonderful flexibility and power of adaptation which forms the prominent characteristic of the other; and, notwithstanding occasional harshness of construction, he has been astonishingly successful. In fine, sublimity constitutes the pre-eminent attribute of the Paradise Lost. ^[51. Channing’s Remarks on the ( haracter and Writings of John Milton have been extolled by many persons, who impeach their own judgment by such commendation. They are merely pulpit criticisms, constructed on the false principle of making out a case for Milton, as if his fame required the help of such exaggeration. They are elaborate and magniloquent, but neither new nor discriminating; and, to speak freely, the whole seems to be a laboured and somewhat tumid paraphrase of Lord Bacon’s well-known definition of poetry, a tissue of ambitious commonplace. ] There is a greatness arising from images of effort and daring, and also from those of moral endurances; in Milton both these kinds are united. From the causes already explained, his fallen angels are invested with a dramatic reality, which is the more astonishing, considering the difficulty of giving to·spiritual natures distinctness and individuality.^[52. The following well-known lines of Dryden show how just an estimate he had formed both of the comparative and the absolute merits of Milton: Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn: The first in loftiness of thought surpassed; The next in majesty; in both the last; The force of nature could no further go: To make a third, she joined the former two. ]

In 1670 Milton published b.is History of England, and in 1671 he gave to the world the Paradise Regained and the Samson Agonistes, poems of very unequal merit. Paradise Regained was probably considered by the author as the theological completion of his design; and he is said to have regarded it with a strong preference. But it possessed no charms for the multitude, notwithstanding the weight of sentiment and knowledge which it everywhere displays; and it seems to have immediately fallen into that state of neglect from which, in spite of all the efforts of Jorton, Warburton, and Dunster, it has never since had the good fortune to emerge. Yet it is by no means unworthy of the author. It is embellished with several exquisite passages, and, in some of its finer parts, it shows the undiminished power of the author of Paradise Lost. The Samson Agonistes is a drama composed upon the ancient model, but, like the Comus, it is in reality a lyric poem in the form of a play. Its delineation of character, though not various, is discriminate and just; its sentiments are full of dignity; its diction is severe, exquisite, and sublime; and the whole is overshadowed by a gloomy majesty, which at once subdues and elevates the imagination.

Milton did not disdain to perform the humblest services to literature. Having already condesended to publish a book of Latin Accidence for the use of children, he now, in 1672, supplied the young but more advanced student with a scheme of logic digested on the plan of Ramus, and entitled Artis Logicae plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata. In 1673, he published a short treatise, entitled Of true Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and what best Means may be used against the Growth of Popery. Milton was as little tolerant of papists as of prelates, and for the same reasons; he conceived (whether rightly or not is another question) that both were equally inimical to the existence of perfect civil and religious liberty. But it must not be supposed that he gave any countenance to persecution. On the contrary, the object of this treatise was to show, first, that no true Protestant [7:15:106] can persecute another on account of his religious opinions, without renouncing the main principles on which true religion is founded; and, secondly, to make it appear that popery, by placing human tradition above the Scriptures, and by inculcating implicit obedience to the pope as a temporal prince, is inimical to religion and to social order. The principle of toleration which he lays down is agreement in the sufficiency of the Scriptures; and this he denies to the papists, because they appeal to another authority. In the same year, he published a second edition of his youthful poems, with his Tractate on Education, in one volume, including some pieces not contained in the edition of 1645. In 1674, the last year of his honourable and laborious life, he published his familiar letters, and some university exercises; the former under the title of Epistolarum Familiarium Liber unus, and the latter under that of Prolusiones quaedarn Oratoriae in Collegio Christi habitae. He is also said, although on doubtful authority, to have translated into English the declaration of the Poles on elevating John Sobieski to the throne; and, with more probability, to have written, in the same year, a Brief History of Muscovy, which was published about eight years after his decease.

His health now declined fast, and the gout, which had for many years afflicted him, attacked him with a severity which prognosticated a fatal termination; yet such was the buoyancy of his spirits, that, even in the paroxysms of the disease, he would, according to Aubrey, “be very cheerful and sing.” On Sunday the 8th of November 1674, he expired without pain, and with so little appearance of death, that his departure was unperceived by the persons who waited in his bed-chamber. He closed a life ennobled by the constant exercise of high and rare endowments, in the sixty-sixth year of his age; and was buried in the chancel of St Giles, Cripplegate, all his learned and great friends in London accompanying his body, “not without a friendly concourse of the vulgar.”^[53. Toland’s Life of Milton, p. 137∙ ]

In the July preceding his decease, Milton had requested the attendance of his brother Christopher, and, in his presence, had made a disposition of his property by a formal declaration of his will. By this nuncupative testament, he bequeathed the whole of his property to his widow, assigning nothing to his daughters but their mother’s portion, which had not yet been paid, and the sums which he had expended upon their education. But after a full hearing of the cause, on a suit instituted against it by the daughters, the will was set aside, on the ground of certain informalities, by a decree of the judge of the Prerogative Court. The property which was thus ineffectually be queathed to the widow is said to have amounted to about fifteen hundred pounds, exclusively of goods. The publication of this will by Mr Warton has completely refuted the charge of unkindness to his children, which has often been alleged against Milton, and proves, as we have already shown, that he had but too good reason for his conduct in this matter.

Milton left three daughters, all by his first wife. Anne, the eldest, married a master builder, and died in her first confinement; Mary, the second, died in a single state; and Deborah, the youngest, married Abraham Clarke, a weaver in Spittalfields, by whom she had seven sons and three daughters. The distress into which she fell in consequence of this imprudent marriage experienced some late and partial relief from the liberality of Addison, and the less splendid munificence of Queen Caroline. Of her ten children two only left offspring; Caleb, who, marrying in the East Indies, had two sons, whose history cannot now be traced; and Elizabeth, who married Thomas Foster, a weaver, by whom she had three sons and four daughters, who all died young and without issue. In old age and in penury, Mrs Foster was discovered in a small chandler’s shop, and brought into public notice by Dr Birch and Dr Newton. Attention being thus awakened to the granddaughter of Milton, Comus was performed for her benefit in 1750; and Johnson, associated as he then was in the labours of the infamous Lauder, did not hesitate to supply the occasional prologue.^[54. For information as to Johnson’s undoubted connection with Lauder, the reader is referred to Dr Symmons’s Life of Milton, Appendix, p. 618, et seq. In fact, Lauder’s essay, entitled Milton’s Use and Imitation of the Moderns, in which he asserted that the author of the Paradise Lost had been guilty of numerous plagiarisms from some modern Latin poets of very inferior note, and produced from their works pretended extracts in support of his alleged discovery, is ornamented with a preface and a postscript by Johnson, who thus made himself an accomplice in the malignity, even if we admit his ignorance of the frauds committed by Lauder. But public detection and exposure awaited the forger. The whole mystery of iniquity was revealed to the world by Dr Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury, who, in a pamphlet entitled Milton vindicated from the charge of Plagiarism brought against him by Mr Lauder, laid bare a system of imposture unparalleled in the history of literature, and showed with what impudence the passages cited from Masenius, Staporstius, Taubmannus, and other obscure writers, had been adapted to the forger’s design by the interpolation of lines either immediately fabricated for the purpose, or transcribed without alteration from Hogg’s Latin translation of the Paradise Lost. Lauder, when convicted, addressed to Dr Douglas a letter of penitence and confession, which was written for him by Johnson, who no doubt felt it necessary to disavow his association with falsehood, but which, with characteristic duplicity, Lauder represented as his own composition. The criminality of the latter, however, required not this plea of guilty to insure condemnation. After a vain attempt to conciliate the high royalist party, by a miserable attempt to vindicate Charles I. from the charge of plagiarism, and to prove that Milton had interpolated the Εikon Basilikl with Pamela’s prayer from the Arcadia of Sidney, the unhappy wretch was compelled to fly from popular resentment to the West Indies, where he sunk into the grave amidst penury and contempt. Johnson, more fortunate than his coadjutor, survived the disgrace of this infamous alliance, to enjoy the opportunity of attempting, with deeper malignity, though not with any better success, to inflict a mortal wound on the invulnerable reputation of Milton. Multi Committunt eadem diverso crimina fato; Ille crucem sceleris pretium tulit, hic diadema. Juvenal. Sat. xiii. 1. 103. For abundant proofs of Johnson’s injustice, see Animadversions on his Life of Milton, appended to Ivimey’s biography of the poet, p. 349, et seq. ] The profits of the night were only L.130; yet this was the greatest benefaction that the Paradise Lost ever procured the author’s descendants. Mrs Foster died on the 9th of May 1754, and with her expired the last descendant of the immortal poet.

In his youth Milton was so remarkable for the fineness of his complexion, and the beauty of his features, that at Cambridge he was called “the lady of Christ’s College.” His eyes were dark grey, but full of animation; and his hair, which was light brown, he wore parted at the top, and clustering, as he describes that of Adam, upon his shoulders. His person was of the middle size, and well proportioned; not fat nor corpulent, but muscular and compact. In early life he was fond of manly sports, and excelled in the exercise of the sword. When blindness and the gout confined him in a great measure to his house, he contrived a swing for the purpose of exercise, as the essential preservative of health, and to this he regularly allotted one hour a day. His habits were those of a severe student, and a rigid economist of time. His temperance, varied by intervals of abstinence, we have [7:15:107] already noticed. In his youth he studied late, and prolonged his vigils far into the night; but he afterwards corrected this practice, retired to bed at the early hour of nine, and usually rose with the sun. The opening of his day was uniformly consecrated to religion. When he rose he heard a chapter of the Hebrew Bible read, and then occupied himself till twelve in private meditation, in listening whilst some author was read to him, or in dictating as some friendly hand supplied him with its pen. At noon commenced his hour of exercise, which was succeeded by his early and frugal dinner; after which he either played on the organ, or sung, or heard some one else sing. From musie, of which he was passionately fond, he returned with fresh vigour to study or composition. At six he received the visits of his friends; at eight he supped; and at nine, having smoked a pipe and drank a glass of water, he retired to his repose. Such was the scheme of his daily life.

His personal character corresponded with his high intellectual endowments. His manners were affable and graceful; his conversation was cheerful, instructive, and engaging. In his whole deportment, however, there was visible a certain elevation of mind, something of a conscious superiority, which could not altogether escape observation. His temper was grave without any taint of melancholy; he was bold in conception, and persevering in the execution of his purposes. His kindness was ardent, his resentments were keen; but the former was permanent, the latter were transitory; his friendships were lasting, his enmities expired with the immediate occasion. In his domestic relations, his conduct seems to have been unimpeachable; and if he was not fortunate in his family, no part of the blame rested with him. He was disinterested, generous, and forgiving. The malignant slanders of his enemies sometimes betrayed him into unbecoming recriminations; but his conduct to the Powells, who had so wantonly injured him, and other circumstances in his life, establish his superiority to any feeling of a vindictive nature. As to his own purity and sanctity of soul, the earnest and fearless declarations contained in his prose writings make it impossible to doubt. These he made before his most bitter enemies, rendered furious by a common cause, in which all the principles of ancient institutions were involved; yet none attempted to disprove them, scarcely any dared to call them in question. Johnson, in his biographical libel on Milton, a production worthy of the coadjutor of Lauder, has had the baseness to stigmatise him as “morose and malevolent,” as “impatient of social subordination, yet oppressive to those within his power,” as at once “a rebel, a tyrant, and a sycophant,” with much more to the same effect that is equally disgusting and false; but these slanderous imputations have been refuted by irrefragable evidence, and the life of the patriot and poet has been shown to be as pure as his soul was lofty and his genius unrivalled.

In strictness, Milton did not belong to any of the classes into which, in his time, his countrymen were divided. In his character the noblest qualities of every party were combined in harmonious union. “From the parliament and from the court,” says an eloquent writer, “from the conventicle and from the Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled.”^[55. Edinburgh Review, vol. xlii. p. 342. ] He lived “as ever in his great taskmaster’s eye,” keeping his mind continually fixed on an Almighty Judge and an eternal reward; and hence he acquired that fortitude, tranquillity, inflexible resolution, and contempt of external circumstances, for which the puritans were distinguished. But he was perfectly free from their wild delusions, savage manners, and ludicrous jargon, their contempt of science, and their aversion to innocent pleasure. There was none who had a stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honour and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and associations were such as harmonize best with other forms of government. But of these natural predilections or tendencies he was the master, not the slave; he enjoyed the pleasures of fascination without being fascinated; the politician was proof against the splendid illusions which enchanted the imagination of the poet. This will be understood by any one who contrasts the sentiments expressed in his treatises on prelacy, with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music in II Penseroso, which were nearly contemporaneous productions. But the public character of Milton derives its great and peculiar splendour from another source. The glory of the battle which he fought for that species of freedom which is the most valuable, and which was then the least understood, is exclusively his own. Here there is none to divide the palm with him. He looked farther and saw deeper than the men of his time. The objects which he justly conceived to be the most important, escaped the observation of his countrymen. They indeed raised their voices against Ship-money and the St
a
r-chamber, because all felt the pressure of the arbitrary impost, or were liable to oppression by the tyrannical tribunal. But it was reserved for Milton alone to discern the more fearful evils of moral and intellectual slavery, and point out the benefits which would result from the liberty of the press, and the unfettered exercise of private judgment.^[56. Ibid. p. 343. ]

Todd has, with laborious industry, collected a list of the editions of Milton’s poetical works, amounting in all to a hundred and four. The Paradise Lost has been translated into Greek, Latin, Italian, French, German, Dutch, and Portuguese; and of the other poems several have likewise been translated into various languages. The best Italian translations are those of Rolli and Mariottini. Of the French translations of Paradise Lost, there are four in prose and six in verse; but, upon the whole, the preference seems to be due to that of Jacques Delille, the celebrated author of the Jardins, which is enriched with an able preface by Michaud, the historian of the Crusades. “D’autres traductions estimables ont paru de nos jours,” says Villemain, “mais le monument qui a naturalisé parmi nous la gloire et la génie du poète Anglais c’est la traduction en vers de Jacques Delille. Nulle part Delille n’a montré un plus riche et plus heureux naturel, plus d’originalité, de chaleur, et d’éclat. Les negligences, les incorrections même, abondent, il est vrai, dans cet ouvrage, écrit avec autant de promptitude que de verve. Le caractère antique et simple del’Homère Anglais disparait quelquefois sous le luxe du traducteur. Ce n’est pas toujours Milton, mais c’est toujours un poète.”^[57. Biog. Univer. art. Milton. ] Of Milton∖works, thirty-five in number, thirty-three have been particularly noticed in the course of the preceding article, where they are arranged and described in their true order. The pieces omitted are of very inferior importance, being, 1. Joannis Philippi Responsio ad Apologiam Anonymi cujusdam; and, 2. Litterae Senatus Anglicanae, which has been 'incidentally referred to. (a.) [7:15:108]