schools that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians. Let me not be censured for this digression as pedantic or paradoxical; for, if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my side. It was his labour to turn philosophy from the study of nature to speculations upon life; but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off attention from life to nature. They seem to think that we. are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the stars: Socrates was rather of opinion, that what we had to learn was, how to do good, and avoid evil. "Οττι τοι ἐν μέγαροισι κακόντ' αγαθόντε τέτυκται. Of institutions we may judge by their effects. From this wonder working academy, I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small history of poetry, written in Latin by his nephew Philips, of which perhaps none of my readers has ever heard.* That, in his school, as in every thing else which he undertook, he laboured with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting. One part of his method 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. He set his pupils an example of hard study. and spare diet: only now and then he allowed himself to pass a day of festivity and indulgence with some gay gentlemen of Gray's Inn. He now began to engage in the controversies, of the times, and lent his breath to blow the flames of contention. In 1641 he published a treatise of Reformation, in two books, against the established church; being willing to help the puritans, who were, he says, "inferior to the prelates in learning." Hall, bishop of Norwich, had published an Humble Remonstrance, in defence of episcopacy; to which, in 1641, five ministers,† of whose names the first letters made the celebrated word Smectymnuus, gave their Answer. Of * Johnson did not here allude to Philips's "Theatrum Poetarum," as has been ignorantly supposed, but (as he himself informed Mr. Malone) to another work by the same author, entitled, "Tractatulus de Carmine dramatis Poetarum Veterum præsertim in Choris tragicis et veteris Comœdiæ. Cui subjungitur compendiose enumeratio poetarum (saltem quo. rum fame maxim emituit) qui a tempore Dantis Atigini usquead hunc ætatem claruerunt," &c. --J. B. + Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, William Spurstow.-R. this Answer a Confutation was attempted by the learned Usher; and to the Confutation Milton published a reply, entitled, "Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduced from the Apostolical Times, by virtue of those Testimonies which are alleged to that purpose in some late Treatises, one whereof goes under the Name of James, Lord Bishop of Armagh." I have transcribed this title to show, by his contemptuous mention of Usher, that he had now adopted the puritanical savageness of manners. His next work was, "The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy, by Mr. John Milton, 1642." 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, he yet knows not what, that may be of use and honour to his country. "This," says he, "is not to be obtained but by devout prayer to that 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 generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compassed, I refuse not to sustain this expectation." From a promise like this, at once fervid, pious, and rational, might be expected the "Paradise Lost." He published the same year two more pamphlets, upon the same question. To one of his antagonists, who affirms that he was "vomited out of the University," he answers in general terms. "The fellows of the college wherein I spent some years, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many times how much better it would content them that I should stay.-As for the common approbation or dislike of that place as now it is, that I should esteem or disesteem myself the more for that, too simple is the answerer, if he think to obtain with me. 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 kecking at, and is queasy; she vomits now out of sickness; but before it will be well with her, she must vomit by strong physic. The University, in the time of her better health, and my younger judgment, I never greatly admired, but now much less." This is surely the language of a man who thinks that he has been injured. He proceeds to describe the course of his conduct, and the train of his thoughts; and, because he has been suspected of incontinence, gives an account of his own purity: "that if I be justly charged,” says he, "with this crime, it may come upon. me with tenfold shame." The style of his piece is rough, and such per- famous assembly at Westminster, procured that the author should be called before the Lords; "but that House," says Wood, "whether approving the doctrine, or not favouring his accusers, did soon dismiss him.” There seems not to have been much written against him, nor any thing by any writer of eminence.* The antagonist that appeared is styled haps was that of his antagonist. This roughness he justifies by great examples in a long digression. Sometimes he tries to be humorous : "Lest I should take him for some chaplain in hand, some squire of the body to his prelate, one who serves not at the altar only, but at the court-cupboard, he will bestow on us a pretty model of himself; and sets me out half a dozen phthisical mottoes, wherever he had them, hop-by him, A serving man turned solicitor. Howel, ping short in the measure of convulsion fits; in which labour the agony of his wit having escaped narrowly, instead of well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumbring poesies. And thus ends this section, or rather dissection, of himself." Such is the controversial merriment of Milton; his gloomy seriousness is yet more offensive. Such is his malignity, that hell grows darker at his frown. His father, after Reading was taken by Essex, came to reside in his house; and his school increased. At Whitsuntide, in his thirty-fifth year, he married Mary, the daughter of Mr. Powell, a justice of the peace in Oxfordshire. He brought her to town with him, and expected all the advantages of a conjugal life. The lady, however, seems not much to have delighted in the pleasures of spare diet and hard study; for, as Philips relates, "having for a month led a philosophic life, after 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." Milton was too busy to much miss his wife; he pursued his studies; and now and then visited the Lady Margaret Leigh, whom he has mentioned in one of his sonnets. At last Michaelmas arrived; but the lady had no inclination to return to the sullen gloom of her husband's habitation, and therefore very willingly forgot her promise. He sent her a letter, but had no answer: he sent more with the same success. It could be alleged that letters miscarry; he therefore despatched a messenger, being by this time too angry to go himself. His messenger was sent back with some contempt. The family of the Lady were cavaliers. in his Letters, mentions the new doctrine with contempt;† and it was, I suppose, thought more worthy of derision than of confutation. He complains of this neglect in two sonnets, of which the first is contemptible, and the second not excellent. 1 From this time it is observed, that he became an enemy to the presbyterians, whom he had favoured before. He that changes his party by his humour, is not more virtuous than he that changes it by his interest; he loves himself rather than truth. His wife and her relations now found that Milton was not an unresisting sufferer of injuries; and perceiving that he had begun to put his doctrine in practice, by courting a young of one Doctor Davis, who was however not woman of great accomplishments, the daughter ready to comply, they resolved to endeavour a re-union. He went sometimes to the house of St. Martin's le-Grand, and at one of his usual one Blackborough, his relation, in the lane of another room, and implore forgiveness on her visits was surprised to see his wife come from knees. He resisted her intreaties for a while : "but partly," says Philips, " his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger or revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion and a firm league of peace." It were injurious to omit, that Milton afterwards received her father and her brothers in his own house, when they were distressed, with other royalists. He published about the same time his Arcopagitica, a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing. The danger of such unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of government, which human understanding seems hitherto unable to solve. If nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must always be the standard of truth: if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his projects, there can be In a man, whose opinion of his own merit was like Milton's, less provocation than this might have raised violent resentment. Milton soon determined to repudiate her for disobedience; and, being one of those who could easily find arguments to justify inclination, published (in 1644) "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce;" which was followed by "The Judgment of Martin Bucer, concerning Divorce ;" and the next year, his Tetrachordon, "Exposition of Milton's name, by Bishop Hall, in his Cases It was animadverted upon, but without any men. tions upon the four chief Places of Scripture of Conscience Decaie, 4, Case 2.-J. B. which treat of Marriage." This innovation was opposed, as might be expected, by the clergy, who, then holding their +He terms the author of it a shallow brain'd puppy; and thus refers to it in his index, "Of a noddy who wrote a book about winning.”—J. B. About the time that the army was new-modelled, (1645,) he removed to a smaller house in Holborn, which opened backward into Lincoln's Inn Fields. He is not known to have published any thing afterwards till the King's death, when, finding his murderers condemned by the presbyterians, he wrote a treatise to justify it, and to compose the minds of the people. no settlement; if every murmurer at government | be not much mistaken, somebody at, some time may diffuse discontent, there can be no peace; designed him for a soldier. and if every sceptic in theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The remedy against these evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed that every society may punish, though not prevent, the publication of opinions which that society shall think pernicious; but this punishment, though it may crush the author, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted because by our laws we can hang a thief. But, whatever were his engagements, civil or domestic, poetry was never long out of his thoughts. About this time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems appeared, in which the "Allegro" and "Penseroso," with some others, were first published. He had taken a larger house in Barbican for the reception of scholars; but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted refuge for a while, occupied his rooms. In time however, they went away: "and the house again," says Philips, "now looked like a house of the muses only, though the accession of scholars was not great. Possibly his having proceeded so far in the education of youth may have been the occasion of his adversaries calling him pedagogue and schoolmaster; whereas it is well known he never set up for a public school, to teach all the young fry of a parish; but only was willing to impart his learning and knowledge to his relations, and the sons of gentlemen who were his intimate friends, and that neither his writings nor his way of teaching ever savoured in the least of pedantry." Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and what might be confessed without disgrace. Milton was not a man who could become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his warmest friends seem not to have found; they therefore shift and palliate. He did not sell literature to all comers at an open shop; he was a chambermilliner, and measured his commodities only to his friends. Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this state of degradation, tells us that it was not long continued: and, to raise his character again, has a mind to invest him with military splendour: "He is much mistaken," he says, "if there was not about this time a design of making him an adjutant-general in Sir William Waller's army. But the new-modelling of the army proved an obstruction to the design." An event cannot be set at a much greater distance than by having been only designed about some time, if a man be not much mistaken. Milton shall be a pedagogue no longer: for, if Philips He made some "Remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the Irish Rebels." While he contented himself to write, he perhaps did only what his conscience dictated; and if he did not very vigilantly watch the influence of his own passions, and the gradual prevalence of opinions, first willingly admitted, and then habitually indulged; if objections, by being overlooked, were forgotten, and desire superinduced conviction; he yet shared only the common weakness of mankind, and might be no less sincere than his opponents. But as faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him, Milton is suspected of having interpolated the book called "Icon Basilike," which the council of state, to whom he was now made Latin secretary, employed him to censure, by inserting a prayer taken from Sidney's" Arcadia,” and imputing it to the King; whom he charges, in his "Iconoclastes," with the use of this prayer, as with a heavy crime, in the indecent language with which prosperity had emboldened the advocates for rebellion to insult all that is venerable or great: "Who would have imagined so little fear in him of the true all-seeing Deity-as, immediately before his death, to pop into the hands of the grave bishop that attended him, as a special relic of his saintly exercises, a prayer stolen word for word from the mouth of a heathen woman praying to a heathen god ?" The papers which the King gave to Dr. Juxon on the scaffold the regicides took away, so that they were at least the publishers of this prayer; and Dr. Birch, who had examined the question with great care, was inclined to think them the forgers. The use of it by adaptation was innocent; and they who could so noisily censure it, with a little extension of their malice, could contrive what they wanted to accuse. King Charles the Second, being now sheltered in Holland, employed Salmasius, professor of polite learning at Leyden, to write a defence of his father and of monarchy; and, to excite his industry, gave him, as was reported, a hundred Jacobuses. Salmasius was a man of skill in languages, knowledge of antiquity, and sagacity of emendatory criticism, almost exceeding all hope of human attainment; and having, by excessive praises, been confirmed in great confidence of himself, though he probably had not much considered the principles of society, or is said, commended the Defence of the People, her the rights of government, undertook the em-purpose must be to torment Salmasius, who was ployment without distrust of his own quali- then at court; for neither her civil station, nor fications; and, as his expedition in writing her natural character, could dispose her to favour the doctrine, who was by birth a queen, and by temper despotic. was wonderful, in 1649 published "Defensio Regis.' That Salmasius was, from the appearance of Milton's book, treated with neglect, there is not much proof; but to a man so long accustomed to admiration, a little praise of his antagonist would be sufficiently offensive, and might incline him to leave Sweden, from which however he was dismissed, not with any mark of contempt, but with a train of attendance scarcely less than regal. To this Milton was required to write a sufficient answer; which he performed (1651) in such a manner, that Hobbes declared himself unable to decide whose language was best, or whose arguments were worst. In my opinion, Milton's periods are smoother, neater, and more pointed; but he delights himself with teasing his adversary as much as with confuting him. He makes a foolish allusion of Salmasius, whose doctrine he considers as servile and un- He prepared a reply, which, left as it was immanly, to the stream of Salmasius, which, who-perfect, was published by his son in the year of ever entered, left half his virility behind him. the Restoration. In the beginning, being proSalmasius was a Frenchman, and was unhappi- bably most in pain for his Latinity, he endealy married to a scold. Tu es Gallus, says Mil-vours to defend his use of the word persona; but, ton, et, ut aiunt, nimium gallinaceus. But his if I remember right, he misses a better authority supreme pleasure is to tax his adversary, so re- than any that he has found, that of Juvenal in nowned for criticisms, with vicious Latin. He his fourth satire: opens his book with telling that he has used persona, which according to Milton, signfies only a mask, in a sense not known to the Romans, by applying it as we apply person. But as Nemesis is always on the watch, it is memorable that he has enforced the charge of a solecism by an expression in itself grossly solecistical, when for one of those supposed blunders, he says, as Ker, and I think some one before him, has remarked, propino te grammatistis tuis vapuladum.* From vapulo, which has a passive sense, vapulandus can never be derived. No man forgets his original trade; the rights of nations, and of kings, sink into questions of grammar, if grammarians discuss them. -Quid agas, cum dira et fœdior omni As Salmasius reproached Milton with losing his eyes in the quarrel, Milton delighted him-self with the belief that he had shortened Salmasius's life, and both perhaps with more malignity than reason. Salmasius died at the Spa, Sept. 3, 1653; and as controvertists are commonly said to be killed by their last dispute, Milton was flattered with the credit of destroying him. Cromwell had now dismissed the parliament by the authority of which he had destroyed monarchy, and commenced monarch himself, under the title of Protector, but with kingly and more than kingly power. That his authority was lawful, never was pretended; he himself founded his right only in necessity; but Milton, having now tasted the honey of public employment, would not return to hunger and philosophy; but, continuing to exercise his office under a ma Milton, when he undertook this answer, was weak of body and dim of sight; but his will was forward, and what was wanting of health was supplied by zeal. He was rewarded with a thousand pounds, and his book was much read; for paradox, recommended by spirit and elegance, easily gains attention; and he, who told every man that he was equal to his King, could hard-nifest usurpation, betrayed to his power that lily want an audience. That the performance of Salmasius was not dispersed with equal rapidity, or read with equal eagerness, is very credible. He taught only the stale doctrine of authority, and the unpleasing duty of submission, and he had been so long not only the monarch but the tyrant of literature, that almost all mankind were delighted to find him defied and insulted by a new name, not yet considered as any one's rival. If Christiana, as * The work here referred to, is "Selectarum de linguâ Latina observationem libri duo. Ductu et curâ Joannis Ker. 1719." Ker, observes, that vapulandum is "pinguis solæcismus ;" and quotes Varassor and Crimius.-J. B B. berty which he had defended. Nothing can be more just than that rebellion should end in slavery; that he who had justified the murder of his king, for some acts which seemed to him unlawful, should now sell his services and his flatteries, to a tyrant, of whom it was evident that he could do nothing lawful. He had now been blind for some years; but his vigour of intellect was such, that he was not disabled to discharge his office of Latin secretary, or continue his controversies. His mind was too eager to be diverted, and too strong to be subdued. About this time his first wife died in childbed, having left him three daughters. As he probably did not much love her, he did not long own. sonnet. continue the appearance of lamenting her; but | mer government, "We were left," says Milton, after a short time married Catharine, the daugh- " to ourselves: the whole national interest fell ter of one Captain Woodcock, of Hackney; a into your hands, and subsists only in your abilwoman doubtless educated in opinions like his ities. To your virtue, overpowering and resistShe died, within a year, of child-birth, less, every man gives way, except some who, or some distemper that followed it; and her without equal qualifications, aspire to equal honhusband honoured her memory with a poor ours, who envy the distinctions of merit greater than their own, or who have yet to learn, that The first reply to Milton's “ Defensio Populi" in the coalition of human society nothing is was published in 1651, called " Apologia pro more pleasing to God, or more agreeable to Rege et Populo Anglicano, contra Johannis Poly-reason, than that the highest mind should have pragmatici (alias Miltoni) defensionem destruc- the sovereign power. Such, Sir, are you by tivam Regis et Populi.' Of this the author general confession; such are the things achieved was not known; but Milton, and his nephew by you, the greatest and most glorious of our Philips, under whose name he published an an- countrymen, the director of our public councils, swer so much corrected by him that it might be the leader of unconquered armies, the father of called his own, imputed it to Bramhal; and, your country; for by that title does every good knowing him no friend to regicides, thought man hail you with sincere and voluntary themselves at liberty to treat him as if they had praise." known what they only suspected. Next year appeared "Regii Sanguinis clamor ad Cœlum." Of this the author was Peter du Moulin, who was afterwards prebendary of Canterbury; but Morus, or More, a French minister, having the care of its publication, was treated as the writer by Milton in his "Defensio Secunda," and overwhelmed by such violence of invective, that he began to shrink under the tempest, and gave his persecutors the means of knowing the true author. Du Moulin was now in great danger; but Milton's pride operated against his malignity; and both he and his friends were more willing that Du Moulin should escape than that he should be convicted of mistake. In this second defence he shows that his eloquence is not merely satirical; the rudeness of his invective is equalled by the grossness of his flattery. "Deserimer, Cromuelle, tu solus superes, ad te summa nostrarum rerum rediit, in te solo consistit, insuperabili tuæ virtuti cedimus cuncti, nemine vel obloquente, nisi qui a quales inæqualis ipse honores sibi quærit, aut digniori concessos invidet, aut non intelligit nihil esse in societate hominum magis vel Deo gratum, vel rationi consentaneum, esse in civitate nihil æquius, nihil utilius, quam potiri rerum dignissimum. Eum te agnoscunt omnes, Cromuelle, ea tu civis maximus et gloriosissimus,* dux publici consilii, exercituum fortissimorum imperator, pater patriæ gessisti. Sic tu spontanea bonorum omnium et animitus missa voce salutaris." Cæsar when he assumed the perpetual dictatorship, had not more servile or more elegant flattery. A translation may show its servility; but its elegance is less attainable. Having exposed the unskilfulness or selfishness of the for It may be doubted whether gloriosissimus be here used with Milton's boasted purity. Res glorio. sa is an illustrious thing; ut vir gloriosus is com monly a braggart, as in miles gloriosus.-Dr. J. Next year, having defended all that wanted defence, he found leisure to defend himself. He undertook his own vindication against More, whom he declares in his title to be justly called the author of the "Regii Sanguinis Clamor." In this there is no want of vehemence or eloquence, nor does he forget his wonted wit. "Morus es? an Momus? an uterque idem est ?" He then remembers that Morus is Latin for a mulberry-tree, and hints at the known transformation : --Poma alba ferebat With this piece ended his controversies; and he from this time gave himself up to his private studies and his civil employment. As secretary to the Protector, he is supposed to have written the declaration of the reasons for a war with Spain. His agency was considered as of great importance; for, when a treaty with Sweden was artfully suspended, the delay was publicly imputed to Mr. Milton's indisposition; and the Swedish agent was provoked to express his wonder, that only one man in England could write Latin, and that man blind. Being now forty-seven years old, and seeing himself disencumbered from external interruptions, he seems to have recollected his former purposes, and to have resumed three great works which he had planned for his future employment; an epic poem, the history of his country, and a dictionary of the Latin tongue. To collect a dictionary, seems a work of all others 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 con"almost to his dying tinued it, says Philips, day; but the papers were so discomposed and deficient, that they could not be fitted for the |