It has also been alleged against Milton that he was unamiable as a family man: but it should be recollected that the evidence on oath, found in the Prerogative Registry, with Milton's nuncupatory will, (and the whole of which has been given to the public in Mr. Warton's second edition of Milton's Juvenile Poems,) goes to prove that our " blind Mæonides" was more sinned against than sinning; that his daughters were very unkind to him; that they even sold his books to "the dunghill women," as the witness calls them; and that they endeavoured to persuade his servant to defraud him in his marketings. In all family disagreements, however, the probability is that there are faults on both sides on which side the greatest fault lay in this instance, it were perhaps now equally useless and vain to inquire: but while any doubt remains, it is obviously unfair to form a strong accusation of Milton on insufficient evidence.

Respecting the purity of Milton's political conduct, in connection with Cromwell, we shall have some remarks to offer towards the conclusion of this article.

tamen vel timiditatis vel ignavia, siqua infertur, facilé me tueor. Neque enim militiæ labores et pericula sic defugi, ut non alia ratione, et operam multò utiliorem, nec minore cum periculo meis civibus navarim, et animum dubiis in rebus neque demissum unquam, neque ullius invidia, vel etiam mortis plus aquo metuentem præstiterim. Nam cum ab adolescentulo humanioribus essem studiis, ut qui maximé deditus, et ingenio semper quám corpore validior, posthabitá castrensi operá, qua me gregarius quilibet robustior facilè superasset, ad ea me contuli, quibus plus potui; ut parte mei meliore ac potiore, si saperem, non deteriore, ad rationes patrie, causamque hanc prastantissimam, quantum maximé possem momentum accederem."

"Relying on the assistance of God, they, indeed, repelled servitude with the most justifiable war; and though I claim no share of their peculiar praise, I can easily defend myself against the charge, (if any charge of that nature should be brought against me) of timidity or of indolence. For I did not for any other reason decline the toils and 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 might easily 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 most honourable cause."

Not satisfied with rescuing the fame of Milton from unmerited aspersion, and with pursuing his detractors to their com plete discomfiture, Dr. Symmons looks forwards with poetic enthusiasm to remote posterity, and predicts that the reputation of his author will outlive the British Empire. Speaking of the Juvenile Poems, he says:

Although these poems obtained some early notice, the number of their admirers was for a long time small. Even from the wits of our Augustan age, as the age of Addison and Pope has sometimes been called, their share of notice was inconsiderable: and it is only in what may be considered as the present generation, that they have acquired any large proportion of their just praise. Their reputation seems to be still increasing; and we may venture to predict that it will yet increase, till some of those great vicissitudes, to which all that is human is perpetually exposed, and which all must eventually experience, shall blot out our name and our language, and bury us in barbarism. But even amid the ruins of Britain, Milton will survive: Europe will preserve one portion of him; and his native strains will be cherished iu the expanding bosom of the great queen of the Atlantic, when his own London may present the spectacle of Thebes, and his Thames roll a silent and solitary stream through heaps of blended desolation.'

To Dr. Johnson's remark on the Epitaphium Damonis, that it is written with "the childish affectation of pastoral life," it is here replied:

Affectation is every where a just object of reprobation; but how a writer can, with propriety, be said to be guilty of it, for employing any allowed and established species of composition as the vehicle of his thoughts, is more than I can possibly comprehend. When Milton chose to embody his sorrow in the form of a pastoral, to invoke the powers of song, who once warbled on the plains of Sicily, and to trace the steps of Theocritus and Virgil, he was not aware that he could be exposing himself to the charge of childish affectation.'

As an historian, Dr. S. presents us with some strictures on the character of Laud, in which his lenity struggles for a time with his love of justice: at last, however, the scale preponderates against the persecuting arch-bishop, and his conduct receives merited chastisement. If history indeed be designed to teach, it must learn magnanimously to condemn, as well as cordially to applaud: and he who writes to promote the cause of virtue must be inspired by a sacred reverence for truth. While the present author avows his attachment to the Church of England, he reprobates persecution as a measure of promoting her interests, and heaps on the memory of Laud the odium to which his cruel bigotry is justly amenable. With not less freedom has Dr. S. spoken of the prince than of the prelate. His account of Charles I. we shall transcribe: Separated

* Separated from the cause of the monarchy and of the church of England, the cause of Charles is much more open to assault than it is susceptible of defence. If he has been lowered beneath his just level by his enemies, he has been proportionably raised above it by his friends, and, with a nice regard to truth, we may probably place him in the central point between Nero, to whom he has been resembled by the former, and either of the intonines, above whom he has been advanced, not without a degree of prophane temerity, to the honours of sainthood and martyrdom by the latter. His private life was not, perhaps, liable to censure, as it was blemished only with common imperfection; but his public conduct betrayed the violence of a despot, with the duplicity and equivocating morality of a follower of Loyola *.*

Of the style of Milton's polemic writings, the following is a correct delineation:

His language, is every where original, figurative, and bold: but his sentences are either not sufficiently or not happily laboured. His words, attentive only to sense, appear to rush into their places as they can; and whenever their combination forms an harmonious period, the effect looks like the result of chance, unconcerted and unheeded by the writer. Force is that character of style which he principally affects, and, that he may obtrude his mind with weight and impression on the mind of his reader, he scruples not to avail himself of the coarsest images and expressions. His object is to array himself in strength; and, not satisfied with making us to understand his meaning, he must, also, make us to feel it. His matter and his manner are often equally erroneous; but his deficiencies are sometimes concealed from us by those flashes of imagination, which cover his rough pages, and are sometimes pardoned by us in consequence of that conviction, which he enforces, of the thorough honesty of his heart.'

To "The Defence of the People of England," particular attention is given; large extracts are made from it, to justify the praise of the biographer; and in a note the Doctor vindicates his hero from a censure unwarily thrown on him by the present enlightened Bishop of Landaff, for having asserted that the Reformers on the Continent entertained political principles similar to his own.

The suspicions of Milton that Charles was not the author of the Icon Basiliké are here fully justified; and the readers of Hume should refer on this subject to Dr. S., who corrects the historian.

When we consider the unpropitious and even dispiriting circumstances under which the immortal poem on "Paradise Lost" was produced, we have additional reason for regarding it as a monument of intellectual vigor, and creative energy, and perseverance, which can very rarely meet with a parallel. It is here compared to a pine on the rocks of Norway, ascending to its

The character of Cromwell is sketched with an equally masterly hand, p. 376.

majestie

majestic elevation beneath the inclemency of a dreary sky, and assailed, in the same moment, by the fury of the ocean at its feet, and the power of the tempest above its head.'

Long specimens of Milton's Latin poems, with translations annexed, some by Dr. S. himself, and others by his friend Mr. Wrangham, are interwoven in the narrative; and it is observed that

Immediately conversant with the great masters of composition, he adopts their taste with their language; and, with the privilege, as with the ease of a native, assumes his station in their ranks. For fluency and sweetness of numbers; for command and purity of expression; for variety and correctness of imagery, we shall look in vain for his equal among the latin poets of his age and his country. May, the continuator and imitator of Lucan; and Cowley, whose taste and thought are English and metaphysical while his verse walks upon Roman feet, will never, as I am confident, be placed in competition with our author by any adequate and unprejudiced judge.'

To the sentence of this critic we subscribe: but we are sorry to add that, as a poetical translator, his verse is defective. Such lines as the following cannot be praised:

All my day is study or is song.' -

"And child and father own the one though varied God.' as a version of

Dividuumque Deum genitorque puerque tenemus.”

From dark fotgetfulness, as time rolls on,
Your power shall snatch the parent and the son.'

As a poetical translator, we are constrained to give the preference to his friend Mr. Wrangham.

In adverting again to the republicanism of Milton, his profession of which is regarded by some, and his supposed dereliction of which is deemed by others, as fixing a deep and indelible stain on his character, Dr. Symmons first invites us to contemplate the blessings of the British Constitution as settled at the Revolution, and then enters on the apology for his hero by reminding us of the different political principles which were current in his time:

In Milton's days the political prospect was far less alluring and, from the spectacle before him, a wise and a good man might very justifiably surrender himself to the impulse of different impressions.

Some of the great component parts of the British constitution, (for the liberties of England are not the creatures of yesterday.) had, long before, been in existence: the Parliament, with all its pre-eminences of power, could boast, in fact, of its Saxon pedigree; the common law of England subsisted in its mature vigour; and the trial by jury, with an origin to be traced to the remotest times, offered its equal justice to the criminal and the innocent: a concurrence of un

fortunate

fortunate circumstances had, however, disordered the machine, and reduced it, in the middle of the seventeenth century, to little more than a ruin and a name. The impetuous power of the Tudors, springing from the disastrous consequences of the wars between the factions of York and Lancaster, had overleaped every barrier of the constitution; and the ambition of the Stuarts, at a period less favourable to the exertion of lawless prerogative, had diligently followed in the track of their insolent and tyrannical predecessors. On whatever side he looked. Milton saw nothing but insulted parliaments, arbitrary taxation, illegal and sanguinary tribunals, corrupted and mercenary law, bigotted and desolating persecution. With that ardent love of liberty, therefore, which always burns brightest in the most expanded and elevated bosoms; and fresh from the schools of Greece and Rome, which had educated the master spirits of the world; it was natural for him to turn, with delight, from the scene, in which he was engaged, to those specious forms of government, the splendid effects of which were obvious, while the defects were withdrawn, in a great measure, by the deception of distance from the sight. He preferred a republic, (and who can blame him?) to that unascertained and unprotected constitution, which on every quarter was open to succesful invasion, which gave the promise of liberty only, as it were, to excite the pain of disappointment, and which told men that they had a right to be free in the very instant in which it abandoned them to oppression.

In the idea of Milton, liberty was associated with the perfection of his species; and he pursued the great object with the enthusiasm of benevolence, and with the consciousness of obedience to a high and imperious duty. Against tyranny, or the abuse of power, wherever it occurred and by whatever party it was attempted, in the church or the state, by the prelate or the presbyter, he felt himself summoned to contend From his continuance in office under the usurpation of Cromwell he has been arraigned of inconsistency, and a dereliction of principle. But, not to repeat what has already been advanced upon the subject, his office did not, in any way, blend him with the usurpation; he had no connection with the confidence or the counsels of the Protector; and he conceived, with the most perfect truth, that he was the servant of his country when he acted as the organ of her intercourse with foreign states. We have seen his magnanimous Address to the Usurper; and from some of his private letters we may collect his acute feelings of mortification and disappointment in consequence of the afflicted state of the commonwealth, and the abandonment of that cause which was always the most near to his heart.'

་

Dr. Symmons's extracts from the "Second Defence of the People of England," including the above-mentioned Address to the Usurper,' speak very strongly to this point. The passage in question has generally been considered as forming a panegyric on Cromwell: but in this very foundation of the charge against Milton, the refutation of that charge is perhaps to be obtained. It commences, indeed, with an apparent encomium on the services and abilities of the Protector, and

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