Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

continued stream. Of the family of Milton nothing more is known than that it was respectable and antient; long resident at Milton in Oxfordshire, and possessed of property which it lost in the wars between the rival houses of York and Lancaster. The fortune alone of a female, who had married into it, preserved it at this crisis from indigence. The first individual of the family, of whom any thing is mentioned, is John Milton, the grandfather of our author; and of him we are told nothing more than that he was under-ranger of the forest of Shotover in his native county; that he was a zealous catholic, and that he disinherited his son, whose name was also John, our author's father, for becoming a convert to the protestant faith. To whom the family property was bequeathed from the right heir, we are not informed: but we know that the son, on this disappointment of fortune, left his station at Christ Church in Oxford, where he was prosecuting his studies, and sought the means of subsistence in London, from the profession of a scrivener; a profession which in those days united the distinct occupations of the lawagent, and the money-broker.

e Near Halton and Thame.

That he was not an ordinary man is evident from many circumstances. Under the constant pressure of a profession, peculiarly unfavourable to the cultivation of liberal knowledge or the elegant arts, his classical acquirements seem to have been considerable; and such was his proficiency in the science of music' that it entitled him to honourable rank among the composers of his

age.

We are not informed of the precise time of his marriage; and there has even been a question respecting the maiden name and family of his wife. His grandson, Philips, who seems on this occasion to be the preferable authority, affirms that she was a Caston, of a family originally from Wales. We are assured that she was an exemplary woinan, and was particularly distinguished by her numerous charities. From this union sprang John, our author, Christopher and Anne. Of the two latter, Christopher, applying himself to the study of the law, became a bencher of the Inner Temple, and at a very advanced period of his life was knighted and raised, by

f Burney's Hist. of Music, vol. iii. p. 134.

* Londini sum natus, genere honesto, patre viro integerrimo, matre probatissimâ et eleemosynis per viciniam potissimum nota. Def. Sec. P. W. v. 230.

James the Second, first to be a baron of the Exchequer, and subsequently, one of the judges of the Common Pleas. During the civil war he followed the royal standard; and effected his composition with the victors only by the prevailing interest of his brother. Christopher Milton is asserted, by his nephew Philips, to have been a person of a modest and quiet temper, in whose estimation justice and virtue were preferable to worldly pleasure and grandeur: but he seems to have been also, as he is represented in another account, 66 a man of no parts or ability." In his old age he retired from the fatigues of business, and closed in the country a life of study and devotion. His only sister, Anne Milton, was given by her father in marriage, with a considerable fortune, to Mr. Edward Philips, a native of Shrewsbury; who, coming young to London, obtained in a course of years the lucrative place of secondary in the Crown Office in Chancery: of the children, which she had by him, only two survived to maturity, Edward and John; the former of whom became the biographer, after having, with his brother, been the pupil of his uncle, our author. By a second husband, a Mr. Agar, she had two daughters, one of whom, Mary, died young;

and of the other, Anne, we know nothing more than that she survived till the year 1694.

JOHN MILTON, the illustrious subject of our immediate notice, was born, at his father's house in Bread Street, on the 9th and was baptized on the 20th of December, 1608. His promise of future excellence was made, as we are assured, at a very early period; and the advantages which he derived from the attentions of a father, so qualified as his to discover and to appreciate genius, must necessarily have been great. Every incitement to exertion and every mode of instruction, adapted to the disposition and the powers of the child, were unquestionably employed; and no means, as we may be certain, were omitted to expand the intellectual Hercules of the nursery into the full dimensions of that mental amplitude for which he was intended. We know that a portrait of him, when he was only ten years of age, was painted by the celebrated Cornelius Janssen; and, if we had not been positively told, on the authority of Aubrey," that he was then a poet, we should

h Aubrey, who is usually distinguished by the title of the Antiquarian, is the author of "Monumenta Britannica," and of a MS. Life of Milton, preserved in the Mus. Ash. Oxon. He was personally acquainted with our poet, and from him Wood professes to derive the materials of his account of Milton. It is but fair to state, that I owe my acquaintance with Aubrey prin

have inferred that the son, who was made the object of so flattering a distinction by a father, in competent indeed but by no means in affluent circumstances, could not have been a common child.i

66

My father destined me," (our author says,) when I was yet a little boy, to the study of elegant literature, and, so eagerly did I seize on it that, from my twelfth year, I seldom quitted my studies for my bed till the middle of the night. This proved the first cause of the ruin of my eyes; in addition to the natural weakness of which organs, I was afflicted with frequent pains in my head. head. When these maladies could not restrain my rage for learning, my father provided that I should be daily instructed in some school abroad, or cipally to Mr. Warton; who speaks of the "Monumenta Britannica," as a very solid and rational work, and vindicates its author from the charge of fantastical, except on the subjects of chemistry and ghosts. Aubrey however, on the whole, is a weak and old-womanish writer; whose authority, on the present subject at least, is to be received with caution, and only where no other can be obtained.

"i Pater me puerulum humaniorum literarum studiis destinavit; quas ita avidè arripui, ut ab anno ætatis duodecimo vix unquam ante mediam noctem à lucubrationibus cubitum discederem; quæ prima oculorum pernicies fuit: quorum ad naturalem debilitatem accesserant et crebri capitis dolores; quæ omnia cum discendi impetum non retardarent, et in ludo literario, et sub aliis domi magistris erudiendum quotidie curavit." Defen. Secun. P. W. v. 230.

« AnteriorContinuar »