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"the duty he is pursuing, or shake from his fettled "firmnefs of mind and countenance."

A writer of fanguine imagination, who delineates a public character he admires in the glowing colours of affection, has rarely the good fortune to find the perfonage whom he has praised acting in perfect conformity to his panegyric; but Milton, in one particular circumftance, had this rare felicity, in regard to the friend whom he fo fervently commended; for Bradshaw refifted the tyrannical orders of Cromwell, in the plenitude of his power, with fuch firmnefs, that we might almost suppose him animated by a defire to act up to the letter of the eulogy, with which he had been honoured by the eloquence and the esteem of Milton. This will fufficiently appear by the following anecdote in Ludlow's Memoirs, who, after fpeaking of Oliver's ufurpation, and the univerfal terror he infpired, relates how he himself was fummoned, with Bradshaw, Sir Henry Vane, and colonel Rich, to appear before the ufurper in council. "Cromwell (fays Ludlow) "as foon as he faw the lord prefident, required him 66 to take out a new commiffion for his office of "chief juftice of Chester, which he refused, alledg❝ing that he held that place by a grant from the parliament of England, to continue,' quamdiu "fe bene gefferit ;' and whether he had carried "himself with that integrity, which his commiffion "exacted, he was ready to submit to a trial by "twelve Englishmen, to be chofen even by Crom"well himself."

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This oppofition to the ufurper was affuredly magnanimous, and the more fo as Bradshaw perfifted in it, and actually went his circuit as chief justice without paying any regard to what Cromwell had required. The odium which the president justly incurred in the trial of Charles feems to have prevented even our liberal hiftorians from recording with candour the great qualities he poffeffed: he was undoubtedly not only an intrepid but a fincere enthu-. fiaft in the caufe of the commonwealth. His dif courfe on his death-bed is a fanction to his fincerity; he regarded it as meritorious to have pronounced fentence on his king, in those awful moments when he was paffing himself to the tribunal of his God. Whatever we may think of his political tenets, let us render justice to the courage and the confiftency with which he supported them.-The mind of Milton was in unifon with the high-toned fpirit of this refolute friend, and we fhall foon fee how little ground there is to accufe the poet of fervility to Cromwell; but we have firft to notice the regular feries of his political compofitions.

Soon after his public appointment, he was requefted by the council to counteract the effect of the celebrated book, entitled, Icon Bafilike, the Royal Image, and in 1649 he publifhed his Iconoclaftes, the Image Breaker. The fagacity of Milton enabled him to difcover, that the pious work imputed to the deceased king was a political artifice to ferve the cause of the royalifts; but as it was impoffible for him to obtain such evidence to detect the impofition as time has fince produced, he executed a regular reply

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reply to the book, as a real production of the king, intimating at the fame time his fufpicion of the fraud.

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This reply has recently drawn on the name of Milton much liberal praise, and much injurious obloquy. A Scottish critic of great eminence, Lord Monboddo, has celebrated the opening of the Iconoclastes as a model of English profe, or, to use his own just expreffions, "a fpecimen of noble and manly eloquence." Johnfon, from the fame work, takes occasion to infinuate, that Milton was a dishonest man. A charge fo ferious, and from a moralist who professed such an attachment to truth, deferves fome difcuffion. "As faction (fays the unfriendly biographer) feldom leaves a man honeft, however it might find him, Milton is fuf"pected of having interpolated the book called "Icon Bafilike, by inferting a prayer taken from "Sidney's Arcadia, and imputing it to the king, "whom he charges, in his Iconoclastes, with the "ufe of this prayer as with a heavy crime, in the "indecent language with which profperity had em"boldened the advocates for rebellion to infult all "that is venerable and great."

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A fimple queftion will fhow the want of candour in this attempt to impeach the moral credit of Milton. By whom is he fufpected of this dishonesty? His fevere biographer finks the name of his own old and difhonourable affociate in depreciating Milton, and does not inform us that it was the infamous Lauder, who, having failed to blast the reputation of the poet, with equal impotence and fury pursued

his attack against the probity of the man in an execrable pamphlet entitled "King Charles the First "vindicated from the Charge of Plagiarism brought

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against him by Milton, and Milton himself con"victed of Forgery." Inftead of naming Lauder, who perfifted in trying to fubftantiate this moft improbable charge, Johnson would infidiously lead us to believe, that the refpectable Dr. Birch supported it, though Birch, who had indeed printed, in the appendix to his Life of Milton, the idle story which Lauder urges as a proof of Milton's impofture, had properly rejected that story from the improved edition of his work, and honourably united with another candid biographer of the poet, the learned bishop of Bristol, in declaring that "fuch con"temptible evidence is not to be admitted against a man, who had a foul above being guilty of fo "mean an action."

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There are fome calumnies fo utterly despicable and abfurd, that to refute them elaborately is almost a difgrace: did not the calumny I am now speaking of belong to this description, it might be here obferved, that a writer who published remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton, in which the afperity of that biographer is oppofed with fuperior afperity, has proved, with new arguments, the futility of the charge in question. Inftead of repeating these, let me observe, that the attempt of Johnson to revive a base and fufficiently refuted imputation against the great author whofe life he was writing, is one of the most extraordinary proofs that literature can exhibit how far the virulence of political hatred

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may pervert a very powerful mind, even a mind which makes moral truth its principal purfuit, and affiduously labours to be juft. This remark is not made in enmity to Johnfon, but to fhew how cautious the most cultivated understanding fhould be in watching the influence of any hoftile prejudice. Milton himself may be alfo urged as an example to enforce the fame caution; for though he was certainly no impoftor in imputing the prayer in queftion to the king, yet his confidering the king's use of it as an offence againft heaven, is a pitiable abfurdity; an abfurdity as glaring as it would be to affirm, that the divine poet is himself profane in affigning to a speech of the Almighty, in his poem, the two following verfes :

Son of my bofom, fon who art alone

My word, my wisdom, and effectual might―

Because they are partly borrowed from a line in Virgil, addreffed by a heathen goddess to her child:

"Nate, meæ vires, mea magna potentia folus."

The heat of political animofity could thus throw a mist over the bright intellects of Milton; yet his Iconoclaftes, taken all together, is a noble effort of manly reason; it uncanonized a fictitious faint, who affuredly had no pretenfion to the title.

Having thus fignalized himself as the literary antagonist of Charles when the celebrated Salmafius was hired to arraign the proceedings of England against him, every member of the English council

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