ing in juvenile defects, proves him attached to his country, and grateful to his friends.

In 1654, Milton, now utterly blind, appeared again in the field of controverfy, firft, in his Second Defence of the English People, and the following year in a defence of himself, " Autoris pro fe Defenfio." The first of these productions is in truth his own vindication; it is the work in which he speaks most abundantly of his own character and conduct; it displays that true eloquence of the heart, by which probity and talents are enabled to defeat the malevolence of an infolent accufer; it proves that the mind of this wonderful man united to the poetic imagination of Homer the argumentative energy of Demofthenes.

It must however be allowed, that while Milton defended himself with the spirit of the Grecian orator, in imitating the eloquent Athenian he promifcuously caught both his merits and defects. It is to be regretted, that thefe mighty mafters of rhetoric permitted fo large an alloy of perfonal virulence to debafe the dignity of national argument; yet as the great orators of an age more humanized are apt, we fee, to be hurried into the fame failing, we may conclude that it is almoft infeparable from the weakness of nature, and we must not expect to find, though we certainly fhould endeavour to introduce, the charity of the Gospel in political contention.

If the utmost acrimony of invective could in any case be justified, it might affuredly be fo by the calumnies which hurried both Demofthenes and Mil

ton

ton into thofe intemperate expreffions, which appear in their refpective vindications like fpecks of a meaner mineral in a mafs of the richeft ore. The outrages that called forth the vindictive thunders of the cloquent Athenian are fufficiently known. The indignation of Milton was awakened by a Latin work, published at the Hague in 1652, entitled, "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cælum;" The Cry of Royal Blood to Heaven. In this book all the bitter terms of abhorrence and reproach, with which the malignity of paffion can difhonour learning, were lavished on the eloquent defender of the English commonwealth. The fecret author of this fcurrility was Peter du Moulin, a Proteftant divine, and fon of a French author, whom the biographers of his own country defcribe as a fatirist without tafte and a theologian without temper. Though du Moulin feems to have inherited the acrimonious fpirit of his father, he had not the courage to publifh himself what he had written as the antagonist of Milton, but fent his papers to Salmafius, who entrusted them to Alexander More, a French protellant of Scotch extraction, and a divine, who agreed in his principles with the author of the manufcript.

Most unfortunately for his own future comfort, More publifhed, without a name, the work of Du Moulin, with a dedication to Charles the Second, under the fignature of Ulac, the Dutch printer. He decorated the book with a portrait of Charles, and applied at the fame time to Milton the Virgilian delineation of Polypheme:

Monftrum

Monftrum horrendum informe ingens, cui lumen ademp

tum.

A monftrous bulk deform'd, depriv'd of fight.

DRYDEN.

Never was a favage infult more completely avenged; for Milton, having discovered that More was unquestionably the publisher of the work, confidered him as its author, which, according to legal maxims, he had a right to do, and in return expofed, with fuch feverity of reproof, the irregular and licentious life of his adverfary, that, lofing his popularity as a preacher, he feems to have been overwhelmed with public contempt.

There is a circumstance hitherto unnoticed in this controverfy, that may be confidered as a proof of Milton's independent and inflexible fpirit. More having heard accidentally, from an acquaintance of the English author, that he was preparing to expose him as the editor of the fcurrilous work he had publifhed, contrived to make great intereft in England, firft, to prevent the appearance, and again, to foften the perfonal severity of Milton's Second Defence.

The Dutch ambaffador endeavoured to prevail on Cromwell to fupprefs the work. When he found that this was impoffible, he conveyed to Milton the letters of More, containing a proteftation that he was not the author of the invective, which had given fo much offence; the ambaffador at the fame time made it his particular request to Milton, that, in answering the book, as far as it related to the English government, he would abstain from all

hoftility

hoftility against More.-Milton replied, "that no unbecoming words fhould proceed from his pen ;" but his principles would not allow him to fpare, at any private interceffion, a public enemy of his country. These particulars are collected from the last of our author's political treatifes in Latin, the defence of himself, and they form, I trust, a favourable introduction to a refutation, which it is time to begin, of the feverest and most plaufible charge, that the recent enemies of Milton have urged against him; I mean the charge of fervility and adulation, as the sycophant of an ufurper.

I will state the charge in the words of his most bitter accuser, and without abridgment, that it may appear in its full force:

"Cromwell (fays Johnfon) had now difmiffed the "parliament, by the authority of which he had "destroyed monarchy, and commenced monarch "himfelf 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 neceffity: but "Milton, having now tafted the honey of public em

ployment, would not return to hunger and phi❝lofophy, but, continuing to exercise his office "under a manifeft ufurpation, betrayed to his

power that liberty which he had defended. No"thing can be more just than that rebellion fhould "end in flavery; that he who had juftified the "murder of the king for fome acts, which to him. "feemed unlawful, fhould now fell his fervices

❝ and

" and his flatteries to a tyrant, of whom it was evi"dent that he could do nothing lawful."

Let us obferve, for the honour of Milton, that the paragraph, in which he is arraigned with so` much rancour, contains a political dogma, that, if it were really true, might blaft the glory of all the illuftrious characters who are particularly endeared to every English heart. If nothing can be more just than that rebellion fhould end in flavery, why do we revere those ancestors, who contended against kings? why do we not refign the privileges that we owe to their repeated rebellion? but the dogma is utterly unworthy of an English moralift; for affuredly we have the fanction of truth, reason, and experience, in faying, that rebellion is morally criminal or meritorious, according to the provocation by which it is excited, and the end it purfues. This doctrine was supported even by a fervant of the imperious Elizabeth. "Sir Thomas Smith" (fays Milton in his Tenure of Kings and Magiftrates)" a "protestant and a statesman, in his Commonwealth "of England, putting the queftion, whether it be "lawful to rife against a tyrant, anfwers, that the "vulgar judge of it according to the event, and the "learned according to the purpose of them that do "it." Dr. Johnson, though one of the learned, here fhews not that candour which the liberal ftatesman had described as the characteristic of their judgment. The biographer, uttering himself political tenets of the most fervile complexion, accufes Milton of fervility; and, in his mode of using the words honey and hunger, falls into a petulant

meannefs