meannefs of expreffion, that too clearly difcovers how cordially he detefted him. But perhaps this deteftation was the mere effect of political prejudice, the common but unchriftian abhorrence that a vehement royalift thinks it virtue to harbour and to manifeft against a republican. We might indeed eafily believe that Johnson's rancour against Milton was merely political, had he not appeared as the biographer of another illuftrious republican; but when we find him reprefenting as honourable in Blake the very principles and conduct which he endeavours to make infamous and contemptible in Milton, can we fail to obferve, that he renders not the fame juftice to the heart of the great republican author which he had nobly rendered to the gallant admiral of the republic. To Blake he generously affigns the praife of intrepidity, honesty, contempt of wealth, and love of his country. Affuredly thefe virtues were as eminent in Milton, and however different their lines in life may appear, the celebrated fpeech of Blake to his feamen, "It is our business to hinder foreigners from fooling us," by which he juftified his continuance in his poft under Cromwell, is fingularly applicable to Milton, who, as a fervant engaged by the state to conduct in Latin its foreign correfpondence, might think himfelf as ftrongly bound in duty and honour as the justly applauded admiral," to hinder his country from being fooled "by foreigners." But Milton," fays his uncandid biographer," continuing to exercise his office "under a manifeft ufurpation, betrayed to his power that liberty which he had defended." Was Was the ufurpation more manifeft to Milton than to Blake? Or is it a deeper crime against liberty to write the Latin difpatches, than to fight the naval battles of a nation under the controul of an ufurper? Affuredly not: nor had either Blake or Milton the leaft intention of betraying that liberty, which was equally the darling idol of their elevated and congenial fpirits; but in finding the learned and eloquent biographer of thefe two immortal worthies fo friendly to the admiral, and fo inimical to the author, have we not reason to lament and reprove fuch inconfiftent hoftility. That the Latin fecretary of the nation deserved not this bitterness of cenfure for remaining in his office, may be thought fufficiently proved by the example of Blake.-If his conduct in this article required farther justification, we might recollect with the candid bifhop Newton, that the blameless Sir Matthew Hale, the favourite model of integrity, exercised under Cromwell the higher office of a judge; but the heaviest charge against Milton is yet unanswered, the charge of lavishing the moft fervile adulation on the ufurper. In replying to this moft plaufible accufation, let me be indulged in a few remarks, that may vindicate the credit not only of a fingle poet but of all Parnaffus. The poetical fraternity have been often accused of being ever ready to flatter; but the general charge is in fome measure inconfiftent with a knowledge of human nature. As poets, gene rally speaking, have more fenfibility and lefs prudence than other men, we fhould naturally expect to to find them rather diftinguished by abundance than by a want of fincerity; when they are candidly judged, they will generally be found fo; a poet indeed is as apt to applaud a hero as a lover is to praise his mistress, and both, according to the forcible and true expreffion of Shakespear, "Are of imagination all compact.” Their defcriptions are more faithful to the acuteness of their own feelings than to the real qualities of the objects described. Paradoxical as it may found, they are often deficient in truth, in proportion to the excess of their fincerity; the charm or the merit they celebrate is partly the phantom of their own fancy; but they believe it real, while they praise it as a reality; and as long as their belief is fincere, it is unjust to accufe them of adulation. Milton himfelf gives us an excellent touchftone for the trial of praise in the following paffage of his Areopagitica; "there are three principal things, without "which all praifing is but courtship and flattery; "first when that only is praised, which is folidly "worth praise; next, when greatest likelihoods are brought that fuch things are truly and really "in those perfons to whom they are ascribed; the "other, when he who praifes, by fhewing that "fuch his actual persuasion is of whom he writes, "can demonftrate that he flatters not." If we try Milton by this his own equitable law, we must honourably acquit him of the illiberal charge that might almost be thought fufficiently refuted by its apparent inconsistency with his elevated fpirit. Though Though in the temperate judgment of pofterity, Cromwell appears only a bold bad man, yet he dazzled and deceived his contemporaries with fuch a ftrong and continued blaze of real and vifionary fplendor, that almost all the power and all the talents on earth feemed eager to pay him unsolicited homage: but I mean not to reft the vindication of Milton on the prevalence of example, which, however high and dignified it might be, could never ferve as a fanction for the man, to whom the rare union of spotless integrity with confummate genius had given an elevation of character that no rank and no powers unfupported by probity could poffibly bestow; though all the potentates and all the literati of the world confpired to flatter the ufurper, we might expect Milton to remain, like his own faithful Abdiel, Unfhaken, unfeduc'd, unterrified. Affuredly he was fo; and in praising Cromwell he praised a perfonage, whose matchlefs hypocrify affumed before him a mask that the arch apoftate of the poet could not wear in the prefence of Abdiel, the mask of affectionate zeal towards man, and of devout attachment to God; a mask that Davenant has described with poetical felicity in the following couplet : Diffembled zeal, ambition's old difguife, The vizard in which fools outface the wife. It was more as a faint than as an hero that Cromwell deluded the generous credulity of Milton; and, perhaps, the recollection of his having been thus deluded infpired the poet with his admirable apology for Uriel deceived by Satan. For neither man nor angel can discern By his permiffive will, thro' heav'n and earth : Refigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill That fublime religious enthufiafm, which was the predominant characteristic of the poet, exposed him particularly to be duped by the prime artifice of the political impoftor, who was indeed fo confummate in the art of deception, that he occafionally deceived the prudent unheated Ludlow and the penetrating inflexible Bradshaw; nay, who carried his habitual deception to fuch a length, that he is fuppofed, by fome acute judges of human nature, to have been ultimately the dupe of his own hypocritical fervour, and to have thought himself, what he induced many to think him, the felected fervant of God, exprefsly chofen to accomplish wonders, not only for the good of his nation, but for the true intereft of Chriftendom. Though Cromwell had affumed the title of Protector, when Milton in his fecond defence sketched a masterly portrait of him (as we have feen he did of Bradshaw in the fame production) yet the new potentate had not, at this period, completely unveil ed |