1 gious morality! to which no feeling heart can subfcribe. No, fay his implacable enemies, he lost his eyes in the vindication of wickednefs: but admitting their affertion in its full force, juftice and humanity'still contend, that, instead of diminishing, it rather doubles his claim to compaffion; to fuffer in a spirited defence of guilt, that we mistake and esteem as virtue, is, perhaps, of all pitiable mif. fortunes, what a candid and confiderate mind should be most willing to pity. But Johnson proceeds to fay, " of evil tongues "for Milton to complain required impudence at leaft equal to his other powers; Milton, whofe "warmest advocates must allow, that he never "fpared any afperity of reproach or brutality of in"folence." These are, perhaps, the moft bitter words that were ever applied by an author, illuftrious himself for great talents, and still more for chriftian virtue, to a character pre-eminent in genius and in piety. By fhewing to what a marvellous degree a very cultivated and devout mind may be exafperated by party rage, may they ferve to caution every. fervid spirit against that outrageous animofity, which a difference of fentiment in politics and religion is fo apt to produce. It would feem almost an affront to the memory of Milton to vindicate him elaborately from a charge, whofe very words exhibit fo palpable a violation of decency and truth. His coldest advocates, inftead of allowing that he never spared any brutality of infolence, may rather contend, that his native tenderness of heart, and very graceful education, rendered it hardly poffible for him at any time to be infolent and brutal. It would have been wonderful indeed, had he not written with fome degree of afperity, when his antagonist Salmafius afferted, that he ought to fuffer an ignominious and excruciating death. Against the unfortunate (but not innocent) Charles the First, he exprefsly declares, that he published nothing till after his decease; and that he meant not, as he fays in one of his Latin works, to infult the Manes of the king, is indeed evident to an unprejudiced reader, from the following very beautifut and pathetic fentence, with which he begins his answer to the Eikon Bafilike: "To defcant on the misfortunes of a person fat, len from fo high a dignity, who hath alfo paid his final debt, both to nature and his faults, is neither of itself a thing commendable, nor the intention of this discourse." Those who fairly confider the exafperated state of the contending parties, when Milton wrote, and compare his political compofitions with the favage ribaldry of his opponents, however mistaken they may think him in his ideas of government, will yet find more reafon to admire his temper than to condemn his afperity. If in a quiet ftudy, at a very advanced period of life, and at the distance of more than a century from the days of the republic; if a philosopher so situat ed could be hurried by political heat to fpeak of Milton with fuch harsh intemperance of language, though writing under the friendly title of his biographer, with what indulgence ought we to view that that afperity in Milton himself, which arose from the immediate preffure of public oppreffion and of private outrage; for his fpirit had been enflamed, not only by the fight of many national vexations, but by feeing his own moral character attacked with the most indecent and execrable calumny that can incite the indignation of infulted virtue. If the fascinating powers of his facred poem, and the luftre of his integrity, have failed to foften the virulence of an aged moralift against him in our days, what must he not have had to apprehend from the raging paffions of his own time, when his poetical genius had not appeared in its meridian fplendor, and when most of his writings were confidered as recent crimes against thofe, who were entering on their career of triumph and revenge? Johnson, indeed, afferts in his barbarous cenfure of Milton's exquifite picture of his own fituation, that the poet, in fpeaking of his danger, was ungrateful and unjuft; that the charge itself seems to be falfe, for it would be hard to recollect any reproach caft upon him, either serious or ludicrous, through the whole remaining part of his life; yet Lauder, once the affociate of Johnfon in writing against Milton, expressly affirms, that it was warmly debated for three days, whether he fhould fuffer death with the regicides or not, as many contended that his guilt was fuperior to theirs. Lauder, indeed, mentions no authority for his affertion; and the word of a man fo fupremely infamous would deferve no notice, were not the circumstance rendered probable by the rancour and atrocity of party fpirit. To what de teftable teftable exceffes this fpirit could proceed we have not only an example in Lauder himself (of whose malignity to the poet I fhall have fubfequent occafion to speak) but in that collection of virulent invectives against Milton, compofed chiefly by his contemporaries, which Lauder added as an appendix to his own moft malignant pamphlet. The moft fingular and indecent of these invectives, whose fcurrility is too grofs to be tranfcribed, has been imputed to that very copious writer, Sir Roger L'Eftrange; and if a pen employed fo favagely against Milton could obtain public encouragement and applaufe, he might furely, without affectation or timidity, think himself expofed to the dagger of fome equally hoftile and more fanguinary royalist. L'Eftrange, for fuch fufferings in the cause of royalty as really entitled him to reward, obtained, not long after the restoration, the revived but unconftitutional office of licenfer to the prefs. It was happy for literature that he poffeffed not that oppreffive jurifdiction when the author of the Paradife Loft was obliged to folicit an imprimatur, fince the excefs of his malevolence to Milton might have then exerted itfelf in fuch a manner as to entitle both the office and its poffeffor to the execration of the world. The licenfer of that period, Thomas Tomkyns, chaplain to archbishop Sheldon, though hardly fo full of rancour as L'Eftrange (if L'Estrange was the real author of the ribaldry afcribed to him) was abfurd or malignant enough to obftruct, in fome measure, the publication of Paradife Loft. "He, among other frivolous exceptions (fays To land) land) would needs fupprefs the whole poem, for imaginary treafon in the following lines; as when the fun new rifen Looks thro' the horizontal misty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change By what means the poet was happily enabled to triumph over the malevolence of an enemy in office we are not informed by the author, who has recorded this very interefting anecdote; but from the peril to which his immortal work was exposed, and which the mention of a licenfer to the press has led me to anticipate, let us return to his perfonal danger the extent of this danger, and the particulars of his escape, have never been completely discovered. The account that his nephew gives of him at this momentous period is chiefly contained in the following fentence: "It was a friend's houfe in Bartholomew Clofe where he lived till the act of oblivion came forth, which, it pleased God, proved as favourable to him as could be hoped or expected, through the interceffion of fome that ftood his friends both in council and parliament; particularly in the House of Commons, Mr. Andrew Marvel, a member for Hull, acted vigorously in his behalf, and made a confiderable party for him." Marvel, like the fuperior author whom he fo nobly protected, was himself a poet and a patriot. He |