after gaining such extenfive celebrity as a political difputant, caft off the mortal vesture of a polemic, and arofe in the pureft fplendor of poetical immortality?

Biographers are frequently accused of being influenced by affection for their fubject; to a cer

tain degree it is right that they fhould be fo; for what is biography in its faireft point of view? a tribute paid by juftice and esteem to genius and to virtue; and never is this tribute more pleafing or more profitable to mankind, than when it is liberally paid, with all the fervour and all the fidelity of friendship the chief delight and the chief utility that arifes from this attractive branch of literature confifts in the affectionate intereft, which it difplays and communicates in favour of the talents and probity that it afpires to celebrate; hence the moft engaging pieces of biography are those that have been written by relations of the deceased. This remark is exemplified in the life of Agricola by Tacitus, and in that of Racine, the dramatic poet, written by his fon, who was alfo a poet, and addreffed to his grandfon.

It has been the lot of Milton to have his life frequently defcribed, and recently, by a very powerful author, who, had he loved the character he engaged to delineate, might, perhaps, have fatisfied the admirers of the poet, and clofed the lift of his numerous biographers. But the very wonderful mind of Johnson was fo embittered by prejudice, that in delineating a character confeffedly pre-eminent in

eminent

eminent accomplishments, in genius, and in piety, The perpetually endeavours to represent him as una miable, and inftead of attributing any mistaken opinions that he might entertain to fuch fources as charity and reafon confpire to fuggeft, imputes them to fuppofed vices in his mind, most foreign to his nature, and the very worst that an enemy could imagine.

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In the course of this narrative I have confidered it as a duty incumbent upon me to notice and counteract, as they occurred, many important ftrokes of the hoftility which I am now lamenting; thefe become still more remarkable in that portion of the biographer's labour to which I am at length arrived; it is in diffecting the mind of Milton, if I may use fuch an expreffion, that Johnson indulges the injurious intemperance of his hatred. "It is to "be fufpected (he fays) that his predominant de"fire was to destroy rather than establish; and that "he felt not so much the love of liberty as repug

nance to authority." Such a fuspicion may indeed be harboured by political rancour, but it must be in direct oppofition to juftice and truth; for of all men who have written or acted in the service of liberty, there is no individual, who has proved more completely, both by his language and his life, that he made a perfect distinction between liberty and licentioufnefs. No human fpirit could be more fincerely a lover of just and beneficent authority; for no man delighted more in peace and order; no man has written more eloquently in their praise, or given fublimer proofs of his own personal

attachment

attachment to them by the regulation of his own orderly and peaceful ftudies. If he hated power (as Johnson afferts) in every established form, he hated not its falutary influence, but its pernicious exertions, Vehement as he occafionally was against kings and prelates, he fpoke of the fectaries with equal indignation and abhorrence when they alfo became the agents of perfecution; and as he had fully feen, and has forcibly expofed, the grofs failings of republican reformers, had his life been extended long enough to witness the Revolution, which he might have beheld without fuffering the decrepitude or imbecility of extreme old age, he would probably have exulted as warmly as the ftaunchest friend of our prefent conftitution can exult, in that temperate and happy reformation of monarchical enormities.

Johnfon alfo intimates, that he was a fhallow politician, who fuppofed money to be the chief good, though with fingular inconfiftency he at the fame time confeffes, "that fortune feems not to have had much of his care."

Money, in fact, had fo little influence over the elevated mind of Milton, that from his want of attention to it he sustained fuch loffes as, according to his nephew's expreffion, might have ruined a man lefs temperate than he was." Two thoufand

pounds he is faid to have loft by entrusting it to government, and as much in a private loan, without fufficient fecurity.

"Towards the latter part of his time," fays one of his early biographers," he contracted his library,

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both because the heirs he left could not make a right use of it, and that he thought he might fell it more to their advantage than they could be able to do themselves, His enemies reported, that poverty constrained him thus to part with his books; and were this true it would be a great difgrace, not to him (for perfons of the highest merits have been often reduced to that condition) but to any country that should have no more regard to probity or learning. This ftory, however, is fo falfe, that he died worth fifteen hundred pounds, befides all his goods."

Such are the remarks of Toland on the pecuniary circumstances of the poet; they fhew with becoming fpirit, that he was not reduced by abfolute indigence to the fale of his library; yet every reader, whofe literary feelings are acute, must regret, that the old age of Milton was not guarded and enlivened by fuch affluence as might have faved him from a measure, in which those who have a paffion for books muft fuppofe him to have fuffered fome degree of mortification.

The neceffities into which many deferving men of letters have fallen towards the close of life, and in various countries, may be regarded as an univerfal difgrace to civilized fociety, which the improving refinement and liberality of mankind ought effectually to remove. Literature, which is fo eminently beneficial to a nation, is frequently ruinous to worthy individuals moft fervently attached to it; and it should be regarded as a duty, therefore, by every polished people, to provide a public fund, which might afford a becoming competence to the

advanced

advanced life of every illuftrious fcholar, whofe public labours entitle him to that honourable diftinction. Such meritorious veterans in literature as Milton and his late aged biographer fhould have been preferved, in their declining days, from every fhadow of indigence, by the public gratitude of the nation to whom they had devoted their intellectual fervice. What friend to letters and to genius could fail to with affluent comfort to the clofing life of fuch authors, however he might condemn the exceffes of republican feverity in the one, or those of fervile and cenforial bigotry in the other?

There can hardly be any contemplation more painful, than to dwell on the virulent exceffes of eminent and good men; yet the utility of fuch contemplation may be equal to its pain. What mildnefs and candour fhould it not inftil into ordinary mortals to observe, that even genius and virtue weaken their title to refpect, in proportion as they recede from that evangelical charity, which fhould influence every man in his judgment of another.

The ftrength and the acuteness of fenfation, which partly constitute genius, have a great tendency to produce virulence, if the mind is not perpetually on its guard against that fubtle, infinuating, and corrofive paffion, hatred against all whofe opinions are oppofite to our own. Johnfon profeffed, in one of his letters, to love a good hater; and in the Latin correfpondence of Milton, there are words that imply a fimilarity of fentiment; they both thought there might be a fanctified bitternefs, to ufe an expreffion of Milton, towards political and religious opponents;

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