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rents; in friendship, ardent and steady; in love, though tender not intemperate; as a poet, fenfible of his rare mental endowments, yet peculiarly modeft in regard to his own productions; enamoured of glory, yet as ready to bestow as anxious to merit praise; in his person and manners so fashioned to prepoffefs all men in his favour, that even foreigners gave him credit for thofe high literary atchievements, which were to fhed peculiar luftre on his latter days, and confidered him already as a man, of whom his country might be proud.

With fuch accomplishments, and fuch expectations in his behalf, Milton returned to England. The fubfequent portion of his life, however gloomy and tempeftuous, will be found to correspond, at least in the close of it, with the radiant promife of his youth. We fhall fee him deferting his favourite haunts of Parnaffus to enter the thorny paths of ecclefiaftical and poetical diffention: his principles as a difputant will be condemned and approved, according to the prevalence of oppofite and irreconcilable opinions, that fluctuate in the world; but his upright confiftency of conduct deferves applause from all honeft and candid men of every perfuafion. The mufe, indeed, who had bleffed him with fingular endowments, and given him fo lively a fenfe of his being conftituted a poet by nature, that when he wrote not verfe, he had the use (to borrow his own forcible expreffion)" but of his left hand ;" the Mufe alone might have a right to reproach him with having acted against inward conviction; but could

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could his muse have visibly appeared to reprove his desertion of her fervice in a parental remonftrance, he might have answered her, as the young Harry of Shakespear answers the tender and keen reproof of his royal father,

"I will redeem all this,

"And in the clofing of fome glorious day
"Be bold to tell that I am your

you

fon."

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PART II.

INCONCUSSA TENENS DUBIO VESTIGIA MUNDO.

LUCAN.

THE narrative may proceed from the informati

on of Milton himself. On his return he procured a refidence in London, ample enough for himself and his books, and felt happy in renewing his interrupted studies *. This first establishment (as we learn from his nephew) was a lodging in St. Bride's Church-yard, where he received, as his disciple, the two fons of his fifter, John and Edward Philips; the latter is his biographer; but although he has written the life of his illuftrious relation with a degree of laudable pride and affectionate fpirit, he does not communicate that abundance of information, which might have been expected from the advantage he poffeffed. In one article his pride has a ludicrous effect, as it leads him into an awkward attempt to vindicate his uncle from the fancied opprobrium of having engaged profeffionally in the

Ipfe, ficubi poffem, tam rebus turbatis & fluctuantibus, locum confiftendi circumfpiciens mihi librifque meis, fat amplam in urbe domum conduxi; ibi ad intermiffa ftudia beatulus me re→ cepi; rerum exitu deo imprimis & quibus id muneris populus dabat, facilè permiffo.

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education of youth; a profeffion which, from its utility and importance, from the talents and virtues it requires, is unquestionably entitled to respect. Philips will not allow that his uncle actually kept a fchool, as he taught only the fons of his particular friends. Johnson ridicules this distinction, and feems determined to treat Milton as a profest schoolmafter, for the fake of attempting to prove, that he did not sustain the character with advantage, but adopted a vain and prepofterous plan of education.

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"Let me not be cenfured," fays the Doctor, "as pedantic or paradoxical; for if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my fide: it was "his labour to turn philofophy from the study of "nature to fpeculations upon life; but the inno

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vators, whom I oppose, are turning off attention "from life to nature; they feem to think that we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or "the motions of the ftars; Socrates was rather of opinion, that what we had to learn was, how to "do good and avoid evil.”

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Οτι τοι ἐν μεγάροισι κακόντ ̓ ἀγαθόνε τέτυκται.

This infidious artifice of reprefenting Milton and Socrates as antagonists is peculiarly unfortunate, fincé no man appears to have imbibed the principles of Socratic wisdom more deeply than our poet; his regard and attachment to them is fervently expreffed, even in his juvenile letters; the very maxims of moral truth, which he is accused of counteracting, never fhone with more luftre than in the following paffage of the Paradife Loft:

But

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