"claim no perfonal fhare, yet I can eafily defend "myself from a charge of timidity or indolence, "should any fuch be alledged against me; for I "have avoided the toil and danger of a military life "only to render my country affistance more use❝ful, and not lefs to my own peril, exerting a "mind never dejected in adverfity, never influenc"ed by unworthy terrors of detraction or of death; "fince from my infancy I had been addicted to literary pursuits, and was ftronger in mind than "in body, declining the duties of a camp, in which 66 every muscular common man must have furpaff❝ed me, I devoted myself to that kind of service "for which I had the greatest ability, that, with "the better portion of myself, I might add all the "weight I could to the pleas of my country and to "this moft excellent cause."

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He thus juftifies, on the nobleft ground, the line of life he pursued. In the fame compofition he frankly states the motives which prompted him to execute each particular work that raised him to notice in his new field of controversy; but before we attend to the order in which he treated various public questions that he confidered of high moment to his country, it is just to obferve his fidelity and tenderness in first discharging, as a poet, the duties of private friendship.

Before he quitted Florence, Milton received intelligence of the lofs he had to sustain, by the untimely death of Charles Diodati, the favourite affociate of his early ftudies. On his arrival in England, the bitterness of fuch a lofs was felt with redoubled

redoubled fenfibility by his affectionate heart, which relieved and gratified itself by commemorating the engaging character of the deceafed, in a poem of confiderable length, entitled, Epitaphium Damonis, a poem mentioned by Johnfon with fupercilious contempt, yet poffeffing fuch beauties as render it pre-eminent in that fpecies of compofition.

Many poets have lamented a friend of their youth, and a companion of their ftudies, but no one has furpaffed the affecting tenderness with which Milton speaks of his loft Diodati.

Quis mihi fidus

Hærebit lateri comes, ut tu fæpe folebas,
Frigoribus duris, et per loca fœta pruinis,
Aut rapido fub fole, fiti morientibus herbis?

Pectora cui credam ? Quis me lenire docebit
Mordaces curas, quis longam fallere noctem
Dulcibus alloquiis, grato cum fibilat igni

Molle pyrum, et nucibus ftrepitat focus, et malus Auster
Mifcet cuncta foris, et defuper intonat ulmo?

Aut æftate, dies medio dum vertitur axe,

Cum Pan æfculea fomnum capit abditus umbra,
Quis mihi blanditiafque tuas, quis tum mihi rifus,
Cecropiofque fales referet, cultofque lepores?

Who now my pains and perils fhall divide
As thou was won't, for ever at my fide,

Both when the rugged froft annoy'd our feet,
And when the herbage all was parch'd with heat?

In whom fhall I confide, whofe counsel find
A balmy medicine to my troubled mind?

Or

Or whose difcourfe with innocent delight
Shall fill me now, and cheat the wintry night?
While hiffes on my hearth the pulpy pear,
And black'ning chefnuts start and crackle there;
While ftorms abroad, the dreary scene o'erwhelm,
And the wind thunders thro' the riven elm ?

Or who, when fummer funs their fummit reach,
And Pan fleeps hidden by the shelt'ring beech,
Who then shall render me thy Attic vein
Of wit, too polish'd to inflict a pain ?

With the spirit of a man most able to feel, and most worthy to enjoy, the delights of true friendship, he defcribes the rarity of that inestimable blessing, and the anguish we fuffer from the untimely lofs of it.

Vix fibi quifque parem de millibus invenit unum;
Aut fi fors dederit tandem non aspera votis,

Illum inopina dies, qua non fperaveris hora,
Surripit, æternum linquens in fæcula damnum,

Scarce one in thousands meets kindred mind;
And if the long-sought good at last he find,
When least he fears it, death his treasure steals,
And gives his heart a wound that nothing heals,

There is, indeed, but one effectual lenitive for wounds of this nature, which Milton happily poffeffed in the fincerity and fervour of his religion. He closes his lamentation for his favourite friend, as he had closed his Lycidas, with juft and foothing reflections on the purity of life, by which the object of his regret was distinguished, and with a sublime conception of that, celeftial beatitude, which he confidently

confidently regarded as the infallible and immediate recompence of departed virtue.

Having paid what was due to friendship in his poetical capacity, he devoted his pen to public affairs, and entered on that career of controversy, which eftranged him fo long, and carried him fo far from thofe milder and more engaging ftudies, that nature and education had made the darlings of his mind. If to facrifice favourite pursuits that promifed great glory, pursuits in which acknowledged genius had qualified an ambitious fpirit to excel; if to facrifice these to irksome disputes, from a sense of what he owed to the exigencies of his country; if fuch conduct deserve, as it affuredly does, the name of public virtue, it may be as difficult, perhaps, to find an equal to Milton in genuine patriotifm as in poetical power: for who can be faid to have facrificed fo much, or to have fhewn a firmer affection to the public good? If he mistook the mode of promoting it; if his fentiments, both on ecclefiaftical and civil policy, are fuch as the majority of our countrymen think it just and wife to reject, let us give him the credit he deferves for the merit of his intention; let us refpect, as we ought to do, the probity of an exalted understanding, animated by a fervent, steady, and laudable defire to enlighten mankind, and to render them more virtuous and happy.

In the year 1640, when Milton returned to England, the current of popular opinion ran with great vehemence against episcopacy. He was prepared to catch the spirit of the time, and to become an advocate for ecclefiaftical reformation, by having peculiar and domeftic grounds of complaint against

religious

religious oppreffion. His favourite preceptor had been reduced to exile, and his father difinherited, by intolerance and fuperftition. He wrote, therefore, with the indignant enthusiasm of a man refenting the injuries of those, who are most entitled to his love and veneration. The ardour of his affections confpired with the warmth of his fancy to enflame him with that puritanical zeal, which blazes fo intenfely in his controverfial productions: no lefs than four of these were publifhed within two years after his return; and he thus fpeaks of the motives, that led him to this fpecies of compofition, in his Second Defence.

"Being * animated by this univerfal outcry against the bishops, as I perceived that men were

taking

* Ut primum loquendi faltem cæpta eft libertas concedi, omnia in epifcopos aperiri ora; alii de ipforum vitiis, alii de ipfius ordinis vitio conqueri - - - Ad hæc fane experrectus, cum veram affectari viam ad libertatem cernerem, ab his initiis, his paffibus, ad liberandam fervitute vitam omnem mortalium rectiffime procedi, fi ab religione difciplina orta, ad mores & inftituta. reipublicæ emanaret, cum etiam me ita ab adolefcentia parâffem, ut quid divini quid humani effet juris, ante omnia poffem non ignorare, meque confuluiffem ecquando ullius ufus effem futurus, fi nunc patriæ, immo vero ecclefiæ totque fratribus evangelii caufà periculo fefe objicientibus deeffem, ftatui, etfi tunc alia quædam meditabar, huc omne ingenium, omnes induftriæ vires transferre. Primum itaque de reformande ecclefia Anglicana, duos ad amicum quendam libros confcripfi; deinde, cum duo præ cæteris magni nominis epifcopi fuum jus contra miniftros quofdam primarios affererent, ratus de iis rebus, quas amore folo veritatis, & ex officii chriftiani ratione didiceram, haud pejus me dicturum quam qui de fuo quæftu & injuftiffimo dominatu con

tendebant,