Those who love not Milton, affect to speak scornfully of his writings on this fubject, and intimate, that they were received at firft with univerfal contempt; but this was far from being the cafe; they were applauded by many, on whofe judgment the author fet the highest value, though they were made a fource of indecent mirth by the vulgar; and we may reasonably conclude, it was this circumftance that induced him to wifh he had written them in Latin. To the low ribaldry, with which they were attacked, he alludes in the fonnet, celebrated for the following admirable lines on the hypocritical or intemperate affertors of liberty,

That ball for freedom in their fenseless mood,

And still revolt when truth would set them free;

clefiafticam, domefticam, feu privatam, atque civilem, deque prima jam fcripfiffem, déque tertia magiftratum fedulò agere viderem, quæ reliqua fecunda erat, domefticam mihi defumpfi; ea quoque tripartita, cum videretur effe, fi res conjugalis, fi liberorum inftitutio rectè fe haberet, fi denique liberè philofophandi poteftas effet, de conjugio non folum rite contrahendo, verum etiam, fi neceffe effet, diffolvendo, quid fentirem explicui; idque ex divina lege, quam Chriftus non fuftulit, nedum aliam, tota lege Mofaica graviorem civiliter fanxit; quid item de excepta folùm fornicatione fentiendum fit, et meam aliorumque fententiam exprompfi, et clariffimus vir Seldenus nofter, in Uxore Hebrææâ plùs minùs biennio pòft edita, uberius demonftravit. Fruftrà enim libertatem in comitiis et foro crepat, qui domi fervitutem viro indigniffimam, inferiori etiam fervit ; ea igitur de re aliquot libros edidi; eo præfertim tempore cùm vir fæpe et conjux hoftes inter fe acerrimi, hic domi cum liberis, illa in caftris hoftium materfamilias verfaretur, viro cædem atque perniciem minitans.-Profe Works, vol. 2. p. 385. folio Edit. London, 1738. vol. 2. p. 333.

Licence they mean, when they cry liberty,

For who loves that, must first be wife and good.

This noble fentiment he has inculcated more than once in profe; and as his life was in harmony with his precept, it might have taught his enemies to avoid the grofs abfurdity of representing him as the lover of anarchy and confufion. Never was a mind better conftituted, than Milton's, to fet a juft value on the prime bleffings of peace and order; if he ran into political errors, they arose not from any fondness for scenes of turbulence, but rather from his-generous credulity respecting the virtue of mankind; from believing that many hypocrites, who affected a wish to establish peace and order in his country, on what he esteemed the fureft foundation, were as fincere and difinterested as himself.

"From this time (fays Johnson) it is obferved, "that he became an enemy to the Prefbyterians, "whom he had favoured before. He that changes "his party by his humour is not much more virtuous than he that changes it by his interest; he "loves himself rather than truth." Notwithstanding the air of morality in this remark, it may be queftioned, if ever an obfervation was made on any great character more invidious or more unjuft. When the Prefbyterians were favoured by Milton, they spake the language of the oppreffed; on their being invested with power, they forgot their own. pleas for liberty of confcience, and became, in their turn, perfecutors; it was the consistency of virtue, therefore, in Milton, that made him at one time their advocate, and at another their opponent:

fo

far

far from loving himself better than truth, he was perhaps of all mortals the least selfish.-He contended for religion without seeking emoluments from the church; he contended for the state without aiming at any civil or military employment: truth and justice were the idols of his heart and the ftudy of his life; if he sometimes failed of attaining them, it was not because he loved any thing better; it was because he overshot the object of his fincere affection from the fondness and ardour of his purfuit.

His wife ftill perfifted in her desertion, but he amufed his mind under the mortification her conduct had occafioned by frequent vifits to the Lady Margaret Ley, whofe manners and converfation were peculiarly engaging. Her father, the Earl of Marlborough, had held the highest offices in a former reign, and of his virtues fhe used to speak with fuch filial eloquence as infpired Milton with a fonnet in her praise.

He continued alfo to manifeft his firm affection to the public good, by two compofitions intended to promote it; the little tractate on education, addreffed to Mr. Hartlib, who had requested his thoughts upon that interesting subject, and his Areopagitica, a speech for the liberty of unlicenced printing. The latter has been re-printed, with a fpirited preface by Thompson, a poet whom a paffion for freedom, united to genius, had highly qualified as an editor and eulogift of Milton.

Had the author of the Paradife Loft left us no compofition but his Areopagitica, he would be still

entitled to the affectionate veneration of every Englishman, who exults in that intellectual light, which is the noblest characteristic of his country, and for which England is chiefly indebted to the liberty of the prefs. Our conftant advocate for freedom, in every department of life, vindicated this most important privilege with a mind fully fenfible of its value; he poured all his heart into this vindication, and, to speak of his work in his own energetic language, we may juftly call it, what he has defined a good book to be," the precious life-blood of a mafter spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpofe to a life beyond life."

66

His late biographer, instead of praising Milton for a fervice fo honourably rendered to literature, feems rather defirous of annihilating its merit, by directing his farcaftic animofity against the liberty of the prefs. "It seems not more reasonable," fays Johnson," to leave the right of printing unrestrain"ed, because writers may be afterwards cenfured, "than it would be to fleep with doors unbolted, "because by our laws we can hang a thief."

This is fervile fophiftry; the author's illuftration of a thief may be turned against himself. To fuffer no book to be published without a licence, is tyranny as abfurd as it would be to fuffer no traveller to pass along the highway without producing a certificate that he is not a robber.

Even bad books may have their use, as Milton obferves; and I mention this obfervation, chiefly to fhew how liberally he introduces a just compliment to a great author of his own time, in fupport

of

of this idea. "What better witness," fays the advocate for unlicenced printing, "can ye expect I "fhould prodcce, than one of your own, not fit"ting in parliament, the chief of learned men re

puted in this land, Mr. Selden, whofe volume of "natural and national laws proves, not only by

great authorities brought together, but by exqui"fite reasons and theorems almost mathematically "demonstrative, that all opinions, yea errors, "known, read, and collected, are of main fervice "and affiftance towards the speedy attainment of "of what is trueft." This eulogy alone appears fufficient to refute a remark unfriendly to Milton, that he was frugal of his praise; fuch frugality will hardly be found united to a benevolent heart and a glowing imagination.

In 1645, his early poems, both English and Latin, were first published in a little volume by Humphry Mosely, who informs the reader in his advertisement, that he had obtained them by folicitation from the author, regarding him as a fuccessful rival of Spencer.

Milton had now paffed more than three years in that fingular state of mortification, which the difobedience of his wife occafioned. His time had been occupied by the inceffant exercife of his mental powers; but he probably felt with peculiar poig

nancy

"A craving void left aching in the breast."

As he entertained ferious thoughts of enforcing, by his own example, his doctrine of divorce, and

of