lately fuffered, not only from the epifcopal but even from the prefbyterian party. About the year 1641, our author, well knowing how much the puritans wanted the affiftance of abilities and learning, attacked the order of bishops and the intire conftitution of the Church of England, in three or four large and laboured treatifes. One of thefe, his Reply to bishop Hall's Remonftrance, was answered the fame year by an anonymous antagonist, supposed to be the bishop's fon; who calls Milton a blafphemer, a drunkard, a profane swearer, and a frequenter of brothels, afferting at the fame time, that he was expelled the University of Cambridge for a perpetual course of riot and debauchery. About the year 1644, Milton published his tracts on Divorce. Here he quarrelled with his own friends. Thefe pieces were inftantly anathematised by the thunder of the prefbyterian clergy, from the pulpit, the prefs, and the tribunal of the Affembly of Divines at Westminster. By the leaders of that perfuafion, who were now predominant, and who began in their turn to find that novelties were dangerous, he was even fummoned before the House of Lords. It is in reference to the rough and perhaps undeserved treatment which he received, in confequence of the publication of thefe differtations in defence of domestic liberty, that he complains in his twelfth Sonnet. I did but prompt the age to quit their CLOGS By the known rules of ancient liberty, When strait a barbarous noise environs me Of owls and cuccoos, affes, apes, and dogs, &c. And the preceding Sonnet on the fame fubject, is thus intitled, "On the DETRACTION which followed upon my writing certain "Treatifes." But these were only the beginnings of obloquy. He was again to appeal to posterity for indulgence. Evil Tongues, together with many Evil Days, were ftill in referve. The commonwealth was to be difannulled, and monarchy to be restored. The Defence of the King's Murther was not yet burnt by the common hangman. In the year 1676, his official Latin Letters were printed. In the Preface, the editor fays of the author, "Eft forfan digniffimus qui ab " omnibus legeretur Miltonus, nifi ftyli fui facundiam et puritatem "TURPISSIMIS MORIBUS inquinaffet." Winftanly thus characterises our author. "He is one whofe natural parts might de"fervedly give him a place among the principal of our English poets. But his fame is gone out like a candle in a fnuff, and "his memory will always ftink, which might have ever lived in honourable repute, had he not been a notorious traytor, &c." LIVES OF THE POETS, p. 175. edit. 1687. 66 I mention these descriptions of Milton, among many others of a like kind which appeared foon after his death, because they probably contain the tone of the public opinion, and feem to reprefent the ge neral and established estimation of his character at that time; and as 4 Cz they they are here delivered difpaffionately, and not thrown out in the heat of controverfy and calumniation. Upon the whole, and with regard to his political writing at large, even after the prejudices of party have fubfided, Milton, I believe, has found no great share of favour, of applaufe, or even of candour, from diftant generations. His Si quid meremur, in the fenfe here belonging to the words, has been too fully ascertained by the mature determination of time. Toland, about thirty years after the Refloration, thought Milton's profe-works of fufficient excellence and importance to be collected and printed in one body. But they were neglected and foon forgotten. Of late years, fome attempts have been made to revive them, with as little fuccefs. At prefent, they are almost unknown. If they are ever infpected, it is perhaps occafionally by the commentator on Milton's verse as affording materials for comparative criticism, or from motives of curiofity only, as the productions of the writer of Coмus and PARADISE LOST, and not fo much for any independent value of their own. In point of doctrine, they are calculated to annihilate the very foundations of our civil and religious establishment, as it now subfifts: they are fubverfive of our legislature, and our species of government. In condemning tyranny, he strikes at the bare existence of kings; in combating fuperftition, he decries all public religion. Thefe difcourfes hold forth a fyftem of politics, at prefent as unconftitutional, and almost as obfolete, as the nonsense of paffive obedience and in this view, we might juft as well think of republifhing the pernicious theories of the kingly bigot James, as of the republican ufurper Oliver Cromwell. Their style is perplexed, pedantic, poetical, and unnatural: abounding in enthusiastic effufions, which have been mistaken for eloquence and imagination. In the midst of the moft folemn rhapsodies, which would have fhone in a fast-fermon before Cromwell, he fometimes indulges a vein of jocularity; but his witticisms are as aukward as they are unfuitable, and Milton never more mifunderstands the nature and bias of his genius, than when he affects to be arch either in profe or verfe. His want of deference to fuperiours teaches him to write without good manners; and, when we confider his familiar acquaintance with the elegancies of antiquity, with the orators and hiftorians of Greece and Rome, few writers will be found to have made fo flender a facrifice to the Graces. From fome of these ftrictures, I must except the TRACTATE ON EDUCATION, and the AREOPAGITICA, which are written with a tolerable degree of facility, fimplicity, purity, and perfpicuity; and the latter, fome tedious hiftorical digreffions, and tome little fophiftry excepted, is the most close, conclufive, comprehenfive, and decifive vindication of the liberty of the prefs that has yet appeared, on a fubject on which it is difficult to decide, between the licentiousness of scepticifm and fedition, and the arbitrary exertions of authority. In the mean time, Milton's profe-works, I fufpect, were never popular he he deeply engaged in moft of the ecclefiaftical difputes of his times, yet he is feldom quoted or mentioned by his contemporaries, either of the prefbyterian or independent perfuafion: even by Richard Baxter, paftor of Kidderminster, a judicious and voluminous advocate on the fide of the prefbyterians, who vehemently cenfures and opposes several of his coadjutors in the cause of church-independency, he is paffed over in profound filence. For his brethren the independents he feems to have been too learned and unintelligible. In 1652, fir Robert Filmer, in a general attack on the recent antimonarchical writers, bestows but a very fhort and flight refutation on his politics. It appears from the CENSURE OF THE ROTA, a pamphlet published in 1660, faid to be fabricated by Harrington's club, that even his brother party-writers ridiculed the affectations and abfurdities of his ftyle.* Lord Monboddo is the only modern critic of note, who ranks Milton as a profe-writer with Hooker, Sprat, and Clarendon. I have hitherto been speaking of Milton's profe-works in English. I cannot allow, that his Latin performances in profe are formed on any one chafte Roman model. They confift of a modern factitious mode of latinity, a compound of phrafeology gleaned from a general imitation of various ftyles, commodious enough for the author's purpofe. His DEFENSIO PRO POPULO ANGLICANO against Salmafius, fo liberally rewarded by the pref byterian adminiftration, the beft apology that ever was offered for bringing kings to the block, and which diffufed his reputation all over Europe, is remembered no more. Doctor Birch obferves of this prophetic hope in the text, that "the univerfal admiration with which his Works are read, jufti"fies what he himself fays in his Ode to Roufe." LIFE, p. lxiii. But this hope, as we have feen, cur author here reftricts to his political speculations, to his works on civil and religious fubjects, which are ftill in expectation of a reverfionary fame, and ftill await the partial fuffrages of a fana pofteritas, and a 'cordatior atas. The flattering anticipation of more propitious times, and more equitable judges, at fome remote period, would have been juftly applicable to his other works; for in those, and thofe only, it has been amply and confpicuously verified. It is from the ultimi nepotes that justice has been done to the genuine claims of his poetical character. Nor does any thing, indeed, more ftrongly mark the improved critical difcernment of the prefent age, than that it has attoned for the contemptible tafte, the blindness and the neglect, of the laft, in recovering and exalting the poetry of Milton to its due degree of cultivation and esteem: and we may fafely prognof ticate, that the pofterities are yet unborn, which will bear teftimony to the beauties of his calmer imagery, and the magnificence of his * Oldys attributes this pamphlet to Harrington, in his Catalogue of the pamplets in the Harleian Library. more more fublime descriptions, to the dignity of his fentiments, and the vigour of his language. Undoubtedly the PARAR DISE LOST had always it's readers, and perhaps more numerous and devoted admirers even at the infancy of its publication, than our biographers have commonly fuppofed. Yet, in its filent progreffion, even after it had been recommended by the popular papers of Addison, and had acquired the distinction of an English claffic, many years elapfed before any fymptoms appeared, that it had influenced the national taste, or that it had wrought a change in our verfification, and our modes of poetical thinking. The remark might be ftill farther extended, and more forcibly directed and brought home, to the pieces which compose the present volume. Among other proofs of our reverence for Milton, we have seen a monument given to his memory in Westminster abbey. But this fplendid memorial did not appear, till we had overlooked the author of REFORMATION IN ENGLAND, and the DEFENSIO: in other words, till our rifing regard for Milton the poet had taught us to forget Milton the politician. Not long before, about the year 1710, when Atterbury's infcription for the monument of John Philips, in which he was faid to be foli Miltono fecundus, was fhewn to doctor Sprat then dean of Westminster, he refused it admittance into the church; the name of Milton as doctor Johnson obferves, who firft relates this anecdote," being in his opinion, too detefta"ble to be read on the wall of a building dedicated to devotion.” Yet when more enlarged principles had taken place, and his bust was erected where once his name had been deemed a profanation, doctor George, Provoft of King's College, Cambridge, who was folicited for an epitaph on the occafion, forbearing to draw his topics of reconciliation from a better fource, thought it expedient to apologise for the reception of the monument of Milton the republican into that venerable repofitory of kings and prelates, in the following hexameters ; which recall our attention to the text, and on account of their spirited fimplicity, and nervous elegance, deserve to be brought forward, and to be more univerfally circulated. Augufti regum cineres, fanctæque favillæ Heroum, vofque O, venerandi nominis, umbræ ! THE EN D. APPENDIX TO THE NOTES ON COMUS.* P EELE's play, to which it is supposed our author had at least a retrofpect in writing COMUS, opens thus. Anticke, Frolicke, and Fantasticke, three adventurers, are loft in a wood, in the night. They agree to fing the old Song, "Three merrie men, and three merrie men, "And three merrie men be wee; "I in the wood, and thou on the ground, They hear a dog, and fancy themselves to be near fome village. A cottager appears, with a lantern: on which Frolicke fays, "I "perceiue the glimryng of a gloworme, a candle, or a cats-eye, "&c." They intreat him to fhew the way: otherwise, they say, wee are like to wander among the owlets and hobgoblins of the "forest." He invites them to his cottage; and orders his wife to "lay a crab in the fire, to roft for lambes-wool, &c." They fing, "When as the rie reach to the chin, "And chopcherrie, chopcherrie ripe within ; "And schoole-boyes playing in the ftreame, &c." At length, to pafs the time trimly, it is propofed that the wife fhall tell " 66 winters tale," or, a merry an old wiues winters tale,” of which fort of ftories fhe is not without a Score. She begins, There was a king, or duke, who had a most beautiful daughter, and she was stolen away by a necromancer, who turning himself into a dragon, carried her in his mouth to his castle. The king fent out all his men to find his daughter; at last, all the king's men "went out so long, that hir Two Brothers went to feeke hir." Immediately the two Brothers enter, and speak, a See above, pp. 126. 127. This old Ballad is alluded to in TWELFTH NIGHT, A. ii. S. iii. Sir Toby fays, "My Lady's a Cataian, we are politicians, Malvolio's a Peg a Ramfey, and 4 THREE MERRY MEN BE WE. ." Again, in the Comedy of RAM-ALLEY, 1611. See Reed's OLD PL. vol. v. p. 437. And in the Preface to the SHOEMAKER'S HOLIDAY, 1610. 4to. Bl. Let." The merriments that paffed in "Eyre's house and other accidents; with two merry THREE MENS SONGS.' And in the Comedy LAUGH AND LIE DOWN, 1605. Signat. E. 5. "He plaied "fuch a song of the THREE MERRY MEN, &c." Many more inítances occur. c See Shakespeare's WINTER'S TALE, A. ii. S. i. There is an entry in the Register of the Stationers, of " A Book entitled A Wynter "Nyghts paftyme, May 22, 1594." This is not Shakespeare's WINTER'S TALE, which perhaps did not appear till after 1600. |