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 favor, that even foreigners gave him credit for those 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 such expectations in his behalf, Milton returned to England. the fubfequent portion of his life, however gloomy and tempeftuous, will be found to correfpond, at leaft in the close of it, with the radiant promise of his youth. We fhall fee him deferting his favorite haunts of Parnaffus to enter the thorny paths of ecclefiaftical and political diffenfion : his principles as a difputant will be condemned and approved, according to the prevalence of oppofite and irreconcileable opinions, that fluctuate in the world; but his upright confiftency of conduct deferves applause from all honest and candid men of every perfuafion. The Mufe, indeed, who had bleft him with fingular endow ments, and given him fo lively a fenfe of his being constituted a poet by nature, that when he wrote not verfe, he had the ufe, (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 his mufe have vifibly appeared to reprove his defertion of her fervice in

a parental remonftrance, he might have answered her, as the young Harry of Shakespeare 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 you that I am your fon."

END OF THE FIRST PART.

PART II.

INCONCUSSA TENENS DUBIO VESTIGIA MUNDO.

LUCAN.

THE narrative may proceed from the informa

tion 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 ftudies. This firft eftablishment (as we learn from his nephew) was a lodging in St. Bride's Church-yard, where he received, as his difciples, 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 landable

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

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 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. Johnfon ridicules this diftinction, and feems determined to treat Milton as a profeft fchoolmafter, for the fake of attempting to prove, that he did not fuftain the character with advantage, but adopted a vain and prepofterous plan of education.

6:

"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 labor to turn philofophy from the ftudy of nature to fpeculations upon life; but the innovators, whom I oppofe, are turning "off attention from life to nature; they feem to "think that we are placed here to watch the

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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."

[ Οτι τοι ἐν μεγάροισι κακόντ ̓ ἀγαθόντε τέτυκται.

This infidious artifice of reprefenting Milton and Socrates as antagonists is peculiarly unfortunate, fince 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, he is accused of counteracting, never fhone with more luftre than in the following paffage of the Paradise Loft :

But apt the mind or fancy is to rove
Uncheck'd, and of her roving is no end,

Till warn'd; or by experience taught, fhe learn,
That not to know at large of things remote
From use, obfcure and fubtle, but to know
That, which before us lies in daily life,

Is the prime wifdom; what is more is fume,
Or emptiness, or fond impertinence,

And renders us in things that moft concern,
Unpractis'd, unprepar'd, and still to feek.

These beautiful lines are built in fome meafure, as Bentley has remarked, upon a verfe of Homer, the very verfe admired by Socrates which Dr. Johnfon has not fcrupled to quote, as a part of his fingular ill-grounded attempt to prove that Milton's ideas of education were in direct oppofition to thofe of the great moralift of Greece; an attempt that arofe from a very inoffenfive boast of Milton's nephew, who gives a long lift of books perufed by the fcholars of his