interest of literature, that the two combatants were both to blame in their reciprocal use of weapons utterly unworthy of the great cause that each had to sustain : not content to wield the broad and bright sword of national argument, they both descended to use the mean and envenomed dagger of personal malevolence. They have indeed great authorities of modern time to plead in their excuse, not to mention the bitter disputants of antiquity. It was the opinion of Johnson, and Milton himself seems to have entertained the same idea, that it is allowable in literary contention to ridicule, vilify, and depreciate as much as possible, the character of an opponent. Surely this doctrine is unworthy of the great names, who have endeavoured to support it, both in theory and practice; a doctrine not only morally wrong but prudentially defective; for a malevolent spirit in eloquence is like a dangerous varnish in painting, which may produce, indeed, a brilliant and forcible effect for a time but ultimately injures the success of the production; a remark that may be verified in

perusing the Latin prose of Milton, where elegance of language and energy of sentiment, suffer not a little from being blended with the tiresome asperity of personal invective,

It is a pleasing transition to return from his enemies to his friends. He had a mind and a heart most feelingly alive to the duties and delights of friendship, and seems to have been peculiarly happy in this important article of human life. In speaking of his blindness, he mentions, in the most interesting manner, the assiduous and ten-der attention, which he received on that occasion from his friends in general: some of them he regarded as not inferior in kindness to Theseus and Pylades, the ancient demigods of amity. We have lost, perhaps, some little poems that flowed from the heart of Milton, by their being addressed. to persons who, in the vicissitudes of public, fortune, were suddenly plunged into ob-. seurity with the honors they had received. Some of his sonnets that we possess did not venture into public till many years after the

death of their author for political reasons; others might be concealed from the same motive, and in such concealment they might easily perish. I can hardly believe that he never addressed a verse to Bradshaw, whom we have seen him praising so eloquently in prose; and among those whom he mentions with esteem in his Latin works, there is a less known military friend, who seems still more likely to have been honored with some tribute of the poet's affection, that time and chance may have destroyed; I mean his friend Overton, a soldier of eminence in the service of the parliament, whom Milton describes" as endeared to him through many years by the sweetness of his manners, and by an intimacy surpassing even the union of brothers.*" A character so highly and tenderly esteemed by the poet has a claim to the attention of his biographer. Overton is

Te, Overtone, mihi multis ab hinc annis et studiorum similitudine, et morum suavitate, concordia plusquam fraternâ conjunctissime.Prose Work, Vol· II. p. 400,

commended by the frank ingenuous Ludlow as a brave and faithful officer; he is also ridiculed in a ballad of the royalists as a religious enthusiast. He had a gratuity of 3001. a-year conferred upon him for his bravery by the parliament, and had risen to the rank of a major general. Cromwell, apprehensive that Overton was conspiring against his usurpation, first imprisoned him in the tower, and afterwards confined him in the island of Jersey. A letter, in which Marvel relates to Milton his having presented to the Protector at Windsor a recent copy of the Second Defence, expresses at the same time, an affectionate curiosity concerning the business of Overton, who was at that time just brought to London by a mysterious order of Cromwell. He did not escape from confinement till after the death of Oliver, when, in consequence of a petition from his sister to the parliament, he obtained his release. Soon after the restoration, he was again imprisoned in the tower with Colonel Desborow, on a rumour of their being concerned in a treasonable

commotion; but as that rumour seems to have been a political device of the royalists, contrived to strengthen the new government, he probably regained his freedom, though we know not how his active days were concluded. The anxiety and anguish that Milton must have indured in the various calamities to which his friends were exposed on the vicissitude of public affairs, formed, I apprehend, the severest sufferings of his extraordinary life, in which genius and affliction seem to have contended for pre-eminence.

Some traces of the sufferings I allude to, though mysteriously veiled, are yet visible in his poetry, and will be noticed hereafter. Not to anticipate the severest evil of his destiny, let me now speak of a foreign friend, in whose lively regard he found only honor and delight. On the publication of his defence, Leonard Philaras, a native of Athens, who had distinguished himself in Italy, and risen to the rank of envoy from the Duke of Parma to the court of France, conceived a flattering desire to