within a few weeks of King Charles the Second's restoration."

Philips also informs us, that while his uncle lodged at Thomson's he was employed in revising and polishing the Latin work of his youngest nephew John, who on the publication of a severe attack upon Milton, ascribed (but injuriously as Mr. Todd has clearly proved) to Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, vindicated his illustrious relation, and satirized his supposed adversary with a keenness and vehemence of invective, which induced, perhaps, some readers to suspect that the performance was written entirely by Milton. The traces however, of a young hand, are evident in the work; and John Philips, at the time it appeared, 1652, was a youth of nineteen or twenty, eager (as he declares) to engage unsolicited in a composition, which however abounding in juvenile defects, proves him attached to his country, and grateful to his friends.

In 1654, Milton, now utterly blind, appeared again in the field of controversy, first in his Second Defence of the English Peo

ple, and the following year in a defence of himself, "Autoris pro se Defensio." The first of these productions is in truth, his own vindication; it is the work in which he speaks most abundantly of his own character and conduct; it displays that true eloquence of the heart, by which probity and talents are enabled to defeat the malevolence of an insolent accuser; it proves that the mind of this wonderful man united to the poetic imagination of Homer, the argumentative energy of Demosthenes.

It must however be allowed, that while Milton defended himself with the spirit of the Grecian orator, in imitating the eloquent Athenian he promiscuously caught both his merits and defects. It is to be regretted, that these mighty masters of rhetoric, permitted so large an alloy of personal virulence to debase the dignity of national argument; yet as the great orators of an age more humanized are apt, we see, to be hurried into the same failing, we may conclude that it is almost inseparable, from the weakness of nature, and we must not expect to find,

though we certainly should endeavour to introduce, the charity of the Gospel in political contention.

If the utmost acrimony of invective, could in any case be justified, it might assuredly be so by the calumnies which hurried both Demosthenes and Milton, into those intemperate expressions, which appear in their respective vindications like specks of a meaner mineral in a mass of the richest ore. The outrages that called forth the vindictive thunders of the eloquent Athenian, are sufficiently known. The indignation of Milton was awakened by a Latin work, published at the Hague in 1652, entitled, Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cælum; The Cry of Royal Blood to Heaven. In this book all the bitter terms of abhorrence and reproach, with which the malignity of passion can dishonor learning, were lavished on the eloquent defender of the English commonwealth. The secret author of this scurrility was Peter du Moulin, a Protestant divine, and son of a French author, whom the biographers of his own

country describe as a satirist without taste. and a theologian without temper. Though du Moulin seems to have inherited the acrimonious spirit of his father, he had not the courage to publish himself what he had written as the antagonist of Milton, but sent his papers to Salmasius, who entrusted them to Alexander More, a French protestant of Scotch extraction, and a divine, who agreed in his principles with the author of the manuscript.

Most unfortunately for his own future comfort, More published, without a name the work of Du Moulin, with a dedication to Charles the second, under the signature of Ulac, the Dutch printer. He decorated the book with a portrait of Charles, and applied at the same time to Milton the Virgi lian delineation of Polypheme:

Monstrum horrendum informe ihgens, cui lumen ademptum.

A monstrous bulk deform'd depriv'd of sight. DRYDEN.

Never was a savage insult more completely avenged; for Milton, having discovered that

More was unquestionably the publisher of the work, considered him as its author, which, according to legal maxims, he had a right to do, and in return exposed, with such severity of reproof, the irregular and licentious life, of his adversary, that, losing his popularity as a preacher, he seems to have been overwhelmed with public contempt.

There is a circumstance hitherto unnoticed in this controversy, that may be considered as a proof of Milton's independent and inflexible spirit. More having heard accidentally, from an acquaintance of the English author, that he was preparing to expose him as the editor of the scurrilous work he had published, contrived to make great interest in England, first, to prevent the appearance, and again, to soften the personal severity of Milton's Second Defence. The Dutch ambassador endeavoured to prevail on Cromwell to suppress the work. When he found that this was impossible, he conveyed to Milton the letters of More, containing a protestation that he was not the author of the invective, which had given so