At tu sume animos, nec spes cadat anxia curis,
Nec tua concutiat decolor ossa metus.
Sis etenim quamvis fulgentibus obsitus armis,
Intententque tibi millia tela necem,

At nullis vel inerme latus violabitur armis,
Deque tuo cuspis nulla cruore bibet;
Namque eris ipse dei radiante sub ægide tutus,
Ille tibi custos, et pugil ille tibi:

Et tu (quod superest miseris) sperare memento,
Et tu magnanimo pectore vince mala;
Nec dubites quandoque frui melioribus annis,
Atque iterum patrios posse videre lares.

But thou, take courage, strive against despair,
Shake not with dread, nor nourish anxious care.
What tho' grim war on every side appears,
And thou art menac'd by a thousand spears,
Not one shall drink thy blood, not one offend
Ev'n the defenceless bosom of my friend;
For thee the ægis of thy God shall hide;
Jehovah's self shall combat on thy side;
Thou, therefore, as the most afflicted may,
Still hope, and triumph o'er thy evil day;
Trust thou shalt yet behold a happier time,
And yet again enjoy thy native clime.

The reader, inclined to sympathise in the joys of Milton, will be gratified in being

informed, that preceptor, whose exile and poverty he pathetically lamented, and whose prosperous return he predicted, was in a few years restored to his country, and became Master of Jesus College, in Cambridge.

As the year in which he quitted England (1625) corresponds with the fifteenth year of his pupil's age, it is probable that Milton was placed, at that time, under the care of Mr. Gill and his son; the former, chief master of St. Paul's school, the latter, his assistant, and afterwards his successor. It is remarkable, that Milton, who has been so uncandidly represented as an uncontroulable spirit, and a spurner of all just authority, seems to have contracted a tender attachment to more than one disciplinarian concerned in his education. He is said to have been the favorite scholar of the younger Gill; and he has left traces of their friendship in three Latin epistles, that express the highest esteem for the literary character and poetical talents of his instructor.

On the 12th of February, 1624, he was entered, not as a sizer, which some of his

ographers have erroneously asserted, but a pensioner of Christ's College, in Camidge. "At this time," says Doctor Johnn, "he was eminently skilled in the Latin tongue, and he himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the learned Politian had given him an example, seems to commend the earli ness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity; but the products of his vernal ertility have been surpassed by many, and particularly by his contemporary, Cowley. Of the powers of the mind it is difficult to Form an estimate; many have excelled Milton in their first essays, who never rose to works like Paradise Lost."

This is the first of many remarks, reete with detraction, in which an illustris author has indulged his spleen' against ilton, in a life of the poet, where an illbdued propensity to censure is ever comting with a necessity to commend. The rtisans of the powerful critic, from a natupartiality to their departed master, affect consider his malignity as existing only

in the prejudices of those who endeavour to counteract his injustice. A biographer of Milton ought therefore to regard it as his indispensable duty to shew how far this malignity is diffused through a long series of observations, which affect the reputation both of the poet and the man; a duty that must be painful in proportion to the sincerity of our esteem for literary excellence; since different as they were in their principles, their manners, and their writings, both the poet and his critical biographer are assuredly entitled to the praise of exalted genius. Perhaps in the republic of letters there never existed two writers more deservedly distinguished, not only for the energy of their mental faculties, but for a generous and devout desire to benefit mankind by their exertion.

Yet it must be lamented, and by the lovers of Milton in particular, that a moralist, who has given us, in the Rambler, such sublime lessons for the discipline of the heart and mind, should be unable to preserve his own from that acrimonious spirit of detraction which led him to depreciate, to the ut

most of his power, the rare abilities, and perhaps the still rarer integrity, of Milton. It may be said, that the truly eloquent and splendid encomium, which he has bestowed on the great work of the poet, ought to exempt him from such a charge. The singular beauties and effect of this eulogy shall be mentioned in the proper place, and with all the applause they merit; but here it is just to recollect, that the praise of the encomiast is nearly confined to the sentence he passes as a critic; his more diffusive detraction may be traced in almost every page of the biographer: not to encounter it on its first appearance, and wherever it is visible and important, would be to fail in that justice and regard towards the character of Milton, which, he, perhaps, of all men, has most eminently deserved.

In the preceding citation it is evidently the purpose of Dr. Johnson to degrade Milton below Cowley, and many other poets distinguished by juvenile compositions; but Mr. Warton has, with great taste and judgment, exposed the error of Johnson, in pre