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life: commencing from his return to the continent, it had extended to a period of twenty years; in three of these he had been afflicted with partial but increasing blindness, and in six he had been utterly blind. His exertions in this period of his life had exposed him to infinite obloquy, but his ge nerous and enlightened country, whatever may be the state of her political opinions, will remember with becoming equity and pride, that the sublimest of her poets, though deceived as he certainly was by extraordinary pretenders to public virtue, and subject to great illusion in his ideas of government, is entitled to the first of encomiums, the praise of being truly an honest man: since it was assuredly his constant aim to be the steady disinterested adherent and encomiast of truth and justice; hence we find him continually displaying those internal blessings, which have been happily called, "the clear witnesses of a benign nature," an innocent conscience, and a satisfied understanding.

Such is the imperfection of human existence, that mistaken notions and principles

are perfectly compatible with elevation, integrity, and satisfaction of mind. The writer must be a slave of prejudice, or a sycophant to power, who would represent Milton as deficient in any of these noble endowments. Even Addison himself seems to lose his rare Christian candour, and Hume his philosophical precision, when these two celebrated though very different authors speak harshly of Milton's political character, without paying due acknowledgment to the rectitude of his heart. I trust, the probity of a very ardent but uncorrupted enthusiast is in some measure vindicated in the course of these pages, happy if they promote the completion of his own manly wish to be perfectly known, if they impress a just and candid estimate of his merits and mistakes on the temperate mind of his country.

END OF THE SECOND PART.

THE

LIFE OF MILTON.

PART III.

E'PER VECCHIEZZA IN LUI VIRTU NON MANCADRITTO EI TENEVA INVERSO IL CIEL IL VOLTO.

TASSO.

IN beginning to contemplate the latter years of Milton, it may be useful to remark, that they afford, perhaps, the most animating lesson, which biography, instructive as it is, can supply; they shew to what noble use a cultivated and religious mind may convert even declining life, though embittered by a variety of afflictions, and darkened by personal calamity.

On regaining his liberty, he took a

house in Holborn near Red Lion Fields, but soon removed to Jewin-street, and there married in his fifty-fourth year, his third wife Elizabeth Minshall; the daughter of a gentleman in Cheshire. As the misfortune of blindness seems particularly to require a female companion, and yet almost precludes the unhappy sufferer from selecting such as might suit him, Milton is said to have formed this attachment on the recommendation of his friend Dr. Paget, an eminent physician of the city, to whom the lady was related. Some biographers have spoken harshly of her temper and conduct; but let me observe, in justice to her memory, that the manuscript of Aubrey, to whom she was probably known, mentions her as a gentle person, of a peaceful and agreeable humour. That she was particularly attentive to her husband, and treated his infirmities with tenderness, is 'candidly remarked by Mr. Warton, in a posthumous note to the testamentary papers relating to Milton, which his indefatigable researches at length discovered, and committed to the press, a few

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