months before his own various and valuable labours were terminated by death. These very curious and interesting papers afford information respecting the latter days of the poet, which his late biographers were so far from possessing, that they could not believe it existed. Indeed, Mr. Warton himself had concluded, that all further enquiries for the will must be fruitless, as he had failed in a tedious and intricate search. At last however, he was enabled, by the friendship of Sir William Scott, to rescue from oblivion a curiosity so precious to poetical antiquarians. He found in the prerogative register the will of Milton, which though made by his brother Christopher, a lawyer by profession, was set aside from a deficiency in point of form-the litigation of this will produced a collection of evidence relating to the testator, which renders the discovery of those long forgotten papers peculiarly interesting; they shew very forcibly, and in new points of view, his domestic infelicity, and his amiable disposition, The tender and sublime poet, whose sensibility and sufferings were

so great, appears to have been almo fortunate in his daughters as the Shakespeare. A servant declares in that her deceased master, a little b last marriage, had lamented to her gratitude and cruelty of his childr complained, that they had combine fraud him in the economy of his ho sold several of his books in the base ner. His feelings on such an outra as a parent and as a scholar must ha singularly painful; perhaps they su to him those very pathetic lines, w seems to paint himself, in Sampson

tes :

I dark in light, exp

To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and w
Within doors or without; still as a fool,
In power of others, never in my own,
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more t

Unfortunate as he had proved trimony, he was probably induced ture once more into that state by th want of a domestic protector agains human daughters, under which des

I include only the two eldest; and in palliation even of their conduct, detestable as it appears, we may observe, that they are entitled to pity, as having been educated without the inestimable guidance of mater nal tenderness, under a father afflicted with loss of sight; they were also young: at the time of Milton's last marriage his eldest daughter had only reached the age of fifteen, and Deborah, his favorite, was still a child of nine years.

His new connection seems to have af forded him what he particularly sought; that degree of domestic tranquillity and comfort essential to his perseverance in study, which appears to have been, through all the vicissitudes of fortune the prime object of his life; and while all his labours were under the direction of religion or of philanthropy, there was nothing too arduous or too humble for his mind. In 1661 he published a little work, entitled, "Accidence commenced Grammar," benevolently calculated for the relief of children, by shortening their very tedious and irksome

progress in learning the elements of Latin. He published also, in the same year, another brief composition of Sir Walter Raleigh's, containing (like the former work of that celebrated man, which the same editor had given to the public) a series of political maxims; one of these I am tempted to transcribe, by the persuasion that Milton regarded it with peculiar pleasure, from its tendency to justify the parliamentary contention with Charles the First. Had the misguided monarch observed the maxim of Raleigh, he would not, like that illustrious victim to the vices of his royal father, have perished on the scaffold.-The maxim is the seventeenth of the collection, and gives the following instruction to a prince for preserving an hereditary kingdom.

"To be moderate in his taxes and impositions, and, when need doth require to use the subjects purse, to do it by parliament, and with their consent, making the cause apparent to them, and shewing his unwillingness in charging them. Finally, so to use it, that it may seem rather an offer

from his subjects, than an exaction by him."

However vehement the enmity of various persons against Milton might have been, during the tumult of passions on the recent restoration, there is great reason to believe, that his extraordinary abilities and probity so far triumphed over the prejudices against him, that, with all his republican offences upon his head, he might have been admitted to royal favor had he been willing to accept it. Richardson relates, on very good authority, that the post of Latin secretary, in which he had obtained so much credit as a scholar, was again offered to him after the Restoration; that he rejected it, and replied to his wife, who advised his acceptance of the appointment,-" You, as other women, would ride in your coach; for me, my aim is to live and die an honest man." Johnson discovers an inclination to discredit this story, because it does honor to Milton, and seemed inconsistent with his own ideas of probability. "He that had shared authority, either with the parliament, or