severance in study and discipline could add, in a long course of years, to the beneficent prodigality of nature: even in infancy he discovered a passion for glory; in youth he was attached to temperance; and, arriving at manhood, he formed the magnanimous design of building a lofty name upon the most solid and secure foundation.

"He all his study bent

To worship God aright, and know his works
Not hid; nor those things last, that might preserve
Freedom and peace to men.

In a noble consciousness of his powers and intentions, he was not afraid to give, in his early life, a most singular promise to his country of producing such future works as might redound to her glory; and though such personal calamities fell upon him, as might fairly have absolved him from that engagement, yet never was any promise more magnificently fulfilled. Seneca has considered a man of resolution struggling with adversity as a spectacle worthy of God; our resolute countryman not only struggled with

adversity, but, under a peculiar load of complicated calamities, he accomplished those works, that are justly reckoned among the noblest offspring of human genius. In this point of view, with what pathetic grandeur is the poet invested. In contemplating the variety of his sufferings, and his various mental achievements, we may declare, without any extravagance of praise, that although sublimity is the predominant characteristic of Milton's poem, his own personal character is still more sublime.

His majestic pre-eminence is nobly described in the following verses of Akenside, a poet who bore some affinity to Milton in the ardour of his mind, whose sentiments are always noble, though not always accompanied by a graceful felicity of expression.

Mark how the dread Pantheon stands
Amid the domes of modern hands,

Amid the toys of idle state

How simply, how severely great!

Then turn, and while each western clime

Presents her tuneful sons to time,

f

So mark thou MILTON's name,

And add, thus differs from the throng

The spirit which inform'd thy aweful song, Which bade thy potent voice protect thy country's fame.

The powers of Milton, indeed, are so irresistible, that even those, whom the blindness of prejudice has rendered his enemies, are constrained to regard him as an object of admiration. In this article, posterity, to whom he made a very interesting appeal, has done him ample justice; still he is more admired than beloved; yet in granting him only admiration, we ungenerously withhold the richest half of that posthumous reward for which he laboured so fervently we may be confident that he rather wished to excite the affection than the applause of mankind; and assuredly he has the noblest title to both, the title of having exerted superlative genius and literary ambition, under the constant influence of religious philanthropy. In proportion as our country has advanced in purity of taste, she has applauded the poet; and in proportion

as she advances in liberality of sentiment, she will love the man; but love in this aspect is more volatile than admiration, and a beneficent genius may be easily deprived of it by the detraction of an enemy, or the mistake of a friend: Milton has suffered not a little from both; and indeed, if one singular mistake of his friends should prevail, he could hardly become an object of general affection. What votary of the Muse could love a poet, however excellent in that capacity, who represented it as a crime in a captive monarch to have made the poetry of Shakespeare the companion of his solitude? Credulity has imagined that Milton was such a barbarous Goth. Nor is this the suggestion of his enemies; even Warton, the liberal defender of his poetical reputation, and several living writers of eminence, have lavished their censures on Milton, from a too hasty belief, that puritanical prejudices had hurried him into this rancorous absurdity.

Their censures are all founded on a mistake; but the merit of correcting it be

longs not to me; Mr. Waldron, the sensible and modest editor of a miscellany, entitled, The Literary Museum, in a note to Roscius Anglicanus, has, in a very liberal manner, collected and refuted the charges against Milton on this point, and abundantly proved, that instead of censuring the unfortunate Charles for amusing himself with Shakespeare, he only censured him for imitating the religious hypocrisy of Richard the Third so closely as to utter the very sentiments that are assigned to Richard in the page of the dramatic poet.

Milton undoubtedly thought, what an ardent political writer of the present age has not scrupled to assert, that "Charles the First lived and died an hypocrite." These two acute judges of mankind were, I believe, mistaken in this idea: it seems more probable, that this unfortunate prince was flattered into a persuasion, that he was really the meritorious martyr his adherents endeavoured to represent him.

But whatsoever his genuine character might be, the severe sentiments which Mil