A writer of a fanguine imagination, who delineates a public character he admires in the glowing colours of -affection, has rarely the good fortune to find the perfonage whom he has praised acting in perfect conformity to his panegyric; but Milton, in one particular circumftance, had this rare felicity, in regard to the friend whom he so fervently commended; for Bradshaw refifted the tyrannical orders of Cromwell, in the plenitude of his power, with such firminess, that we might almost suppose him animated by a defire to act up to the letter of the eulogy, with which he had been honoured by the eloquence and the esteem of Milton. This will fufficiently appear by the following anecdote in Ludlow's Memoirs, who, after speaking of Oliver's ufurpation, and the universal terror he infpired, relates how he himself was fummoned, with Bradshaw, Sir Henry Vane, and colonel Rich, to appear before the ufurper in council. "Cromwell (fays Ludlow) as foon as he saw the "lord prefident, required him to take out a new com"miffion for his office of chief justice of Chester, which "he refused, alledging that he held that place by a grant "from the parliament of England, to continue, 'quamdiu “se bene gefferit ;' and whether he had carried himself "with that integrity, which his commiffion exacted, he was ready to fubmit to a trial by twelve Englishmen, to "be chofen even by Cromwell himself.”

This opposition to the ufurper was affuredly magnanimous, and the more so as Bradshaw perfifted in it, and actually went his circuit as chief justice without paying any regard to what Cromwell had required. The odium which

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the prefident justly incurred in the trial of Charles feems to have prevented even our liberal hiftorians from recording with candour the great qualities he poffeffed: he was undoubtedly not only an intrepid but a fincere enthusiast in the cause of the commonwealth. His difcourfe on his death-bed is a fanction to his fincerity; he regarded it as · meritorious to have pronounced sentence on his king, in those awful moments when he was paffing himself to the tribunal of his God. Whatever we may think of his po·litical tenets, let us render justice to the courage and the confiftency with which he fupported them.-The mind of Milton was in unifon with the high-toned spirit of this resolute friend, and we shall foon see how little ground there is to accufe the poet of fervility to Cromwell; but we have first to notice the regular feries of his political compofitions.

Soon after his public appointment, he was requested by the council to counteract the effect of the celebrated book, entitled, Icon Bafilike, the Royal Image, and in 1649 he published his Iconoclaftes, the Image Breaker. The faga- city of Milton enabled him to discover, that the pious work imputed to the deceased king was a political artifice to serve the cause of the royalifts; but as it was impoffible for him to obtain fuch evidence to detect the impofition as time has fince produced, he executed a regular reply to the book, as a real production of the king, intimating at the fame time his fufpicion of the fraud.

This reply has recently drawn on the name of Milton much liberal praife, and much injurious obloquy. A Scot

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tifh critic of great eminence, Lord Monboddo, has celebrated -the opening of the Iconoclastes as a model of English prose, or, to use his own juft expreffions, "a fpecimen of noble "and manly eloquence." Johnson, from the fame work, takes occafion to infinuate, that Milton was a dishonest man. A charge fo ferious, and from a moralift who profeffed fuch an attachment to truth, deferves fome difcuffion. "As fac"tion (fays the unfriendly biographer) seldom leaves a man

honeft, however it might find him, Milton is fufpected of "having interpolated the book called Icon Bafilike, by in

ferting a prayer taken from Sidney's Arcadia, and im"puting it to the king, whom he charges, in his Iconoclaftes, "with the use of this prayer as with a heavy crime, in "the indecent language with which prosperity had en"boldened the advocates for rebellion to infult; all that is "venerable and great."

A fimple question will show the want of candour in this attempt to impeach the moral credit of Milton. By whom is the fufpected of this dishonesty? His fevere biographer: finks the name of his own old and dishonourable affociate in de-preciating Milton, and does not inform us that it was the in<famous Lauder, who, having failed to blast the reputation of the poet, with equal impotence, and fury pursued his attack against the probity of the man in an execrable pamphlet entitled "King Charles the First vindicated from the Charge "of Plagiarism brought against him by Milton, and Milton "himself convicted of Forgery." Inftead of naming Lauder, who perfifted in trying to fubstantiate this most improbable charge, Johnson would infidiously lead us to believe, that

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the refpectable Dr. Birch fupported it, though Birch, who had indeed printed, in the appendix to his Life of Milton, the idle ftory which Lauder urges as a proof of Milton's imposture, had properly rejected that story from the improved edition of his work, and honourably united with another candid biographer of the poet, the learned bishop of Bristol, in declaring that "fuch contemptible evidence is not to be admitted against a man, who had a foul above "being guilty of so mean an action."

There are fome calumnics fo utterly defpicable and abfurd, that to refute them elaborately is almoft a difgrace: did not the calumny I am now fpeaking of belong to this description, it might be here observed, that a writer who published remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton, in which the afperity of that biographer is oppofed with fuperior afperity, has proved, with new arguments, the futility of the charge in question. Inftead of repeating thefe, let me observe, that the attempt of Johnson to revive a base and fuffciently refuted imputation against the great author whofe life he was writing, is one of the moft' extraordinary proofs that literature can exhibit how far the virulence of political hatred' may pervert a very powerful mind, even a mind which makes moral truth its principal purfuit, and affiduously labours to be just. This remark is not made in enmity to Johnson, but to fhew how cautious the most cultivated understanding should be in watching the influence of any hoftile prejudice. Milton himself may be alfo urged as an example to enforce the fame caution; for though he was certainly no impoftor in imputing the prayer in queftion to

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the king, yet his confidering the king's use of it as an offence against heaven, is a pitiable absurdity; an absurdity as glaring as it would be to affirm, that the divine poet is himfelf profane in affigning to a speech of the Almighty, in his poem, the two following verfes:

Son of my bofom, fon who art alone

My word, my wisdom, and effectual might

Because they are partly borrowed from a line in Virgil, addressed by a heathen goddess to her child :

"Nate, meæ vires, mea magna potentia folus."

The heat of political animofity could thus throw a mist over the bright intellects of Milton; yet his Iconoclaftes, taken all toge、her, is a noble effort of manly reason; it uncanonized a fictitious faint, who affuredly had no pretenfion to the title.

Having thus fignalized himself as the literary antagonist of Charles, when the celebrated Salmafius was hired to arraign the proceedings of England against him, every member of the English council turned his eyes upon Milton as the man from whose spirit and eloquence his country might expect the most able vindication. In 1651, he published his defence of the people, the most elaborate of all his Latin compofitions; the merits and defects of this fignal performance might be most properly difcuffed in a preliminary difcourse to the profe works of Milton; here I fhall only remark, that in the compofition of it he gave the moft fingu

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