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diately under the conduct and providence of God * : when regarded in this manner, it could not fail to quicken and invigorate his mental powers. Blindness, indeed, without the aid of religious enthusiasm, has a natural tendency to favour that undisturbed, intenfe, and continual meditation, which works of magnitude require. Perhaps we sometimes include in the catalogue of disadvantages the very circumstances that have been partly inftrumental in leading extraordinary men to diftinction. In examining the lives of illustrious scholars we may discover, that many of them arofe to glory by the impulfe of perfonal misfortune; Bacon and Pope were deformed; Homer and Milton were blind.

It has been frequently remarked, that the blind are generally cheerful; it is not therefore marvellous that Milton was very far from being dispirited by the utter extinction of his fight; but his unconquerable vigour of mind was fignally displayed in continuing to labour under all the pains. and inconveniencies of approaching blindness, a state peculiarly unfavourable to mental exertion.

* Sed neque ego cæcis afflictis morentibus imbecillis tametfi vos id miferum ducitis aggregari me difcrucior; quando quidem fpes eft, co me propriùs ad mifericordiam fummi patris atque tutelam pertinere. Eft quoddam per imbecillitatem præeunte apoftolo ad maximas vires iter: fim ego debiliffimus; dummodo in mea debilitate immortalis ille et melior vigor eo fe efficacius exerat; dummodo in meis tenebris divini

vultus lumen eo clarius eluceat, tum enim infirmiffimus ero fimul et validiffimus cæcus eodem tempore et perfpicaciffimus; hac poffim ego infirmitate confummari, hac perfici poffim in hac obfcuritate fic ego irradiari. Et fanè haud ultima Dei cura cæci fumus; qui nos quo minus quicquam aliud præter.ipfum cernere valemus, eo clementius atque benignius refpicere dignatur.-Profe Works, vol. 2. P. 376.

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From the very eloquent preface to his Defence we learn, that while he was engaged on that compofition, and eager to throw into it all the force of his exalted mind, “his in"firmity obliged him to work only by starts, and scarce "to touch, in short periods of study broken by hourly in"terruptions, what he wished to pursue with continued application *. In this most uneafy and perilous labour he exerted his failing eyes to the utmost, and, to repeat his own triumphant expreffion,

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Loft them overply'd

In liberty's defence.

His left eye became utterly blind in 1651, the year in which the book that he alludes to was published, and he loft the use of the other in 1654, the year in which he wrote concerning his blindness to his Athenian friend. In this interval he repeatedly changed his abode. As every spot inhabited by fuch a man acquires a fort of confecration in the fancy of his admirers, I shall here transcribe from his nephew the particulars of his refidence.

"First he lodged at one Thomson's, next door to the "Bull Head tavern at Charing Crofs, opening into th

Quod fi quis miretur fortè cur ergò tam diu intactum et ovantem, noftroque omnium filentio inflatum volitare paffi fumus de aliis fane nefcio, de me audacter poffum dicere, non mihi verba aut argumenta quibus caufam tuerer tam bonam diu quærenda aut investiganda fuiffe fi otium et valetudinem (quæ

quidem fcribendi laborem ferre poffit) nacti effem. Quâ cum adhuc etiam tenui adm dum utar carptim hæc cogor et intercifis per fingulis horis vix attingere, quæ continer ftylo atque ftudio perfequi debuiffem.-Pro. Works, vol. 2. p. 278.

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"Spring Garden, which feems to have been only a lodging "taken till his defigned apartment in Scotland Yard was prepared for him; for hither he foon removed from the "aforefaid place, and here his third child, a fon, was born, "which, through the ill-ufage or bad conftitution of an ill"chofen nurse, died an infant. From this apartment, "whether he thought it not healthy or otherwise conve"nient for his ufe, or whatever elfe was the reafon, he "foon after took a pretty garden-house in Petty France, in "Westminster, next door to the Lord Scudamore's, and opening into St. James's Park, where he remained no "less than eight years, namely, from the year 1652 till "within a few weeks of King Charles the Second's resto«ration."

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Philips alfo informs us, that while his uncle lodged at Thomfon's he was employed in revifing and polishing the Latin work of his youngest nephew John, who, on the publication of a severe attack upon Milton, ascribed to Bramhall, Bishop of Derry, vindicated his illuftrious relation, and satirized his fuppofed adversary with a keenness and vehemence of invective, which induced, perhaps, fome readers to fufpect that the performance was written entirely by Milton. The traces, however, of a young hand are evident in the work; and John Philips, at the time it appeared, 1652, was a youth of nineteen or twenty, eager (as he declares) to engage unsolicited in a compofition, which, however abounding in juvenile defects, proves him attached to his country, and grateful to his friends.

In 1654, Milton, now utterly blind, appeared again in the field of controverfy, firft, in his Second Defence of the English People, and the following year in a defence of himself, Autoris pro fe Defenfio." The first of these productions is in truth his own vindication; it is the work in which he speaks most abundantly of his own character and conduct; it displays that true eloquence of the heart, by which probity and talents are enabled to defeat the malevolence of an infolent accuser; it proves that the mind of this wonderful man united to the poetic imagination of Homer the argumentative energy of Demofthenes.

It must however be allowed, that while Milton defended himself with the fpirit of the Grecian orator, in imitating the eloquent Athenian he promiscuously caught both his merits and defects. It is to be regretted, that these mighty mafters of rhetoric permitted fo large an alloy of perfonal virulence to debafe the dignity of national argument; yet as the great orators of an age more humanized are apt, we see, to be hurried into the fame failing, we may conclude that it is almost infeparable from the weakness of nature, and we must not expect to find, though we certainly should endeavour to introduce, the charity of the Gofpel in political

contention.

If the utmost acrimony of invective could in any cafe be juftified, it might affuredly be fo by the calumnies which hurried both Demofthenes and Milton into thofe intemperate expreffions, which appear in their respective vindications like specks of a meaner mineral in a mafs of the The outrages that called forth the vindictive thunders

richeft ore.

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thunders of the eloquent Athenian are fufficiently known. The indignation of Milton was awakened by a Latin work, published at the Hague in 1652, entitled, "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cælum;" The Cry of Royal Blood to Heaven. In this book all the bitter terms of abhorrence and reproach, with which the malignity of paffion can difhonour learning, were lavished on the eloquent defender of the English commonwealth. The fecret author of this fourrility was Peter du Moulin, a Proteftant divine, and fon of a French author, whom the biographers of his own country describe as a fatirist without taste and a theologian without temper. Though du Moulin feems to have inherited the acrimonious spirit of his father, he had not the courage to publish himself what he had written as the antagonist of Milton, but sent his papers to Salmafius, who entrusted them to Alexander More, a French proteftant of Scotch extraction, and a divine, who agreed in his principles with the author of the manufcript.

Most unfortunately for his own future comfort, More published, without a name, the work of Du Moulin, with a dedication to Charles the Second, under the fignature of Ulac, the Dutch printer. He decorated the book with a portrait of Charles, and applied at the fame time to Milton the Virgilian delineation of Polypheme:

Monftrum horrendum informe ingens, cui lumen ademptum.

A monftrous bulk deform'd, depriv'd of fight.

DRYDEN.

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