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and confidence of mankind, the worft of wounds, fince the fall of our first parents, that could be inflicted on the human race. You have taken upon you a burthen of weight inexpreffible; it will put to the feverest perpetual test the inmost qualities, virtues, and powers of your heart and foul; it will determine whether there really exifts in your character that piety, faith, juftice, and moderation, for the fake of which we believe you raised above others, by the inAluence of God, to this fupreme charge.

"To direct three moft powerful nations by your counsel, to endeavour to reclaim the people from their depraved institutions to better conduct and discipline, to fend forth into remotest regions your anxious spirit and inceffant thoughts, to watch, to foresee, to shrink from no labour, to spurn every allurement of pleasure, to avoid the oftentation of opulence and power, these are the arduous duties, in comparison of which war itself is mere fport; these will fearch and prove you; they require, indeed, a man supported by the affiftance of heaven, and almost admonished and instructed by immediate intercourfe with God. These and more I doubt not but you diligently revolve in your mind, and this in particular, by what methods you may be most able to accomplish things of highest moment, and fecure to us our liberty not only fafe but enlarged."

If a private individual thus fpeaking to a man of unbounded influence, whom a powerful nation had idolized and courted to affume the reins of government, can be called a flatterer, we have only to wish that all the flatterers of earthly power may be of the fame complexion. The ad

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monition to the people, with which Milton concludes his second defence, is by no means inferior in dignity and spirit to the advice he bestowed on the protector. The great misfortune of the monitor was, that the two parties, to whom he addreffed his eloquent and patriotic exhortation, were neither of them so worthy of his counsel as he wished them to be, and endeavoured to make them. For Cromwell, as his subsequent conduct fufficiently proved; was a political impoftor with an arbitrary foul; and as to the people, they were alternately the dishonoured inftruments and victims of licentioufnefs and fanaticifin. The protector, his adherents, and his enemies, to speak of them in general, were as little able to reach the difinterested purity of Milton's principles, as they were to attain, and even to estimate, the fublimity of his poetical genius. But Milton, who pasfionately loved his country, though he faw and lamented the various corruptions of his contemporaries, ftill continued to hope, with the native ardour of a fanguine fpirit, that the mafs of the English people would be enlightened and improved. His real fentiments of Cromwell, I am perfuaded, were thefe: he long regarded him as a person not only poffeffed of wonderful influence and ability, but difpofed to attempt, and likely to accomplish, the pureft: and nobleft purposes of policy and religion; yet often thwarted and embarraffed in his best defigns, not only by the power and machinations of the enemies with whom he had to contend, but by the want of faith, morality, and fense in the motley multitude, whom he endeavoured to guide and govern. As religious enthusiasm was the predo

minant characteristic of Milton, it is most probable that his fervid imagination beheld in Cromwell a person destined by heaven to reduce, if not to annihilate, what he confidered as the most enormous grievance of earth, the prevalence of popery and fuperftition. The feveral humane and spirited letters which he wrote, in the name of Cromwell, to redrefs the injuries of the perfecuted proteftants, who suffered in Piedmont, were highly calculated to promote, in equal degrees, his zeal for the purity of religion, and his attachment to the protector. :

Yet great as the powers of Cromwell were to dazzle and ́delude, and willing as the liberal mind of Milton was to give credit to others for that pure public fpirit, which he possessed himself, there is great reason to apprehend, that his veneration and efteem for the protector were entirely destroyed by the treacherous defpotism of his latter days. But however his opinion of Oliver might change, he was far from betraying liberty, according to Johnson's ungenerous accufation, by continuing to exercise his office; on the contrary, it ought to be efteemed a proof of his fidelity to freedom, that he condefcended to remain in an office, which he had received from no individual, and in which he justly confidered himself as a fervant of the state. From one of his familiar letters, written in the year preceding the death of Cromwell, it is evident that he had no fecret intimacy or influence with the protector; and that, instead of engaging in ambitious machinations, he confined himself as much as poffible to the privacy of domestic life. Finally, on a full and fair review of all the intercourfe between Milton, and

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Cromwell, there is not the smallest ground to fufpect, that Milton ever spoke or acted as a fycophant or a flave; he bestowed, indeed, the most liberal eulogy, both in profe and rhyme, upon the protector; but at a period, when it was the general opinion, that the utmost efforts of panegyric could hardly equal the magnitude and the variety of the fervices rendered to his country by the acknowledged hero and the fancied patriot; at a period when the eulogift, who understood the frailty of human nature, and forefaw the temptations of recent power, might hope that praise fo magnificent, united to the noblest advice, would prove to the ardent spirit of the protector the best preservative against the delirium of tyranny. These generous hopes were disappointed; the defpotic proceedings of Cromwell convinced his independent monitor, that he deserved not the continued applause of a free fpirit; and though the atchievements of the protector were so fascinating, that poetical panegyrics encircled even his grave, yet Milton praised him no more, but after his deceafe fondly hailed the revival of parlia-mentary independence, as a new dawning of God's providence on the nation. In contemplating these two extraordinary men together, the real lover of truth and freedom can hardly fail to obferve the striking contraft of their characters; one was an abfolute model of falfe, and the other of true, grandeur. Mental dignity and public virtue were in Cromwell fictitious and delufive; in Milton they were genuine and unchangeable ; Cromwell fhews the formidable wonders that courage and cunning can perform, with the affiftance of fortune; Milton, the wonders, of a fuperior

kind, that integrity and genius can accomplish, in despight of adverfity and affliction.

An eager folicitude to vindicate a most noble mind from a very base and injurious imputation has led me to anticipate fome public events. From these observations on the native and incorruptible independence of Milton's mind, let us return to the incidents of his domeftic life.

Soon after his removal to his houfe in Westminster, his fourth child, Deborah, was born, on the 2d of May, 1652. The mother, according to Philips, died in child-bed. The fituation of Milton at this period was fuch as might have depressed the mind of any ordinary man : at the age of fortyfour he was left a widower, with three female orphans, the eldest about fix years old, deformed in her person, and with an impediment in her speech; his own health was very delicate; and with eyes that were rapidly finking into incurable blindness, he was deeply engaged in a literary contest of the highest importance. With what spirit and fuccefs he triumphed over his political and perfonal enemies the reader is already informed. When thefe, in 1654, were all filenced and fubdued by the irrefiftible power of his fuperior talents and probity," he had leisure again (fays his nephew) for "his own studies and private defigns."

It seems to have been the habit of Milton to devote as many hours in every day to intenfe ftudy as the mental faculties could bear, and to render fuch conftant exertion less oppreffive to the mind, by giving variety to the objects of its application, engaging in different works of magnitude at the same time, that he might occafionally relieve and in

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