out a breach of honesty, have resumed it under the king; but his return to it, though not abfolutely difhonourable, would have ill accorded with that refined purity and elevation of character, which, from his earliest youth, it was the nobleft ambition of Milton to acquire and fupport. He would have loft much of his title to the reverence of mankind for his magnanimity, had he accepted his former office under Charles the Second, whom he must have particularly despised as a profligate and fervile tyrant, as ready to betray the honour of the nation as he was carelefs of his own; a perfonage whom Milton could never have beheld without horror, on reflecting on his fingular barbarity to his celebrated friend, that eccentric but interefting character, Sir Henry Vane. The king, fo extolled for his mercy, had granted the life of Sir Henry to the joint petition of the Lords and Commons; but, after promifing to preserve him, figned a warrant for his execution-one of the most inhuman and detestable acts of duplicity that was ever practised against a subject by his fovereign. It is to the fate of Vane, with others of that party, and to his own perfonal fufferings, that the great poet alludes in the following admirable reflections, affigned to the chorus in his Sampfon Agonistes:

Many are the fayings of the wife

In antient and in modern books enroll'd,
Extolling patience as the trueft fortitude,
And to the bearing well of all calamities,
All chances incident to man's frail life,

Confolatories writ

With

With studied argument, and much perfuafion fought,
Lenient of grief, and anxious thought;

But with th' afflicted in his pangs their found

Little prevails, or rather seems a tune

Harsh and of diffonant mood from his complaint,

Unless he feel within

Some fource of confolation from above,

Secret refreshings that repair his strength,

And fainting fpirits uphold.

God of our fathers! what is man?

That thou towards him with hand fo various,

Or might I fay, contrarious,

Tempereft thy Providence through his short course;

Not evenly, as thou rul❜st

The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute,

Irrational and brute.

Nor do I name of men the common rout,

That wand'ring loose about,

Grow up and perish as the fummer fly,

Heads without name, no more remembered;
But fuch as thou haft folemnly elected,

With gifts and graces eminently adorn'd,

To fome great work, thy glory,

And people's fafety, which in part they effect :

Yet toward these, thus dignified, thou oft

Amidst their heighth of noon

Changeft thy countenance and thy hand, with no regard

Of highest favours past

From thee on them, or them to thee of service.

Nor

Nor only doft degrade them, or remit

To life obfcur'd, which were a fair difmiffion,

But throw'st them lower than thou didst exalt them high;
Unfeemly falls in human eye,

Too grievous for the trefpafs or omiffion!

Oft leav'ft them to the hoftile fword

Of heathen and profane, their carcases

To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captiv'd;

Or to th' unjust tribunals under change of times,

And condemnation of th' ungrateful multitude.

If these they scape, perhaps in poverty,

With fickness and disease thou bow'ft them down,

Painful difeafes and deform'd,

In crude old age;

Though not difordinate, yet causeless fuff'ring
The punishment of diffolute days.

Warburton was the first, I believe, to remark how exactly these concluding lines describe the fituation of the poet himself, afflicted by his lofs of property, and "his gout, not caused by intemperance." The fame acute but very unequal critic is by no means fo happy in his obfervation, that Milton feems to have chosen the subject of this fublime drama for the fake of the fatire on bad wives; it would be hardly less abfurd to fay, that he chose the fubject of Paradife Loft for the fake of defcribing a connubial altercation. The nephew of Milton has told us, that he could not afcertain the time when this drama was written; but it probably flowed from the heart of the in

dignant

dignant poet foon after his spirit had been wounded by the calamitous destiny of his friends, to which he alludes with so much energy and pathos. He did not defign the drama for a theatre, nor has it the kind of action requifite for theatrical interest; but in one point of view the Sampfon Agonistes is the most singularly affecting compofition, that was ever produced by fenfibility of heart and vigour of imagination. To give it this peculiar effect, we must remember, that the lot of Milton had a marvellous coincidence with that of his hero, in three remarkable points; first (but we should regard this as the most inconfiderable article of refemblance) he had been tormented by a beautiful but difaffectionate and disobedient wife; fecondly, he had been the great champion of his country, and as fuch the idol of public admiration; lastly, he had fallen from that heighth of unrivalled glory, and had experienced the most humiliating reverse of fortune :

His foes' derifion, captive, poor, and blind.

In delineating the greater part of Sampfon's fenfations under calamity, he had only to defcribe his own. No dramatist can have ever conformed fo literally as Milton to the Horatian precept.

Si vis me flere, dolendum eft

Primum ipfi tibi.

And if, in reading the Sampfon Agonistes, we obferve how many paffages, expreffed with the most energetic fenfibility,

exhibit

exhibit to our fancy the fufferings and real fentiments of the poet, as well as thofe of his hero, we may derive from this extraordinary compofition a kind of pathetic delight, that no other drama can afford; we may applaud the felicity of genius, that contrived, in this manner, to relieve a heart overburthened with anguish and indignation, and to pay a half concealed yet hallowed tribute to the memories of dear though dishonoured friends, whom the ftate of the times allowed not the afflicted poet more openly to deplore.

The concluding verfes of the beautiful chorus (which I have already cited in part) appear to me particularly affecting, from the perfuafion that Milton, in compofing them, addressed the two last immediately to Heaven, as a prayer for himself:

In fine,

Juft or unjust alike feem miferable,
For oft alike both come to evil end.

So deal not with this once thy glorious champion,
The image of thy ftrength, and mighty minifter.
What do I beg? how haft thou dealt already?
Behold him in his ftate calamitous, and turn

His labours, for thou can't, to peaceful end.

If the conjecture of this application be juft, we may add, that never was the prevalence of a righteous prayer more happily confpicuous; and let me here remark, that however various the opinions of men may be concerning the