he forgave and received again his disobedient and long-alie nated wife, fince their re-union not only difquieted his days, but gave birth to daughters, who seem to have inherited the perverfity of their mother : The wifest and best men full oft beguil'd Are drawn to wear out miserable days, These pathetic lines, in a speech of his Sampson Agonistes, ftrike me as a forcible allufion to his own connubial infelicity. If in his first marriage he was eminently unhappy, his fuccefs in the two laft turned the balance of fortune in his favour. That his fecond wife deferved, poffeffed, and retained his affection, is evident from his fonnet occafioned by her death; of the care and kindness which he had long experienced from the partner of his declining life, he spoke with tender gratitude to his brother, in explaining his testamentary intention; and we are probably indebted to the care and kindness, which the aged poet experienced from this affectionate guardian, for the happy accomplishment of his ineftimable works. A blind and defolate father muft be utterly unequal to the management of difobedient daughters confpiring against him; the anguish he endured from their filial ingratitude, and the base deceptions, with which they continually tormented him, must have rendered even the strongest mind very unfit for poetical application. The X marriage marriage, which he concluded by the advice and the aid of his friend Dr. Paget, seems to have been his only resource against a most exafperating and calamitous species of domeftic difquietude; it appears, therefore, not unreasonable to regard those immortal poems, which recovered tranquillity enabled him to produce, as the fruits of that marriage. As matrimony has, perhaps, annihilated many a literary defign, let it be remembered to its honour, that it probably gave birth to the brightest offspring of literature. The two eldest daughters of Milton appear to me utterly unworthy of their father; but those who adopt the dark prejudices of Johnson, and believe with him, that the great poet was an auftere domestic tyrant, will find, in their idea of the father, an apology for his children, whose destiny in the world I shall immediately mention, that I may have occafion to fpeak of them no more. Anne, the eldeft, who with a deformed person had a pleafing face, married an architect, and died, with her first infant, in child-bed. Mary, the second, and apparently the most deficient in affection to her father, died unmarried. Deborah, who was the favourite of Milton, and who, long after his decease, discovered, on a cafual fight of his genuine portrait, very affecting emotions of filial tenderness and enthusiasm, even Deborah deserted him without his knowledge, not in confequence of his paternal severity, of which she was very far from complaining, but, as Richardson intimates, from a disgust she had conceived against her mother-in-law. On quitting the house of her father, fhe went to Ireland with a lady, and afterwards became the wife of Mr. Clarke, a weaver, in Spital-fields. As her family was numerous, and her circumstances not affluent, the liberal Addison made her a prefent, from his regard to the memory of her father, and intended to procure her fome decent establishment, but died before he could accomplish his generous defign. From Queen Caroline, fhe received fifty guineas, a donation as ill proportioned to the rank of the donor as to the mental dignity of the great genius, whofe indigent daughter was the object of this unprincely munificence.Mrs. Clarke had ten children, but none of them appear to have attracted public regard, till Dr. Birch and Dr. Newton, two benevolent and refpectable biographers of the poet, discovered his grand-daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Fofter, keeping a little chandler's-shop in the city, poor, aged, and infirm; they publicly spoke of her condition; Johnson was then writing as the coadjutor of Lauder in his attempt to fink the glory of Milton; but as the critic's charity was still greater than his fpleen, he feized the occafion of recommending, under Lauder's name, this neceffitous defcendant of the great poet to the beneficence of his country; Comus was reprefented for her benefit, in the year 1750, and Johnfon, to his honour, contributed a prologue on the occafion, in which noble sentiments are nobly expreffed. The poor grand-daughter of Milton gained but one hundred and thirty pounds by this public benefaction; this fum, however, small as it was, afforded peculiar comfort to her declining age, by enabling her to retire to Iflington with her husband: fhe had feven children, who died before her, and by her own death it is probable that the line of ; the poet became extinct. Let us haften from this painful furvey of his progeny to the more enlivening contemplation of his rare mental endowments. The most diligent refearches into all that can elucidate the real temper of Milton only confirm the opinion, that his native characteristics were mildness and magnanimity. In controversy his mind was undoubtedly overheated, and passages may be quoted from his profe works, that are certainly neither mild nor magnanimous ;; but if his controversial asperity is compared with the outrageous infolence of his opponents, even that afperity will appear moderation in focial intercourfe he is reprefented as peculiarly courteous and engaging. When the celebrity of his Latin work made him efteemed abroad, many enquiries were made concerning his private character among his familiar acquaintance, and the refult of fuch enquiry was, that mildness and affability were his diftinguishing qualities. “ Virum esse miti comique ingenio aiunt,” fays the celebrate Heinfius, in a letter that he wrote concerning Milton, in the year 1651, to Gronovius. Another eminent foreigner represents him in the fame pleasing light, and from the best information. Voffius, who was at that time in Sweden, and who mentions the praise, which his royal patronefs Chriftina bestowed on Milton's recent defence of the English people, informs his friend Heinfius, that he had obtained a very particular account of the author from a relation of his own, the learned Junius, who wrote the elaborate and interesting history of ancient painting, refided in England, and particularly cultivated the intimacy of Milton. Indeed, when we reflect on the poet's uncommon tenderness towards his parents, and all the advantages of his early life, both at home and abroad, we have every reason to believe, that his manners were fingularly pleafing. He was fond of refined female fociety, and appears to have been very fortunate in two female friends of distinction, the Lady Margaret Ley, whofe fociety confoled him when he was mortified by the defertion of his first wife, and the no less accomplished Lady Ranelagh, who had placed her fon under his care, and who probably affifted him, when he was a widower and blind, with friendly directions for the management of his female infants. A paffage in one of his letters to her fon fuggests this idea; for he condoles with his young correfpondent, then at the University, on the loss they would both sustain by the long absence of his most excellent mother, paffing at that time into Ireland; "her departure muft grieve us both," fays Milton, "for to me alfo fhe fupplied the place of every friend *;" an expreffion full of tenderness and regret, highly honourable to the lady, and a pleafing memorial of that fenfibility and gratitude, which I am perfuaded we should have seen moft eminent in the character of Milton, if his English letters had been fortunately preferved, particularly his letters to this interefting lady, whose merits are commemorated in an eloquent fermon,. preached by bishop Burnet, on the death of her brother, that mild and accomplished model of virtue and of learning, Robert Boyle. Lady Ranelagh must have been one of the + Nam et mihi omnium neceffitudinum loco fuit. moft |