and abhorrence when they also became the agents of persecution; and as he had fully seen, and has forcibly exposed, the grofs failings of republican reformers, had his life been extended long enough to witness the Revolution, which he might have beheld without suffering the decrepitude or imbecility of extreme old age, he would probably have exulted as warmly as the ftaunchest friend of our prefent conftitution can exult, in that temperate and happy reformation of monarchical enormities. Johnson also intimates, that he was a shallow politician, who fuppofed money to be the chief good, though with fingular inconsistency he at the fame time confeffes, "that fortune feems not to have had much of his care." Money, in fact, had fo little influence over the elevated mind of Milton, that from his want of attention to it he fuftained fuch loffes as, according to his nephew's expreffion, might have ruined a man less temperate than he was. Two thousand pounds he is said to have loft by entrusting it to government, and as much in a private loan, without fufficient fecurity. “Towards the latter part of his time," fays one of his early biographers, "he contracted his library, both because the heirs he left could not make a right use of it, and that he thought he might fell it more to their advantage than they could be able to do themselves. His enemies reported, that poverty constrained him thus to part with his books; and were this true it would be a great difgrace, not to him (for perfons of the highest merits have been often reduced to that condition) but to any country that should have no more regard regard to probity or learning. This ftory, however, is fo false, that he died worth fifteen hundred pounds, befides all his goods." Such are the remarks of Toland on the pecuniary circumstances of the poet; they fhew with becoming fpirit, that he was not reduced by abfolute indigence to the fale of his library; yet every reader, whose literary feelings are acute, must regret, that the old age of Milton was not guarded and enlivened by fuch affluence as might have faved him from a measure, in which those who have a paffion for books must suppose him to have fuffered fome degree of mortification. The neceffities into which many deferving men of letters have fallen towards the clofe of life, and in various countries, may be regarded as an universal disgrace to civilized fociety, which the improving refinement and liberality of mankind ought effectually to remove. Literature, which is fo eminently beneficial to a nation, is frequently ruinous to worthy individuals most fervently attached to it; and it should be regarded as a duty, therefore, by every polished people, to provide a public fund, which might afford a becoming competence to the advanced life of every illuftrious scholar, whofe public labours entitle him to that honourable diftinction. Such meritorious veterans in literature as Milton and his late aged biographer should have been preserved, in their declining days, from every fhadow of indigence, by the public gratitude of the nation to whom they had devoted their intellectual fervice. What friend to letters and to genius could fail to wifh affluent comfort to the closing life of fuch authors, however he might condemn the exceffes of republican severity in the one, or those of servile and cenforial bigotry in the other? There can hardly be any contemplation more painful, than to dwell on the virulent exceffes of eminent and good men; yet the utility of fuch contemplation may be equal to its pain. What mildness and candour should it not inftil ordinary into mortals to observe, that even genius and virtue weaken their title to refpect, in proportion as they recede from that evangelical charity, which should influence every man in his judgment of another. The strength and the acuteness of fenfation, which partly conftitute genius, have a great tendency to produce virulence, if the mind is not perpetually on its guard against that subtle, infinuating, and corrofive paffion, hatred against all whofe opinions are oppofite to our own. Johnson professed, in one of his letters, to love a good hater; and in the Latin correspondence of Milton, there are words that imply a similarity of sentiment; they both thought there might be a fanctified bitterness, to use an expreffion of Milton, towards political and religious opponents; yet furely these two devout men were both wrong, and both in some degree unchristian in this principle. To what fingular iniquities of judgment fuch a principle may lead, we might, perhaps, have had a most striking, and a double proof, had it been poffible for these two energetic writers to exhibit alternately a portrait of each other. Milton, adorned with every graceful endowment, highly and holily accomplished as he was, appears, in the dark colouring of Johnson, a most unamia ble being; but could he revifit earth in his mortal character, with a wish to retaliate, what a picture might be drawn, by that fublime and offended genius, of the great moralift, who has treated him with fuch excefs of afperity. The passions are powerful colourists, and marvellous adepts in the art of exaggeration; but the portraits executed by love (famous as he is for overcharging them) are infinitely more faithful to nature, than gloomy fketches from the heavy hand of hatred; a passion not to be trufted or indulged even in minds of the highest purity or power; fince hatred, though it may enter the field of conteft under the banner of justice, yet generally becomes fo blind and outrageous, from the heat of contention, as to execute, in the name of virtue, the worst purposes of vice. Hence arifes that fpecies of calumny the most to be regretted, the calumny lavished by men of talents and worth on their equals or fuperiors, whon they have rafhly and blindly hated for a difference of opinion. To fuch hatred the fervid and oppofite characters,. who gave rife to this obfervation, were both more inclined, perhaps, by nature and by habit, than christianity can allow. The freedom of thefe remarks on two very great, and equally devout, though different writers, may poffibly offend the partizans of both: in that cafe my confolation will be, that I have endeavoured to speak of them with that temperate, though undaunted fincerity, which may fatisfy the spirit of each in a purer state of existence. There is one characteristic in Milton, which ought to be confidered as the chief fource of his happiness and his fame; I mean his early and perpetual attachment to religion. It must gratify every christian to reflect, that the man of our country most eminent for energy of mind, for intenseness of application, and for franknefs and intrepidity in afferting whatever he believed to be the cause of truth, was fo confirmedly devoted to christianity, that he feems to have made the Bible, not only the rule of his conduct, but the prime director of his genius. His poetry flowed from the fcripture, as if his unparalleled poetical powers had been exprefsly given him by Heaven for the purpose of imparting to religion fuch luftre as the most splendid of human faculties could beftow. As in the Paradife Loft he seems to emulate the fublimity of Mofes and the prophets, it appears to have been his wish, in the Paradise Regained, to copy the fweetness and fimplicity of the milder evangelifts. If the futile remarks that were made upon the latter work, on its first appearance, excited the fpleen of the great author, he would probably have felt still more indignant, could he have seen the comment of Warburton. That difgufting writer, whofe critical dictates form a fantastic medley of arrogance, acuteness, and abfurdity, has afferted, that the plan of Paradife Regained is very unhappy, and that nothing was easier than to have invented a good one. Much idle cenfure feems to have been thrown on more than one of Milton's poetical works, from want of due attention to the chief aim of the poet :-if we fairly confider it in regard to Paradise Regained, the aim I allude to, as it probably occafioned, will completely justify, the plan which the prefumptuous critic has fo fupercilioufly condemned. Milton had already executed one extenfive divine poem, peculiarly Ff2 |