-"He all his study bent

To worship God aright, and know his works

Not hid; nor those things laft that might preferve
Freedom and peace to men.

In a noble confciousness of his powers and intentions, he was not afraid to give, in his early life, a moft fingular promife to his country of producing fuch future works as might redound to her glory; and though such personal calamities fell upon him, as might fairly have abfolved him from that engagement, yet never was any promife more magnificently fulfilled. Seneca has confidered a man of refolution ftruggling with adverfity as a fpectacle worthy of God; our refolute countryman not only struggled with adverfity, but, under a peculiar load of complicated calamities, he accomplished those works, that are justly reckoned among the nobleft offspring of human genius. In this point of view, with what pathetic grandeur is the poet invested. In contemplating the variety of his fufferings, and his vari-ous mental' atchievements, we may declare, without any extravagance of praise, that although fublimity is the predominant characteristic of Milton's poem, his own perfonal character is ftill more fublime.

His majeftic pre-eminence is nobly defcribed in the following verses of Akenfide, à poet who bore fome affinity to Milton in the ardour of his mind, whofe fentiments are always noble, though not always accompanied by a graceful felicity of expreffion.

Mark how the dread Pantheon ftands.

Amid the domes of modern hands,

Amid the toys of idle ftate

How fimply, how feverely great!

Then turn, and while each western clime

Presents her tuneful fons to time,

So mark thou MILTON's name,

And add, thus differs from the throng

The spirit which inform'd thy aweful song,

Which bade thy potent voice protect thy country's fame.

The powers of Milton, indeed, are fo irrefiftible, that even those, whom the blindness of prejudice has rendered ◄his enemies, are constrained to regard him as an object of admiration. In this article pofterity, to whom he made a very interesting appeal, has done him ample justice; ftill he is more admired than beloved; yet in granting him only admiration, we ungenerously withhold the richest half of that pofthumous reward for which he laboured fo fervently: we may be confident that he rather wished to excite the affection than the applause of mankind; and affuredly he has the nobleft title to both, the title of having exerted fuperlative genius and literary ambition, under the conftant influence of religious philanthropy. In proportion as our country has advanced in purity of tafte, fhe has applauded the poet; and in proportion as the advances in liberality of fentiment, she will love the man; but love in this afpect is more volatile than admiration, and a beneficent genius may be easily deprived of it by the detraction of an enemy, or

the mistake of a friend: Milton has fuffered not a little from both; and indeed, if one fingular mistake of his friends should prevail, he could hardly become an object of general affection. What votary of the Mufes could love a poet, however excellent in that capacity, who represented it as a crime in a captive monarch to have made the poetry of Shakespeare the companion of his folitude? Credulity has imagined that Milton was fuch a barbarous Goth. Nor is this the fuggeftion of his enemies; even Warton, the liberal defender of his poetical reputation, and several living writers of eminence, have lavished their cenfures on Milton, from a too hafty belief, that puritanical prejudices had hurried him into this rancorous abfurdity.

Their cenfures are all founded on a mistake; but the merit of correcting it belongs not to me; Mr. Waldron, the fenfible and modeft editor of a miscellany, entitled, The Literary Museum, in a note to Roscius Anglicanus, has, in a very liberal manner, collected and refuted the charges against Milton on this point, and abundantly proved, that instead of cenfuring the unfortunate Charles for amufing himself with Shakespeare, he only cenfured him for imitating the religious hypocrify of Richard the Third fo closely as to utter the very fentiments that are affigned to Richard in the page of the dramatic poet.

Milton undoubtedly thought, what an ardent political writer of the prefent age has not fcrupled to affert, that "Charles the Firft lived and died an hypocrite." Thefe two acute judges of mankind were, I believe, miftaken in this idea it seems more probable, that this unfortunate

fent him.

prince was flattered into a perfuafion, that he was really the meritorious martyr his adherents endeavoured to repreBut whatsoever his genuine character might be, the severe fentiments which Milton entertained of the king, and the delufive hopes that he cherished of the protector, had equally their fource in the virtuous ardour of his own fpirit. The consciousness of his integrity, when time had fully unveiled to him fome illufions, gave that tranquillity and vigour to his declining days, which enabled him to produce his aftonishing poems, not more astonishing for their intrinfic merit, than for the period of their production; so that his poetry, in this point of view, may be regarded both as the offspring and the witnefs of his virtue. The world had never been enriched with his two poems on Paradise, if their great author, when he was, according to his own true and pathetic defcription,

“ In darkness and with dangers compass'd round,"

ħad not, in some little degree, resembled the hero of his latter poem, and like that hallowed perfonage, whom he delineates fo divinely, amid the darkness and the fiends of the defert,

"Sat unappall'd in calm and finless peace."

Yet to fuch mifrepresentations has the life and the poetry of Milton been exposed, that both have been confidered as too austere to be amiable, though affuredly, both in the one

and

and the other, the most engaging qualities are admirably united to the moft aweful-the graceful and the tender to the grand and the sublime.

The attractions of his mufe have triumphed over obloquy, and in the estimation of the world fhe is juftly thought to resemble the enchanting Eve of the poet,

Adorn'd

With what all earth or heav'n could bestow

To make her amiable..

But equal juftice has not hitherto been rendered to the perfonal virtues of the author; it has, therefore, been my chief aim, in a delineation of his life, to make Milton rather more beloved than more admired; and I may the more reasonably hope to fucceed in that idea, because, though I have never been attached to his political opinions, yet, in proportion to my researches into his character as a man, he has advanced in my esteem and my affection.

I lament that the neceffity of investigating many misrepresentations, and of correcting much asperity against him, has frequently obliged me to speak rather in the tone of an advocate, than of a common biographer; but I may fay, in the words of the great Roman author, pleading the cause of a poet infinitely less entitled to love and admiration ; Hunc ego non diligam, non admirer, non omni ratione defendendum putem? Atque fic a fummis hominibus eruditiffimisque accepimus, cæterarum rerum ftudia et doctrina, et præceptis, et arte conftare; poetam natura ipfa valere, et men

tis