eulogy alone appears fufficient to refute a remark unfriendly to Milton, that he was frugal of his praise; fuch frugality will hardly be found united to a benevolent heart and a glowing imagination.

In 1645, his early poems, both English and Latin, were first published in a little volume by Humphry Mosely, who informs the reader in his advertisement, that he had obtained them by folicitation from the author, regarding him as a fuccessful rival of Spencer.

Milton had now paffed more than three years in that singular state of mortification, which the disobedience of his wife occafioned. His time had been occupied by the inceffant exercise of his mental powers; but he probably felt with peculiar poignancy

"A craving void left aching in the breast."

As he entertained ferious thoughts of enforcing, by his own example, his doctrine of divorce, and of marrying another wife, who might be worthy of the title, he paid his addresses to the daughter of Doctor Davies: the father seems to have been a convert to Milton's arguments; but the lady had fcruples. She poffeffed, according to Philips, both wit and beauty. A novelist could hardly imagine circumstances more fingularly diftreffing to fenfibility, than the fituation of the poet, if, as we may reasonably conjecture, he was deeply enamoured of this lady; if her father was inclined to accept him as a son-in-law; and if the object of his love had no inclination to reject his fuit, but what arose from a dread of his being indiffolubly united to another.

Perhaps

Perhaps Milton alludes to what he felt on this occafion in those affecting lines of Paradife Loft, where Adam, prophetically enumerating the miseries to arife from woman, fays, in clofing the melancholy lift, that man fometimes

"His happieft choice too late

• Shall meet, already link'd and wedlock-bound

"To a fell adversary, his hate or shame!

"Which infinite calamity fhall caufe

"To human life, and houfhold peace confound."

However ftrong the fcruples of his new favourite might have been, it seems not improbable that he would have triumphed over them, had not an occurrence, which has the air of an incident in romance, given another turn to the emotions of his heart. While he was converfing with a relation, whom he frequently vifited in St. Martin's-lane, the door of an adjoining apartment was fuddenly opened : he beheld his repentant wife kneeling at his feet, and imploring his forgiveness. After the natural struggles of honeft pride and juft refentment, he forgave and received her, " partly "from the interceffion of their common friends, and partly," fays his nephew, "from his own generous nature, more "inclinable to reconciliation, than to perfeverance in anger "and revenge."

Fenton justly remarks, that the strong impreffion which this interview muft have made on Milton "contributed "much to the painting of that pathetic scene in Paradise "Loft, in which Eve addreffes herself to Adam for pardon " and

N 2.

"and peace;" the verses, charming as they are, acquire new charms, when we confider them as defcriptive of the poet himself and the penitent destroyer of his domeftic

comfort.

"Her lowly plight

"Immovable, till peace obtain'd from fault

86

Acknowledg'd and deplor'd, in Adam wrought
"Commiferation; foon his heart relented

"Towards her, his life fo late and fole delight,
"Now at his feet fubmiffive in diftrefs!
"Creature fo fair his reconcilement feeking,
"His counsel whom she had difpleas'd, his aid
"As one difarm'd, his anger all he lost.'

It has been faid, that Milton refembled his own Adam in the comeliness of his perfon; but he seems to have resembled him still more in much nobler endowments, and particularly in uniting great tenderness of heart to equal dignity of mind. Soon after he had pardoned, and lived again with his wife, he afforded an afylum, in his own house, to both her parents, and to their numerous family. They were active royalists, and fell into great distress by the ruin of their party: these were the perfons who had not only treated Milton with contemptuous pride, but had imbittered his existence for four years, by inftigating his wife to persist in deferting him. The mother, as Wood intimates, was his greatest enemy, and occafioned the perverfe conduct of her daughter. The father, though sumptuous in his mode of life when he firft received Milton as his fon-in-law, had

never paid the marriage portion of a thousand pounds, according to his agreement, and was now ftript of his property by the prevalence of the party he had opposed. On persons thus contumelious and culpable towards him, Milton, bestowed his favour and protection. Can the records of private life exhibit a more magnanimous example of forgiveness and beneficence?

At the time of his wife's unexpected return, he was preparing to remove from Alderfgate to a larger house in Barbican, with a view of increasing the number of his scholars. It was in this new manfion that he received the forgiven penitent, and provided a refuge for her relations, whom he retained under his roof, according to Fenton, "till their "affairs were accommodated by his intereft with the victo"rious party."

They left him soon after the death of his father, who ended a very long life, in the year 1647, and not without the gratification, peculiarly foothing to an affectionate old man, of bestowing his benediction on a grand-child; for, within the year of Milton's re-union with his wife, his family was increased by a daughter, Anne, the eldest of his children, born July 29th, 1646.

When his apartments were no longer occupied by the guests, whom he had fo generously received, he admitted more scholars; but their number was small, and Philips imagines, that he was induced to withdraw himself from the business of education by a profpect of being appointed adjutant general in Sir William Waller's army: whatever might have been the motive for his change of life, he quit

ted

ted his large house in Barbican for a smaller in Holborn, among those (says his nephew) that open backwards into "Lincoln's Inn Fields," where he lived, according to the fame author, in great privacy, and perpetually engaged in a variety of ftudies.

Three years elapfed without any new publication from his pen; a filence which the various affecting occurrences in his family would naturally produce. In 1649 he published The Tenure of Kings and Magiftrates; and in his fummary account of his own writings, he relates the time and occafion of this performance. He declares, that without any perfonal malevolence against the deceased monarch, who had been tried and executed before this publication appeared, it was written to compose the minds of the people, disturbed by the duplicity and turbulence of certain prefbyterian minifters, who affected to confider the fentence against the king as contrary to the principles of every protestant church,“ a falfehood (fays Milton) which, without inveighing against Charles, I refuted by the teftimony "of their most eminent theologians*.

*Tum verò tandem, cùm presbyteriani quidam miniftri, Carolo priùs infeftiffimi, nunc independentium partes fuis anteferri, et in fenatu plus poffe indignantes, parliamenti fententiæ de rege latæ (non facto irati, fed quod ipforum factio non feciflet) reclamitarent, et quantum in ipfis erat tumultuarentur, aufi affirmare proteftantium doctrinam, omnefque ecclefias reformatas ab ejufmodi in reges atroci fententia abhorrere, ratus falfitati tam apertæ palàm eundem obviàm effe, ne tum quidem de

Carolo quicquam fcripfi aut fuafi, fed quid in genere contra tyrannos liceret, adductis haud paucis fummorum theologorum teftimoniis oftendi; et infignem hominum meliora profitentium, five ignorantiam five impudentiam propè concionabundus inceffi. Liber ifte non nifi poft mortem regis prodiit, ad componendos potius hominum animos factus, quam ad ftatuendum de Carolo quicquam, quod non mea, fed magiftratuum intererat, et peractum jam tum erat,-Profe Works, vol. ii. p. 385,

His