painting of The Temptation. The genius of Milton seems to have resembled more particular that of Michael Angelo. It is worthy of notice, as it shows a strong coincidence of taste in the poet and the painter, that Michael Angelo was particularly struck with Dante; and

that he is said to have sketched with

a pen, on the margin of his copy of the Inferno, every striking scene of the terrible and the pathetic; but this valuable curiosity was unfortunately lost in a shipwreck. The learned author of Tableaux tirés

6

mas; but she declined to return al the expiration of that period. The visit to her friends was, in fact, only a pretence for conjugal desertion. This desertion has been imputed, by Philips, to the different principles of the two families. Her relations, he tells us, being generally addicted to the cavalier party, and some of them possibly engaged in the king's service (who by this time had his head-quarters at Oxford, and was in some prospect of success), they began to repent them of having matched the eldest de l'Iliade, de l'Odyssée d'Ho- daughter of the family to a person mere, et de l'Eneide de Virgile,' so contrary to them in opinion; and was never more mistaken than in thought it would be a blot in their supposing the Paradise Lost incapa- escutcheon, whenever that court. ble of supplying an artist with should come to flourish again: scenes as graceful and sublime as however, it so incensed our aucan be met with in the poems of the thor, that he thought it would be Grecian and Roman bards: for, in dishonourable ever to receive her the words of Mr. Hayley, there is again after such a repulse.' The no charm exhibited by painting, biographer intimates, that she was which Milton's poetry has failed to averse to the philosophic life of Mil equal, as far as analogy between ton, and sighed for the mirth and the different arts can extend. In jovialness to which she had been acdeed the numerous exercises for the customed in Oxfordshire. And Aupainter's skill, which Milton's works brey relates that she was brought afford, have, in later times, com- up and bred where there was a manded due attention; and Fuseli,great deal of company and merriby his happy sketches from such originals, has taught us how to admire poetry and painting breathing

united force.'

"At Whitsuntide, in 1643, and in his thirty-fifth year, he married Mary, the daughter of Richard Powell, a gentleman who resided at Forest Hill, near Shotover, in Oxfordshire, and was a justice of the peace for the county. He brought his bride to London; who, after living only a few weeks with him, obtained his consent to accept the invitation of her friends to spend the remaining part of the summer with them in the country. He gave her permission to stay till Michael

ment, as dancing, &c; and when she came to live with her husband, she found it solitary, no company came to her, and she often heard her nephews cry and be beaten. This life was irksome to her, and so she went to her parents. He sent for her home after some time. As for wronging his bed, I never heard the least suspicion of that; nor had he of that any jea

lousy.' He sent for her, however, in vain. As all his letters, desiring her to return, were unanswered; so the messenger, whom he afterwards employed for the same purpose, was dismissed from her father's house with contempt. He resolved there

fore

fore to repudiate her; and, in de- beauty, the daughter of one Dr. Dafence of his resolution, he published vis, with a design to marry her! four treatises, the two first in 1644, But this desire of carrying his docthe two last in 1645. The Doctrine trine into practice was not counteand Discipline of Divorce; the nanced by the lady. What is more Judgment of Martin Bucer concern- remarkable, the proceeding contrimy Divorce; Tetrachordon, or Ex-buted to effect a reconciliation with positions upon the four chief Places the discarded wife. of Scripture which treat of Marriage, or Nullities of Marriage; and Colasterion. The last is a reply to the anonymous author of An Answer to a book intituled, The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, or a Plea for Ladies and Gentlewomen, and all other married Women against Divorce. Wherein both Sexes are vindi'cated from all Bondage of Canon ⚫ Law, and other Mistakes whatsoever; and the unsound Principles of the Author are examined and fully confuted by Authority of Holy Scripture, the Laws of this Land, and sound Reason. Lond. 1644. This pamphlet was licensed, and recommended by Mr. Joseph Caryl, a presbyterian divine, and author of a voluminous commentary on the book of Job; whom Milton, in his reply, roughly stigmatises with repeated charges of ignorance, as he also styles his antagonist, serving a man both by na

ture and by function, an idiot by breeding, and a solicitor by presumption! The application of these and similar terms in the dispute may remind us of the elegant dialogue between Nym and Pistol in King Henry V.: but there a wife retained, and not a wife repudiated, is the cause of so much eloquence.

"His father having come to live with him, after the surrender of Reading to the earl of Essex in 1643 and his scholars now increasing, he required a larger house; before his removal to which, he was surprised, at one of his usual visits to a relation in the lane of St. Martin'sle-grand, to see his wife come from another room, and beg forgiveness on her kness. The interview on her part had been concerted. The declining state of the royal cause, and consequently of her father's family, as well as the intelligence of Milton's determination to marry again, caused her friends to employ every method to re-unite the insulted husband and disobedient wife. It was contrived that she should be ready, when he came, in another apartment. Fenton, in his elegant sketch of the poet's life, judiciously remarks, that It is not to be

"Milton now became an enemy to the presbyterians, whom he before had favoured. Notwithstanding their opposition, however, he proceeded to illustrate his opinion more forcibly by paying his addresses to a young lady of great wit and

doubted but an interview of that nature, so little expected, must wonderfully affect him: and perhaps the impressions it made on his imagination contributed much to the painting of that pathe ic scene in Paradise Lost, in which Eve addresses herself to A lam for pardon and peace. At the intercession of his friends who were present, after a short reluctance, he generously sacrificed all ⚫his resentment to her tears:

he from retaining an unkind memory of the provocations which he had received from her ill conduct, that, when the king's cause was entirely oppressed, and her ⚫ father who had been active in his loyalty was exposed to sequestration, Milton received both him and his family to protection and • free entertainment in his own house, till their affairs were accommodated by his interest in the • victorious faction.'

"While Milton experienced the mortification of conjugal desertion, and was immersed in elaborate discussions connected with his misfortune, he was not without mental amusement. His leisure hours often passed smoothly away in visits to a lady of the most engaging talents and conversation, the daughter of the Earl of Marlborough; to whom, as to her husband captain Hobson, a very accomplished gentleman, his company was peculiarly acceptable. His tenth sonnet, inscribed to this discerning lady, is a grateful acknowledgment of his esteem. His time also had been employed in collecting together his early poems, both English and Latin, for the press. They were first published by Hum. phrey Moseley, the general publisher of the poets of this day, in 1645; who tells us in his address to the reader, that the author's more peculiar excellency in these studies < was too well known to conceal his papers, or to keep me from attempting to solicit them from ⚫ him.

Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age, by bringing into the

light as true a birth as the Muses

have brought forth since our famous Spenser wrote; whose

poems in these English ones are as rarely imitated as sweetly excelled.' Moseley was not morediscerning than Milton was modest. But modesty was a principal feature in Milton's chsracter. He affixed only his initia's to Lycidas: he ac◄ knowledged, with hesitation, Comus. It is rather surprising, that Mr. Warton should have asserted that, for seventy years after their first publication, he recollects no mention of these poems in the whole succession of English literature; and that the quantity of an hemistich, quoted from them, is not to be found in the Collections of those who have digested the Beauties or Parases of the English Poets from 1655 to 1738 inclusively. It is my duty positively to assert, that in the edition of Poole's English Parnas us, or Help to English Poesie, published in 1677, there are few pages in which quotations may not be found from Milton's poetry.

"It was while he lived in Jewenstreet, that Ellwood the quaker was recommended to him as a person who, for the advantage of his conversation, would read to him such Latin books as he thought proper; an employment to which he attended every afternoon, except on Sundays. At my first sitting to him,' this ingenuous writer informs us, in his Life of himself, observing that I used the English pronuncia ior, he told me, if I would have the benefit of the Latin tongue, not only to read and understand Latin authors, but to converse with foreigners, either abroad or at home, I must learn the foreign pronunciation; to this • I consenting, he instructed me how to sound the vowels: this

*And, to the credit of Poole's selection, I may add that the examples are very en taken from Lycidas, L'Allegio, and Il Penseroso, and the Ode on the Nativity."

change

change of pronunciation proved a new difficulty to me; but "labor omnia vincit improbus ;" and so ⚫ did I, which made my reading the more acceptable to my master. He, on the other hand, perceiving with what earnest desire I pursued learning, gave me not only all the encouragement, but all the help he could; for, having a curious ear, he understood by my tone when I understood what I ' read, and when I did not; and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most difficult passages to me.' The kind care bestowed by Milton upon the improvement of this young man was repaid by every mark of personal regard. The courtesy of the The courtesy of the preceptor, and the gratitude of the disciple, are indeed alike conspicuous. After several adventures, which were no slight trials of patience, Ellwood found an asylum in the house of an affluent quaker at Chalfont, in Buckinghamshire, whose children he was to instruct. This situation afforded him an opportunity of being serviceable to Milton. For, when the plague began to rage in London in 1665, Ellwood took a house for him at Chalfont St. Giles, to which the poet retired with his family. He had not long been removed from Jewenstreet to a house in the Artillery Walk, leading to Bunhill Fields. On his arrival at Chalfont he found that Ellwood, in consequence of a persecution of the quakers, was confined in the gaol at Aylesbury. But, being soon released, this affectionate friend made a visit to him, to welcome him into the country. After some common discourses,' says Elwood, had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his, which, being brought, he delivered to me, bidding me

take it home with me, and read it at my leisure, and, when I had so done, return it to him with my judgment thereupon. When Í came home, and set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem, which he entitled Paradise • Lost.' From this account it appears that Paradise Lost was complete in 1665.

"After the poem had been made ready for publication, it is said to have been in danger of being suppressed by the licenser, who imagined that, in the noble simile of the sun in an eclipse, he had discovered treason. The licenser's hesitation is a striking example of lord Lyttel ton's acute remark, that the poli tics of Milton at that time brought his poetry into disgrace: for it is a rule with the English, they see no good in a man whose politics they dislike. Licensed, however, the poem was; and Milton sold his copy, April 27, 1667, to Samuel Simmons, for an immediate payment of five pounds. But the agreement with the bookseller entitled him to a conditional payment of five pounds more when thirteen hundred copies should be sold of the first edition; of the like sum after the same number of the second edition: and of another five pounds after the same sale of the third. The number of each edition was not to exceed fifteen hundred copies. first appeared in 1667, in ten books. In the history of Paradise Lost, Dr. Johnson has observed that a relation of minute circumstances will rather gratify than fatigue. Countenanced by such authority, I proceed to state that the poem, in a small quar to form, and plainly but neatly bound, was advertised at the price of three shillings. The titles were varied, in order to circulate the edition, in 1667, 1658, and 1669.

It

Of

Of these there were no less than five. In two years the sale gave the poet a right to his second payment, for which the receipt was signed April 26, 1669. The second edition was not given till 1674; it was printed in small octavo; and, by a judicious division of the seventh and tenth, contained twelve books. He lived not to receive the payment stipulated for this impression. The third edition was published in 1678; and his widow, to whom the copy was then to devolve, agreed with Simmons, the printer, to receive eight pounds for her right, according to her receipt dated December 21, .1680. Simmons had already covenanted to transfer the right, for twenty-five pounds, to Brabazon Aylmer, the bookseller; and Aylmer sold to Jacob Tonson half, August 17, 1683, and the other half, March 24, 1690, at a price considerably advanced.

many more readers than were supplied at first, the nation did 'not afford.' Only three thousand were sold in eleven years; for it forced its way without assistance; its admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities now given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few. But the reputation and price of the copy still advanced, till the revolution put an end to the secre cy of love, and Paradise Lost broke into open view with sufficient security of kind reception.

Milton, in his youth, is said to have been extremely handsome. He was called the lady of his college; an appellation which Mr. Hayley says he could not relish; and I may add that he might be less inclined to be pleased with his title, as, at that period, the appear. ance of effeminacy was attacked from the pulpit: We live in an

age,' says Bishop Lake, wherein it is hard to say, whether in

"Of the first edition it has been observed by Dr. Johnson, that the call for books was not in Mil-clothes men grow more womanton's age what it is at present ; ✦ the nation had been satisfied from 1623 to 1664, that is, forty-one years, with only two editions of the works of Shakspeare, which probably did not together make one thousand copies. The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all and disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius.' This remark will always be read with peculiar gratification, as it exonerates our forefathers from the charge of being inattentive to the glorious blaze of a luminary, before which so many stars din their ineffectual light.' The demand, as Dr. Johnson notices, did not immediately increase; because

nish, or women more mannish!' Milton had a very fine skin and fresh complexion. His hair was of a light brown; and, parted on the foretop, hung down in curls upon his shoulders. His features were regular; and when turned of forty, he has himself told us, he was generally allowed to have had the appearance of being ten years younger. He has also represented himself as a man of moderate stature, neither too lean nor too corpulent; and so far endued with strength and spirit, that, as he always wore a sword, he wanted not, while light revisited his eyes, the skill or the courage to use it. His eyes were of a greyish colour; which, when deprived of sight, did not betray their loss: at first view, and at a small distance, it was difficult to

know