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complete work indeed! To misconceive and misinterpret utterly the opinions of the man, whose life he was writing! A beautiful and complete work! beautiful and complete cant. In fact, as St. John well says in his notes on Milton's prose works, Johnson here attempts to obtain the credit of being a practical man.

"Those authors," he says, "therefore, are to be read at schools, that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians. Let me not be censured for this digression as pedantic or paradoxical; for, if I have Milton against me," (observe that,) "I have Socrates on my side. It was his labour to turn philosophy from the study of Nature to speculations upon life; but the innovators whom I oppose," (he represents Socrates as an innovator in his day,) "are turning off attention from life to Nature. They seem to think that we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the stars: Socrates was rather of opinion, that what we had to learn was, how to do good, and avoid evil.”

But the treatise of Milton is eminently practical. The course of study he recommends. turns upon the developement of the life. No

thing that Johnson ever said was so practical as this treatise. Milton does recommend the study of poets, historians, and orators, because they are generally the treasures of moral truth. He does recommend the turning philosophy to the study of Nature, and Nature viewed with immediate reference to life in its most practical movements. It was that unfortunate passage, in commending the study of politics as a branch of moral conduct which aroused the ire of Johnson. A more shameless piece of criticism we do not know. The man decorates himself in the plumage of Milton's "Wisdom,” in his account of the things in which true learning should consist; and then, with an effrontery marvellous even for Johnson, says: "See! this should be the order of study, not yours." Utter ignorance of the interior of the letter, or the most perverse and wilful misrepresentation alone can be assigned to the biographer. first we are prevented from assigning. From several portions of the criticism we are compelled, therefore, to attribute to him the dishonesty of the last.

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The methods of education pursued amongst us have not yet reached Milton's standard; and it is remarkable, that neither in the university or the school, we have as yet a method

free from cumbrous dogmatism, or ridiculous unfitness. In few instances has education any reference to future position in life. There are few attempts made to make our youth comprehend the law of their being as it should be comprehended, both in the life of the body, and in the life of the state. Culture is needed still -perfect culture; culture of the frame culture of the mind. It was Milton's desire to bestow this to give to the youth the power to attain all the riches of intellect; and to watch them earnestly, so that the body should not interfere with the developement of the mind, but by proper training be a means of imparting, constantly, new sources of happiness to the spirit. There are a number of reformers of the present day, who, without knowing it, are attempting to step in the pathway Milton trod : and for all their labours and efforts at training the minds of their fellows to deal wisely and virtuously with their bodies-to search and explore the foundations of morals and politics, they receive the same thanks that Johnson gave Milton-sneers, as at would-be wonder workers, misinterpretation, and attribution of erroneous motive, and sometimes the borrowing of arguments and thoughts to decorate the baldness and sterility of their adversaries.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE AREOPAGITICA.

"THIS is a perfect field of cloth of gold," says Macauley, in his Essay on Milton; and truly if any one desire to see our author in his best and noblest harness, they should read this most magnificent performance. It is an apology for the liberty of the press; and this great right is argued with an affluence of eloquence and illustration-with a pomp and majesty of language which place the work in the very foremost rank in the catalogue of the choice pieces of English Literature. The occasion of the paper has passed away, but it is full of passages which may be ever quoted as the texts of mental freedom, and relevantly to the more immediate subject of his discourse, he expounds the nature of Virtue, and the office and functions of government: he saw how vain

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was the attempt to impose shackles on the human mind, and he pleads for freedom as the surest means of working out the great life of virtue. This discourse was occasioned by the tyranny of the Presbyterians. They were the party then exercising predominant power; and some opinion may be formed of the length to which they proceeded, from the following entry in the Journals, the 12th of July, 1644:"A book entitled Comfort for Believers about their sins and troubles, by John Archer, sometime preacher at Lombard Street." Assembly denounced it as blasphemous; and the Lords ordered it to be burnt by the hands of the common hangman, and all the copies of it to be called in. It was necessary, before a book could be printed, that it should receive the imprimatur of some person authorised by government. The object proposed by Milton was to procure the most entire liberty of the press, but subject to liability to prosecution, should that liberty be employed for licentious or injurious purposes. Amongst the prose writings, this occupies the same post as the “Paradise Lost." Amongst the poems it is the chief work, and is a noble offering of bold and patriotic virtue, faith, and enthusiasm of genius and scholarship, upon the shrines of

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