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Dear as the sage, renown'd for moral truth,
To the prime spirit of the Attic youth!
Dear as the Stagyrite to Ammon's son,

His pupil, who disdain'd the world he won!
Nor so did Chiron, or so Phoenix shine,

In young

Achilles' eyes, as he in mine:

First led by him, thro' sweet Aonian shade, Each sacred haunt of Pindus I survey'd; Explor'd the fountain, and the Muse my guide, Thrice steep'd my lips in the Castalian tide.

And again, in expressing his regret upon the length of their separation :

Nec dum ejus licuit mihi lumina pascere vultu, Aut linguæ dulces aure bibisse sonos.

Nor yet his friendly features feast my sight,
Nor his sweet accents my fond ear delight.

As the tenderness of the young poet is admirably displayed in the beginning of this Elegy, his more acknowledged characteristic, religious fortitude, is not less admirable in the close of it.

At tu sume animos, nec spes cadat anxia curis,
Nec tua concutiat decolor ossa metus.
Sis etenim quamvis fulgentibus obsitus armis,
Intententque tibi millia tela necem,

At nullis vel inerme latus violabitur armis,
Deque tuo cuspis nulla cruore bibet ;
Namque eris ipse dei radiante sub ægide tutus,
Ille tibi custos, et pugil ille tibi:

Et tu (quod superest miseris) sperare memento,
Et tu magnanimo pectore vince mala;
Nec dubites quandoque frui melioribus annis,
Atque iterum patrios posse videre lares.

But thou, take courage, strive against despair,
Shake not with dread, nor nourish anxious care.
What tho' grim war on every side appears,
And thou art menac'd by a thousand spears,
Not one shall drink thy blood, not one offend
Ev'n the defenceless bosom of my friend;
For thee the ægis of thy God shall hide;
Jehovah's self shall combat on thy side;
Thou, therefore, as the most afflicted may,
Still hope, and triumph o'er thy evil day;
Trust thou shalt yet behold a happier time,
And yet again enjoy thy native clime.

The reader, inclined to sympathise in the joys of Milton, will be gratified in being.

VOL. I.

informed, that preceptor, whose exile and poverty he pathetically lamented, and whose prosperous return he predicted, was in a few years restored to his country, and became Master of Jesus College, in Cambridge.

As the year in which he quitted England (1625) corresponds with the fifteenth year of his pupil's age, it is probable that Milton was placed, at that time, under the care of Mr. Gill and his son; the former, chief master of St. Paul's school, the latter, his assistant, and afterwards his successor. It is remarkable, that Milton, who has been so uncandidly represented as an uncontroulable spirit, and a spurner of all just authority, seems to have contracted a tender attachment to more than one disciplinarian concerned in his education. He is said to have been the favorite scholar of the younger Gill; and he has left traces of their friendship in three Latin epistles, that express the highest esteem for the literary character and poetical talents of his instructor.

On the 12th of February, 1624, he was entered, not as a sizer, which some of his

biographers have erroneously asserted, but as a pensioner of Christ's College, in Cambridge. "At this time," says Doctor Johnson, "he was eminently skilled in the Latin

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tongue, and he himself, by annexing the "dates to his first compositions, a boast of "which the learned Politian had given him "an example, seems to commend the earli"ness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity; but the products of his vernal

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fertility have been surpassed by many, and particularly by his contemporary, Cowley. "Of the powers of the mind it is difficult to "form an estimate; many have excelled "Milton in their first essays, who never rose "to works like Paradise Lost."

This is the first of many remarks, replete with detraction, in which an illustrious author has indulged his spleen against Milton, in a life of the poet, where an illsubdued propensity to censure is ever combating with a necessity to commend. The partisans of the powerful critic, from a natural partiality to their departed master, affect to consider his malignity as existing only

in the prejudices of those who endeavour to counteract his injustice. A biographer of Milton ought therefore to regard it as his indispensable duty to shew how far this malignity is diffused through a long series of observations, which affect the reputation both of the poet and the man; a and the man; a duty that must be painful in proportion to the sincerity of our esteem for literary excellence; since different as they were in their principles, their manners, and their writings, both the poet and his critical biographer are assuredly entitled to the praise of exalted genius. Perhaps in the republic of letters there never existed two writers more deservedly distinguished, not only for the energy of their mental faculties, but for a generous and devout desire to benefit mankind by their exertion.

Yet it must be lamented, and by the lovers of Milton in particular, that a moralist, who has given us, in the Rambler, such sublime lessons for the discipline of the heart and mind, should be unable to preserve his own from that acrimonious spirit of detraction which led him to depreciate, to the ut

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