posed and chastised by the indignant spirit of Milton. The wretched Salmasius, indeed was utterly overwhelmed in the encounter ; he had quitted France, his native country, where he honorably disdained to purchase a pension by flattering the tyranny of Richlieu, and had settled in Leyden as an asylum of liberty; he seemed, therefore, as one of his Parisian correspondents observed to him, "to cancel the merit of his former conduct by writing against England." Salmasius was extravagantly vain, and trusted too much to his great reputation as a scholar; his antagonist, on the contrary, was so little known as a Latin writer before the defence appeared that several friends advised Milton not to hazard his credit against a name so eminent as that of Salmasius. Never did a literary conflict engage the attention of a wider circle; and never did victory declare more decidedly in favor of the party from whom the public had least expectation. Perhaps no

author ever acquired a more rapid and extensive celebrity than Milton gained by this contest. Let us however remark, for the

interest of literature, that the two combatants were both to blame in their reciprocal use of weapons utterly unworthy of the great cause that each had to sustain not content to wield the broad and bright sword of national argument, they both descended to use the mean and envenomed dagger of personal malevolence. They have indeed great authorities of modern time to plead in their excuse, not to mention the bitter disputants of antiquity. It was the opinion of Johnson, and Milton himself seems to have entertained the same idea, that it is allowable in literary contention to ridicule, vilify, and depreciate as much as possible, the character of an opponent. Surely this doctrine is unworthy of the great names, who have endeavoured to support it, both in theory and practice; a doctrine not only morally wrong but prudentially defective; for a malevolent spirit in eloquence is like a dangerous varnish in painting, which may produce, indeed, a brilliant and forcible effect for a time but ultimately injures the success of the production; a remark that may be verified in

perusing the Latin prose of Milton, where elegance of language and energy of sentiment, suffer not a little from being blended: with the tiresome asperity of personal invective.

It is a pleasing transition to return from his enemies to his friends. He had a mindand a heart most feelingly alive to the duties and delights of friendship, and seems to have been peculiarly happy in this important article of human life. In speaking of his blindness, he mentions, in the most interesting manner, the assiduous and tender attention, which he received on that occasion from his friends in general: some of them he regarded as not inferior in kindness to Theseus and Pylades, the ancient demigods of amity. We have lost, perhaps, some little poems that flowed from the heart of Milton, by their being addressed to persons who, in the vicissitudes of public. fortune, were suddenly plunged into ob-. scurity with the honors they had received. Some of his sonnets that we possess did not venture into public till many years after the

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death of their author for political reasons; others might be concealed from the same motive, and in such concealment they might easily perish. I can hardly believe that he never addressed a verse to Bradshaw, whom we have seen him praising so eloquently in prose; and among those whom he mentions with esteem in his Latinworks, there is a less known military friend, who seems still more likely to have been honored with some tribute of the poet's affection, that time and chance may have destroyed; I mean his friend Overton, a soldier of eminence in the service of the parliament, whom Milton describes "as endeared to him through many years by the sweetness of his manners, and by an intimacy surpassing even the union of brothers.*"' A character so highly and tenderly esteemed by the poet has a claim to the attention of his biographer. Overton is

Te, Overtone, mihi multis ab hinc annis et studiorum similitudine, et morum suavitate, concordia plusquam fraterna conjunctissime.-Prose Work, Vol. II. p. 400.

commended by the frank ingenuous Ludlow as a brave and faithful officer; he is also ridiculed in a ballad of the royalists as a religious enthusiast. He had a gratuity of 3001. a-year conferred upon him for his bravery by the parliament, and had risen to the rank of a major general. Cromwell, apprehensive that Overton was conspiring against his usurpation, first imprisoned him in the tower, and afterwards confined him in the island of Jersey. A letter, in which Marvel relates to Milton his having presented to the Protector at Windsor a recent copy of the Second Defence, expresses at the same time, an affectionate curiosity concerning the business of Overton, who was at that time just brought to London by a mysterious order of Cromwell. He did not escape from confinement till after the death of Oliver, when, in consequence of a petition from his sister to the parliament, he obtained his release. Soon after the restoration, he was again imprisoned in the tower with Colonel Desborow, on a rumour of their being concerned in a treasonable