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Methought I saw my late espoused saint

Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, tho' pale and faint:

and in the latter part of it,

Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd
So clear, as in no face with more delight;

But O, as to embrace me she inclin'd

I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

Milton has equalled the mournful graces of Petrarch and of Camoens, who have each of them left a plaintive composition on a similar idea. The curious reader, who may wish to compare the three poets on this occasion, will find the similarity I speak of in the 79th sonnet of Petrarch, and the 72d of Camoens.

The loss of a wife so beloved, and the severe enthralment of his country under the increasing despotism of Cromwell, must have wounded very deeply the tender and patriotic feelings of Milton. His variety of

affliction from these sources might probably occasion his being silent, as an author, for some years. In 1655, he is supposed to have written a national manifesto in Latin, to justify the war against Spain. From that time, when his defence of himself also appeared, we know not of his having been engaged in any publication till the year 1659, excepting a political manuscript of Sir Walter Raleigh, called the Cabinet Council, which he printed in 1658, with a brief advertisement. What his sentiments were concerning the last years of Cromwell, and the following distracted period, we have a striking proof in one of his private letters, written not long after the death of the protector. In reply to his foreign friend Oldenburgh (he says) "I am very far from

* Ab historiâ nostrorum motuum concinnandâ, quod hortari videris, longe absum; sunt enim silentio digniores quam præconio: nec nobis qui motuum historiam concinnare, sed qui motus ipsos componere feliciter possit est opus; tecum enim vereor ne libertatis ac religionis hostibus nunc nuper sociatis, nimis opportuni inter has nostras civiles discordias vel potius insanias,

preparing a history of our commotions, as you seem to advise, for they are more worthy of silence than of panegyric; nor do we want a person with ability to frame an history of our troubles, but to give those troubles a happy termination; for I sympathise with you in the fear, that the enemies of our liberty and our religion, who are recently combined, may find us too much exposed to their attack in these our civil dissentions, or rather our fits of frenzy; they cannot, however, wound our religion more than we have done ourselves by our own enormities." The interest of religion appears on every occasion to have maintained its due ascendency in the mind of Milton, and to have formed, through the whole course of his life, the primary object of his pursuit; it led him to publish in 1659, two distinct treatises, the first on civil power in ecclesiastical causes; the

videamur; verum non illi gravius quam nosmetipsi jamdiu flagitiis nostris religioni vulnus intulerint.Prose Works, vol. 2. p. 585.

second, on the likeliest means to remove hirelings out of the church; performances which Johnson presumes to characterize by an expression not very consonant to the spirit of Christianity, representing them as written merely to gratify the author's malevolence to the clergy; a coarse reproach, which every bigot bestows upon enlightened solicitude for the purity of religion, and particularly uncandid in the present case, because the devout author has conscientiously explained his own motives in the following expressions, addressed to the long parliament restored after the decease of Cromwell.

"Of civil liberty I have written heretofore by the appointment, and not without the approbation of civil power; of Christian liberty I write now, which others long since having done with all freedom under heathen emperors, I should do wrong to suspect that I now shall with less under Christian governors, and such especially as profess openly their defence of Christian liberty; although I write this not otherways ap

pointed or induced than by an inward persuasion of the Christian duty, which I may usefully discharge herein to the common Lord and Master of us all, and the certain hope of his approbation, first and chiefest to be sought." Milton was not a being of that common and reptile class, who assume an affected devotion as the mask of malignity. In addressing his second treatise also to the parliament, he describes himself as a man under the protection of the legislative assembly, who had used, during eighteen years, on all occasions to assert the just rights and freedom both of church and

state.

Had he been conscious of any base servility to Cromwell, he would certainly have abstained from this manly assertion of his own patriotic integrity, which, in that case, would have been only ridiculous and contemptible. His opinions might be erroneous, and his ardent mind over heated; but no man ever maintained, with more steadiness and resolution, the native dignity of an elevated spirit, no man more sedul

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