the illustrious chief justice) to establish constitutional limitations to the power of the king at the critical period of his reception. The neglect of this measure contributed not a little to subsequent evils, and the reign of Charles the Second was in truth deformed with all the public misery and disgrace which Milton had predicted, when he argued on the idea of his re-admission. For his own person, the literary champion of the people had no less to dread from the barbarity of public vengeance, or from the private dagger of some over-heated royalist, who, like the assassins of Dorislaus in Holland, and of Ascham in Spain, might think it meritorious to seize any opportunity of destroying a servant of the English republic. When royal government, restored to itself, could yet descend to authorise a mean and execrable indignity against the dead body of a man so magnanimous and so innocent as Blake, it was surely natural, and by no means unbecoming the spirit of Milton, to speak as he does, in the preceding verses, of evil days and evil tongues, of darkness and of danger.

"This darkness (says Johnson) had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly deserved compassion." What! had Milton no title to compassion for his personal calamity, because he had nobly sacrificed his sight to what he esteemed an important discharge of his public duty?— Oh egregious morality! to which no feeling heart can subscribe. No, say his implacable enemies, he lost his eyes in the vindication of wickedness; but admitting their assertion in its full force, justice and humanity still contend, that, instead of diminishing, it rather doubles his claim to compassion; to suffer in a spirited defence of guilt, that we mistake and esteem as virtue, is, perhaps, of all pitiable misfortunes, what a candid and considerate mind should be most willing to pity.

But Johnson proceeds to say,-" of evil tongues for Milton to complain required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates allow, that he never spared any asperity of reproach or brutality of insolence."

These are, perhaps, the most bitter words that were ever applied by an author, illustrious himself for great talents, and still more for Christian virtue, to a character pre-eminent in genius and in piety. By shewing to what a marvellous degree a very cultivated and devout mind may be exasperated by party rage, may they serve to caution every fervid spirit against that outrageous animosity, which a difference of sentiment in politics and religion is so apt to produce. It would seem almost an affront to the memory of Milton to vindicate him elaborately from a charge, whose very words exhibit so palpable a violation of decency and truth.

His coldest advocates, instead of allowing that he never spared any brutality of insolence, may rather contend, that his native tenderness of heart, and very graceful education, rendered it hardly possible for him at any time to be insolent and brutal. It would have been wonderful indeed, had he not written with some degree of asperity, when his antagonist Salmasius asserted, that

he ought to suffer an ignominious and excruciating death. Against the unfortunate (but not innocent) Charles the First, he expressly declares, that he published nothing till after his decease; and that he meant not, as he says in one of his Latin works, to insult the Manes of the king, is indeed evident to an unprejudiced reader, from the very beautiful and pathetic sentence, with which he begins his answer to the Icon. Basilike:

"To descant on the misfortunes of a person fallen from so high a dignity, who hath also paid his final debt, both to nature and his faults, is neither of itself a thing commendable, nor the intention of this discourse." Those who fairly consider the exasperated state of the contending parties, when Milton wrote, and compare his political compositions with the savage ribaldry of his opponents, however mistaken they may think him in his ideas of government, will yet find more reason to admire his temper, than to condemn his asperity.

If in a quiet study, at a very advanced

period of life, and at the distance of more than a century from the days of the republic, if a philosopher so situated could be hurried by political heat to speak of Milton with such harsh intemperance of language, though writing under the friendly title of his biogropher, with what indulgence ought we to view that asperity in Milton himself, which arose from the immediate pressure of public oppression and of private outrage; for his spirit had been inflamed, not only by the sight of many national vexations, but by seeing his own moral character attacked with the most indecent and execrable calumny that can incite the indignation of insulted virtue. If the fascinating powers of his sacred poem, and the lustre of his integrity, have failed to soften the virulence of an aged moralist against him in our days, what must he not have had to apprehend from the raging passions of his own time, when his poetical genius had not appeared in its meridian splendor, and when most of his writings were considered as recent crimes against those, who were entering on