ance of his history, he published the Pararadise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. Many groundless remarks have been

in court or commonwealth.

At twenty years of age,

not yet reigning, he took to wife Egelswitha, the daughter of Ethelred, a Mercian earl. The extremities which befel him in the sixth of his reign, Neothan Abbot told him were justly come upon him for neglecting, in his younger days, the complaint of such as, injured and oppressed, repaired to him, as then second person in the kingdom, for redress; which neglect, were it such indeed, were excusable in a youth, through jollity of mind, unwilling perhaps to be detained long with sad and sorrowful narrations; but from the time of his undertaking regal charge, no man more patient in hearing causes, more inquisitive in examining, more exact in doing justice, and providing good laws, which are yet extant; more severe in punishing unjust judges, or obstinate offenders, thieves especially and robbers, to the terror of whom in cross-ways were hung upon a high post certain chains of gold, as it were daring any one to take them thence; so that justice seemed in his days not to flourish only, but to triumph: no man can be more frugal of two precious things in man's life, his time and his revenue; no man wiser in the disposal of both. His time, the day and night, he distributed by the burning of certain tapers into three equal portions; the one was for devotion, the other for private affairs, the third for bodily re

made on the supposed want of judgment in Milton to form a proper estimate of his own compositions. "His last poetical offspring

freshment; how each hour passed he was put in mind by one who had that office. His whole annual revenue, which his first care was should be justly his own, he divided into two equal parts; the first he employed to secular uses, and subdivided those into three; the first to pay his soldiers, household servants, and guards, of which divided into three bands, one attended monthly by turn; the second was to pay his architects and workmen, whom he had got together of several nations for he was also an elegant builder, above the custom and conceit of Englishmen in those days; the third he had in readiness to relieve and honor strangers, according to their worth, who came from all parts to see him, and to live under him. The other equal part of his yearly wealth he dedicated to religious uses; those of four sorts; the first to relieve the poor, the second to the building and maintenance of two monasteries, the third of a school, where he had persuaded many noblemen to study sacred knowledge and liberal arts, some say at Oxford; the fourth was for the relief of foreign churches, as far as India to the shrine of St. Thomas, sending thither Sigelm bishop of Sherburn, who both returned safe and brought with him many rich gems and spices; gifts also and a letter, he received from the patriarch at Jerusalem; sent many to Rome, and from them received reliques. Thus far,

(says Johnson) was his favorite; he could not, as Ellwood relates, endure to have Paradise Lost preferred to Paradise Regained." In this brief passage, there is more than one misrepresentation. It is not Ellwood, but Philips, who speaks of Milton's esteem for his latter poem; and instead of saying that the author preferred it to his greater work, he merely intimates, that Milton was offended with the general censure, which condemned the Paradise Regained as infinitely inferior to the other. Instead of supposing, therefore, that the great poet was under the influence of an absurd predilection, we have only reason to conclude, that he heard with lively scorn such idle witticism as we find recorded by

and much more might be said of his noble mind, which rendered him the mirror of princes. His body was diseased in his youth with a great soreness in the seige, and that ceasing of itself, with another inward pain of unknown cause, which held him by frequent fits to his dying day; yet not disenabled to sustain those many glorious labours of his life both in peace and war.-Prose Works vol. II p. 97.

Toland, "that Milton might be seen in Paradise Lost, but not in Paradise Regained. His own accomplished mind, in which sensibility and judgment were proportioned to extraordinary imagination, most probably assured him what is indisputably true, that uncommon energy of thought and felicity of composition are apparent in both performances, however different in design, dimension, and effect. To censure the Paradise Regained, because it does not more resemble the preceding poem, is hardly less absurd than it would be to condemn the moon for not being a sun, instead of admiring the two different luminaries, and feeling that both the greater and the less are visibly the work of the same divine and inimitable power.

Johnson has very liberally noticed one peculiarity in Milton, and calls it, with a benevolent happiness of expression, "a kind of humble dignity, which did not disdain. the meanest services to literature. The epic poet, the controvertist, the politician,

having already descended to accommodate children with a book of rudiments, now, in the last years of his life, composed a book of Logic, for the initiation of students in philosophy, and published, 1672, Artis Logicæ plenior Institutio ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata, that is, a new scheme of Logic, according to the method of Ra

mus.'

It is so pleasing to find one great author speaking of another in terms, which do honor to both, that I transcribe, with singular satisfaction, the preceding passage of the eminent biographer, whose frequent and injurious asperity to Milton I have so repeatedly noticed and must continue to notice, with reprehension and regret.

In the very moment of delivering the just encomium I have commended, the critic discovers an intemperate eagerness to revile the object of his praise; for he proceeds to say of Milton, "I know not whether, even in this book, he did not intend an act of hostility against the universities, for Ramus was one of the first oppugners of the old