mates, from a disgust she had conceived against her mother-in-law. On quitting the house of her father, she went to Ireland with a lady, and afterwards became the wife of Mr. Clarke, a weaver, in Spitalfields. As her family was numerous, and her circumstances not affluent, the liberal Addison made her a present, from his regard to the memory of her father, and intended to procure her some decent establishment, but died before he could accomplish his generous design. From Queen Caroline, she received fifty guineas, a donation as ill proportioned to the rank of the donor as to the mental dignity of the great genius, whose indigent daughter was the object of this unprincely munificence. Mrs. Clarke had ten children, but none of them appear to have attracted public regard, till Dr. Birch and Dr. Newton, two benevolent and respectable biographers of the poet, discovered his grand-daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Foster, keeping a little chandler's shop in the city, poor, aged, and infirm; they publicly spoke of her condition, Johnson

was then writing as the coadjutor of Lauder in his attempt to sink the glory of Milton ; but as the critics charity was still greater than his spleen, he seized the occasion of recommending, under Lauder's name, this necessitous descendant of the great poet to the beneficence of his country; Comus was represented for her benefit, in the year 1750, and Johnson to his honor contributed a prologue on the occasion, in which noble sentiments are nobly expressed.

The poor grand-daughter of Milton gained but one hundred and thirty pounds by this public benefaction; this sum, however, small as it was, afforded peculiar comfort to her declining age, by enabling her to retire to Islington with her husband; she had seven children, who died before her, and by her own death it is probable that the line of the poet became extinct. Let us hasten from this painful survey of his progeny to the more enlivening contemplation of his rare mental endowments. The most

diligent researches into all that can elucidate the real temper of Milton only confirm the

opinion, that his native characteristics were mildness and magnanimity. In controversy his mind was undoubtedly overheated, and passages may be quoted from his prose works, that are certainly neither mild nor magnanimous; but if his controversial asperity is compared with the outrageous insolence of his opponents, even that asperity will appear moderation; in social intercourse he is represented as peculiarly courteous and engaging. When the celebrity of his Latin work made him esteemed abroad, many enquiries were made concerning his private character among his familiar acquaintance, and the result of such enquiry was, that mildness and affability were his distinguishing qualities. " Virum esse miti comique ingenio aiunt," says the celebrated Heinsius, in a letter that he wrote concerning Milton, in the year 1651, to Gronovius. Another eminent foreigner represents himself in the same pleasing light, and from the best information. Vossius, who was at that time in Sweden, and who mentions the praise, which his royal pa

troness Christina bestowed on Milton's recent defence of the English people, informs his friend Heinsius, that he had obtained a very particular account of the author from a relation of his own, the learned Junius, who wrote the elaborate and interesting history of ancient painting, resided in England, and particularly cultivated the intimacy of Milton.

Indeed, when we reflect on the poet's uncommon tenderness towards his parents, and all the advantages of his early life, both at home and abroad, we have every reason to believe, that his manners were singularly pleasing. He was fond of refined female society, and appears to have been very fortunate in two female friends of distinction the Lady Margaret Ley, whose society consoled him when he was mortified by the desertion of his first wife, and the no less accomplished Lady Ranelagh, who had placed her son under his care, and who probably assisted him, when he was a widower and blind, with friendly directions for the management of his female infants.

A passage in one of his letters to her son suggests this idea; for he condoles with his young correspondent, then at the university, on the loss they would both sustain by the long absence of his most excellent mother, passing at that time into Ireland; "for to me also she supplied the place of every friend; an expression full of tenderness and regret, highly honorable to the lady, and a pleasing memorial of that sensibility and gratitude, which I am persuaded we should have seen most eminent in the character of Milton, if his English letters had been fortunately preserved, particularly his letters to this interesting lady, whose merits are commemorated in an eloquent sermon, preached by Bishop Burnet, on the death of her brother, that mild and accomplished model of virtue and of learning, Robert Boyle. Lady Ranelagh must have been one of the most exemplary and engaging characters that ever existed, since we find she was the darling sister of this illustrious philosopher, and the favorite friend of a

*Nam et mihi omnium necessitudinum loco fuit.