lished with its author's name, its motives would, probably, have atoned with Milton for its virulence; and his own filial piety, affected by the spectacle of a generous youth, rushing to present his bosom to the wound intended for his father's, would have spared the enemy, and warned him from the combat in the words of Æneas—

Fallit te incautum pietas tua, &c.

But the publication was anonymɔus; and, heaping enormous falsehoods on its adversary's head, it attempted to overwhelm his innocence with strong abuse, and with random accusation.

The "Apology for Smectymnuus" was the result of this accumulated provocation: and the call of defence made it necessary for our author to relate some circumstances respecting himself, of which we should, otherwise, have been ignorant. The most objectionable part of this performance is that which attacks Hall and his satires; its most splendid, an eloquent and merited eulogy on the first acts of the Long Parliament.

This production seems to have closed the controversy. Weapons, more effectual than pens, were drawn against the Church; and, exposed by the injudicious conduct of some

of its prelates, it fell under the assault. If argument and reason could have prevailed, the result would, probably, have been different. The learning of Usher and the wit of Hall certainly preponderated in the contest; and they seem to have been felt, not only by the Smectymnuan divines, but by Milton himself. The affected contempt with which he speaks of " the dust and pudder in antiquity; of his respected friends lying at the mercy of a coy and flurting style;" of "their antagonist vapouring them out with quips and snapping adagies, and employing weak arguments headed with sharp taunts," sufficiently betrays the weak points of his friends, and the strong of his opponents. If the Church, indeed, at this crisis, could have been upheld by the abilities of its sons,

• I allude, particularly, to the intemperate and most unseasonable protest, signed by twelve bishops and drawn up by archbishop Williams, which was presented to the King and by him communicated to the Lords, (on dec. 30, 1641,) against the legality of all the acts of the Legislature, during the compulsory absence of the prelates from their places in the Upper House. Archbishop Williams's accustomed prudence and moderation seem, on this occasion, to have deserted him; but the strong return of court favour, even at this inauspicious period, had not been unproductive of effect upon his conduct. In the inflammable moment, when it was made, this protest instantly excited an explosion, which expelled the governors of the church from their seats in the Legislature, and shook the old hierarchy of England to its base.

it would have been supported by these admirable prelates; but numbers, exasperation and enthusiasm were against them. The storm raged beyond the controll of any human voice, and the vessel appeared to be lost: she was soon, however, to be launched again in all her graceful pride; and, favoured by the breath of heaven, to pursue her prosperous course till the misconduct of her navigators shall again endanger her; or till she attain, perhaps, the most distant limit assigned for the duration of human institutions.

The tone of this debate was far from mild; and all the combatants, with exception to Usher, seem to have been careless of manners, and not less intent on giving pain to their adversaries, than on the discovery or the establishment of truth. The temper of polemics and of literary disputants is, in all ages, the same; but controversy had not yet learned to conceal the malignity of her bosom under the disguise of a polished brow, and a smiling cheek. On this occasion, also, many circumstances concurred, as we have already remarked, to heighten that ferocity, which always marks her character, when interests of important moment constitute her objects. In this dispute, one party was urged to the defence by every thing which educa

tion or possession had endeared; while the other was pressed to the attack by the recollection of the past, and by the terror of future oppression.

With an ardent temper and a brilliant imagination, Milton was not formed for cool and temperate disputation. "I could not,"

he says, "to my thinking, honour a good -cause more from the heart than by defending it carnestly." He talked, indeed, "of pleading against his confuter by no other advocates than silence and sufferance; and speaking deeds against faltering words;” but his bold and sanguine nature prohibited such efficient acquiescence, and hurried him into active war. When his adversary called upon all "Christians to stone him, as a miscreant, whose impunity would be their crime," we cannot reasonably wonder at the warmth of his expressions, or at the little scruple with which he scattered his various instruments of" pain. These polemical tracts of our author, though, perhaps, some of the least valuable of his works, are so illumined with knowledge and with fancy, and open to us such occasional glimpses of a great and sublime mind, that they must always be regarded as affording an ample compensation for any harsh

P Apol. for Smect. P.W. vol. i. 207.

9 Ibid. vol. i. 209.

ness of manner with which they may sometimes offend.

We have now conducted our author to a period of his history when an event took place, which, by its immediate and its remote result, was destined to interrupt the even tenor of his domestic life, and to afflict his. heart to the latest moment of his existence. "About Whitsuntide," (1643) says his nephew, “he' took a journey into the country, no body about him certainly knowing the reason, or that it was more than a journey of recreation. After a month's stay, home he returns a married man, who set out a bachelor, his wife being Mary, the eldest daughter of Mr. Richard Powell, then a justice of the peace, of Forest-Hill, near Shotover, in Oxfordshire."

Milton's matrimonial choice, in this instance, seems to have been the result of fancy alone, and its consequences were those which might have been expected from a connexion so evidently imprudent. Strongly attached with all her family to the royalist party, and accustomed to the affluent hospitality of her father's house," where there was," as Aubrey mentions, a great deal of company, and

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Philips, p 18.