fifty guineas. She had feven fons and three daughters; but none of them had any children, except her fon Caleb and her daughter Elizabeth. Caleb went to Fort St. George in the Eaft Indies, and had two fons, of whom nothing is now known. Elizabeth married Thomas Fofter, a weaver in Spitalfields, and had feven children, who all died. She kept a petty grocer's or chandler's fhop, first at Holloway, and afterwards in Cocklane near Shoreditch Church. She knew little of her grandfather, and that littlewa snot good. She told of his harshness to his daughters, and his refufal to have them taught to write; and, in oppofition to other accounts, represented him as delicate, though tempe rate, in his diet.

In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had fo little acquaintance with diverfion or gaiety, that she did not know what was intended when a benefit was offered her. The profits of the night were only one hundred and thirty pounds, though Dr. Newton brought a large contribution; and twenty pounds were given by Tonson, a man who is to be praised as often as he is named,

named. Of this fum one hundred pounds was placed in the stocks, after some debate between her and her husband in whose name it should be entered; and the reft augmented their little stock, with which they removed to Iflington. This was the greatest benefaction that Paradife Loft ever procured the author's defcendents; and to this he who has now attempted to relate his Life, had the honour of contributing a Prologue.

IN the examination of Milton's poetical works, I fhall fhall pay fo much regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. For his early pieces he feems to have had a degree of fondness not very laudable: what he has once written he refolves to prefervé, and gives to the publick an unfinished poem, which he broke off because he was nothing fatisfied with what he had done, fuppofing his readers less nice than himself. Thefe preludes to his future labours are in Italian, Latin, and English. Of the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as a critick; but I have heard them commended by a man well qualified to decide their merit. The Latin pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is rather by the exquisite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of invention, or vigour of fentiment. They are not all of equal value; the elegies excell the odes; and fome of the exercises on Gunpowder Treafon might have been spared.

The

The English poems, though they make no promises of Paradife Loft, have this evidence of genius, that they have a caft original and unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence if they differ from verses of others, they differ for the worfe; for they are too often diftinguished by repulfive harsh nefs; the combinations of words are new, but they are not pleafing the rhymes and epithets feem to be laboriously fought, and violently applied.

That in the early parts of his life he wrote with much care appears from his manufcripts, happily preferved at Cambridge, in which many of his smaller works are found as they were first written, with the subsequent cor rections. Such reliques fhew how excellence is required; what we hope ever to do with eafe, we may learn first to do with dili gence.

Those who admire the beauties of this great poet, fometimes force their own judgement into falfe approbation of his little pieces, and prevail upon themselves to think

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that

that admirable which is only fingular. All that thort compofitions can commonly attain is neatness and elegance. Milton never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the milder excellence of fuavity and foftness; he was a Lion that had no skill in dandling the Kid,

One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed is Lycidas; of which the diction is harth, the rhymes uncertain, and the numbers unpleafing. What beauty there is, we must therefore feek in the fentiments and images. It is not to be confidered as the effufion of real paffion; for paffion runs not after remote allufions and obfcure opinions. Paffion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethufe and Mincius, nor tells of rough fatyrs and fauns with cloven heel. Where there is leifure for fiction there

is little grief.

In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, eafy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting: whatever images it can fupply, are long ago ex

haufted;