with its ejaculation "God have mercy, Betty." The fact comes to us not from Elizabeth Fisher, but from her sister Mary Fisher, a servant in the same neighbourhood, who used often to look in upon her sister, and in that way knew Mr. Milton very well. She testifies that, one day about the middle of October, as nearly as she could remember, being in Milton's house about noon, and in the kitchen with her sister, and Milton and his wife dining that day in the kitchen, she heard Milton say to his wife, "Make much of "me as long as I live, for thou knowest I have given thee "all when I die at thy disposal." He "was then very merry and seemed to be in good health of body." The words about his will, we can see, had by this time established themselves half-humorously between him and his wife as his formula for his sense of helplessness and dependence on her alone1. November 1674 had come,-the beginning, as the chronicles inform us, of an unusually warm and unhealthy winter through the British Islands. Again Milton was ill, this time of "the gout struck in," or severe gout-fever. His neighbours were thenceforth to miss their famous blind man in grey. He died on Sunday, the 8th of November, late at night, "with "so little pain that the time of his expiring was not perceived "by those in the room." He had reached the age of sixtyfive years and eleven months. Bunhill Fields Burying-ground, close to Milton's house, was already known as peculiarly the London burying-ground of the Dissenters, and was to be more and more famous in that character as one eminent Nonconformist after another found a grave within it and the number of the tombstones increased. Not there, however, was Milton buried, but in his own parish-church of St. Giles, Cripplegate, beside his father, and according to the rites of the Church of England. The funeral was on Thursday, the 12th of November. "He had "a very decent interment, according to his quality," says Phillips, "being attended from his house to the church by "several gentlemen then in town, his principal well-wishers 1 Evidence of Elizabeth Fisher and Mary Fisher in the case of Milton's Nuncupative Will. "and admirers." 66 Toland's account is as trustworthy and is more particular. "All his learned and great friends in "London, not without a concourse of the vulgar," says Toland, accompanied his body to the church of St. Giles, near Crip"plegate, where he was buried in the chancel." We can see the coffin brought out from the small house opposite the Artillery Garden Wall, the neighbours looking on from their windows, and the widow left in the house with one or two women attending her, but perhaps not one of the three daughters. We can see the funeral procession, from Bunhill Row, along Beech Lane and Whitecross Street or Redcross Street, to Cripplegate church, Christopher Milton and perhaps the two Phillipses as chief mourners, and surely Andrew Marvell and Dr. Nathan Paget following in the ranks, whether the Earl of Anglesey, Sir Robert Howard, and Dryden were there or not. It arrives at the church gate, where there is some little concourse, either because the neighbourhood has heard that Mr. Milton is to be buried, or merely because it is the funeral of somebody. There one or two clergymen meet the coffin; they place themselves before it and begin the reading or chaunt, "I am the "resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth "in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." They read or chaunt the rest, advancing into the church, till the coffin rests by the side of the grave that has been opened for it in the pavement of the upper end of the chancel, and round which the mourners are now grouped. Then comes the moment for the lowering of the coffin and for the words, "Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God, of his great mercy, to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here "departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground, earth "to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." With these words, the handfuls of earth fall on the coffin-lid; some eyes are in tears; the remaining prayers are read; the workmen bustle to fill up the grave; and the company depart. POSTHUMOUS MILTONIANA. In no case can the life of a man be said to end precisely at his death; but the amount of posthumous matter appertaining to the biography of Milton is unusually large. It may be arranged under a series of headings :— : MILTON'S NUNCUPATIVE WILL. Hardly was Milton dead when there arose a dispute between his widow and his three daughters as to the inheritance of his property. The dispute took the form of resistance by the three daughters to the widow's application in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury for probate of the nuncupative or word-of-mouth will which she alleged Milton to have made, on or about the 20th of the preceding July, in presence of his brother, Mr. Christopher Milton, Bencher of the Inner Temple and Deputy of Recorder of Ipswich (ante, p. 727-728). The words of the will, as they were reduced to writing by Christopher Milton on the 23rd of November 1674, and lodged that day in Court on the widow's behalf, attested by Christopher Milton's signature and by the mark of Elizabeth Fisher, Milton's maidservant, were these:"The portion due to me from Mr. Powell, my former wife's "father, I leave to the unkind children I had by her, having "received no part of it; but my meaning is they shall have no "other benefit of my estate than the said portion and what I "have besides done for them, they having been very undutiful to me: All the rest of my estate I leave to disposal of Elizabeth, my loving wife." The question for the Court was whether this, in the circumstances, could be taken as a good nuncupative will. Verbal or nuncupative wills, if sufficiently vouched, |