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siring her return; but the messenger came back not only without an answer, at least a satisfactory one, but, to the best of my re membrance, reported that he was dismissed with some sort of contempt. This proceeding, in all probability, was grounded upon no other cause but this, namely: that the family being generally addicted to the cavalier party, as they called it, and some of then possibly engaged in the king's service, who by this time had his headquarters at Oxford, and was in some prospect of success, they began to repent them of having matched the eldest daughter of the family to a person so contrary to them in opinion, and thought it would be a blot in their escutcheon whenever that court should come to flourish again. However, it so incensed our author that he thought it would be dishonorable ever to receive her again after such a repulse, so that he forthwith prepared to fortify himself with arguments for such a resolution, and accordingly wrote two treatises, by which he undertook to maintain that it was against reason (and the enjoyment of it not provable by scripture) for any married couple, disagreeable in humor and temper, or having an aversion to each other, to be forced to live yoked together all their days. The first was, his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, of which there was printed a second edition, with some additions. The other, in prosecution of the first, was styled Tetrachordon. Then the better to confirm his own opinion by the attestation of others, he set out a piece called the Judgment of Martin Bucer, a Protestant Minister, being a translation out of that reverend divine of some part of his works exactly agreeing with him in sentiment. Lastly, he wrote, in answer to a pragmatical clerk, who would needs give himself the honor of writing against so great a man, his Colasterion, or Rod of Correction for a Saucy Impertinent. Not very long after the setting forth of these treatises, having application made to him by several gentlemen of his acquaintance, for the education of their sons, as understanding haply the progress he had infixed by his first undertakings of that nature, he laid out for a larger house, and soon found it out; but in the interim before he removed, there fell out a passage, which, though it altered not the whole course he was going to steer, yet it put a stop, or rather an end, to a grand affair, which was more than probably thought to be then in agitation. It was, indeed, a design of marrying one of Dr. Davis's daughters-a very handsome and witty gentlewomen, but averse, as it is said, to this motion. However, the intelligence hereof, and the then declining state of the king's cause, and consequently of the circumstances of Justice Powell's family, caused them to set all engines at work to restore the late married woman to the station wherein they a lit

tle before had planted her. At last this device was pitched upon :There dwelt in the Lane of St. Martin's le Grand, which was hard by, a relation of our author's, one Blackborough, whom it was known he often visited; and upon this occasion the visits were the more narrowly observed, and possibly there might be a combination between both parties; the friends on both sides concentring in the same action, though on different behalfs. One time above the rest, he making his usual visit, the wife was ready in another room, and on a sudden he was surprised to see one whom he thought to have never seen more, making submission and begging pardon on her knees before him. He might probably at first make some show of aversion and rejection; but partly his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to perseverance in anger and revenge, and partly the strong intercession of friends on both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion and a firm league of peace for the future; and it was at length concluded that she should remain at a friend's house till such time as he was settled in his new house at Barbican, and all things for her reception in order. The place agreed on for her present abode was the Widow Webber's house in St. Clement's Churchyard, whose second daughter had been married to the other brother many years before. The first fruits of her return to her husband was a brave girl, born within a year after, though, whether by ill-constitution or want of care, she grew more and more decrepit. But it was not only by children that she increased the number of the family; for in no very long time after her coming, she had a great resort of her kindred with her in the house, viz., her father and mother, and several of her brothers and sisters, which were in all pretty numerous; who, upon his father's sickening and dying soon after, went away. And now the house looked again like a house of the Muses only, though the accession of scholars was not great. Possibly his proceeding thus far in the education of youth may have been the occasion of some of his adversaries calling him pedagogue and schoolmaster. Whereas it is well known he never set up for a public school to teach all the young fry of a parish, but only was willing to impart his learning and knowledge to relations, and the sons of some gentlemen that were his intimate friends; besides, that neither his converse, nor his writings, nor his manner of teaching, ever savored in the least any thing of pedantry: and, probably, he might have some prospect of putting in practice his academical institution, according to the model laid down in his sheet of Education. The progress of which design was afterwards diverted by a series of alteration in the affairs of state, for I am much mistaken if there

were not, about this time, a design in agitation of making him adjutant-general in Sir William Waller's army; but the new modelling of the army soon following, proved an obstruction to that design, and, Sir William's commission being laid down, as the common saying is, to turn cat in pan. It was not long after the march of Fairfax and Cromwell through the city of London with the whole army, to quell the insurrections, Brown and Massey, now malcontents also, were endeavoring to raise in the city against the army's proceedings, ere he left his great house in Barbican, and betook himself to a smaller in High Holborn, among those that open backward into Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. Here he lived a private and quiet life, still prosecuting his study and curious search into knowledge-the grand affair perpetually of his life-till such time as the war being now at an end, with complete victory to the parliament's side, as the parliament then stood purged of all its dissenting members, and the king, after some treaties with the army, re infecta, brought to his trial; the form of government being now changed into a free state, he was hereupon obliged to write a treatise, called the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. After which, his thoughts were bent upon retiring again to his own private studies, and falling upon such subjects as his proper genius prompted him to write of, among which was the history of our own nation from the beginning till the Norman conquest, wherein he had made some progress. When for this his last treatise, reviving the fame of other things he had formerly published, being more and more taken notice of for his excellency of style and depth of judgment, he was courted into the service of this new commonwealth, and at last prevailed with (for he never hunted after preferment, nor affected the tintamar and hurry of public business) to take upon him the office of Latin secretary to the council of state, for all their letters to foreign princes and states; for they stuck to this noble and generous resolution, not to write to any, or receive answers from them, but in a language most proper to maintain a correspondence among the learned of all nations in this part of the world, scorning to carry on their affairs in the wheedling, lisping jargon of the cringing French, especially having a minister of state able to cope with the ablest any prince or state could employ for the Latin tongue: and so well he acquitted himself in this station, that he gained, from abroad, both reputation to himself and credit to the state that employed him. And it was well the business of his office caine not very fast upon him, for he was scarce well warm in his secretaryship before other work flowed in upon him, which took him up for some considerable time. In the first place, there

came out a book, said to have been written by the king, and finished little before his death, entitled, Eikov Barilen, that is, The Royal Image-a book highly cried up for its smooth style and pathetical composure: wherefore, to obviate the impression it was like to make among the many, he was obliged to write an answer, which he entitled EKоvokλαoтns, or Image-breaker. And, upon the heels of that, out comes, in public, the great Kill-cow of Christendom, with his Defensio Regis contra Populum Anglicanum-a man so famous and cried up for his Plinian Exercitations, and other pieces of reputed learning, that there could nowhere have been found a champion that durst lift up the pen against so formidable an adversary, had not our little English David had the courage to undertake this great French Goliah, to whom he gave such a hit in the forehead, that he presently staggered, and soon after fell; for, immediately upon the coming out of the answer, entitled, Defensic Populi Anglicani, contra claudium Anonymum, &c., he that till then had been chief minister and superintendent in the court of the learned Christina, Queen of Sweden, dwindled in esteem to that degree, that he at last vouchsafed to speak to the meanest servant. In short, he was dismissed with so cold and slighting an adieu, that, after a faint dying reply, he was glad to have recourse to death, the remedy of evils and ender of controversies. And now I presume our author had some breathing space: but it was not long; for, though Salmasius was departed, he left some stings behind-new enemies started up, barkers, though no great biters. Who the first assertor of Salmasius's cause was, is not certainly known, but variously conjectured at, some supposing it to be one Janus, a lawyer of Gray's-Inn, some Dr. Bramhal, made by King Charles the Second, after his restoration, Archbishop of Armagh, in Ireland. But, whoever the author was, the book was thought fit to be taken into correction, and our author, not thinking it worth his own undertaking, to the disturbing the progress of whatever more chosen work he had then in hands, committed this task to the youngest of his nephews, but with such exact emendations before it went to the press, that it might very well have passed for his, but that he was willing the person that took the pains to prepare it for his examination and polishment, should have the name and credit of being the author; so that it came forth under this title, Joannis Philippi Angli Defensio pro Populo Anglicano contra, &c. During the writing and publishing of this book, he lodged at one Thompson's, next door to the BullHead tavern at Charing Cross, opening into the Spring Garden, which seems to have been only a lodging taken till his designed

apartment in Scotland Yard was prepared for him, for hither he soon removed from the foresaid place; and here his third child, a son, was born, which, through the ill-usage, or bad constitution of an ill-chosen nurse, died an infant. From this apartment, whether he thought not healthy, or otherwise convenient for his use, or whatever else was the reason, he soon after took a pretty gardenhouse in Petty France, in Westminster, next door to the Lord Scudamore's, and opening into St. James's Park. Here he remained no less than eight years, namely, from the year 1652, till within a few weeks of King Charles the Second's restoration. In this house, his first wife dying in childbed, he married a second, who, after a year's time, died in childbed also. This second marriage was about two or three years after his being wholly deprived of sight, which was just going about the time of his answering Salmasius; whereupon his adversaries gladly take occasion of imputing his blindness as a judgment upon him for his answering the king's book, &c., whereas it is most certainly known that his sight, what with his continual study, his being subject to a headache, and his perpetual tampering with physic to preserve it, had been decaying for above a dozen years before, and the sight of one, for a long time, clearly lost. Here he wrote, by his amanuensis, his two answers to Alexander More, who, upon the last answer, quitted the field. So that, being now quiet from state-adversaries and public contests, he had leisure again for his own studies and private designs-which were his foresaid History of England, and a new Thesaurus Linguæ Latinæ, according to the manner of Stephanus, a work he had been long since collecting from his own reading, and still went on with it at times, even very near to his dying day; but the papers, after his death, were so discomposed and deficient, that it could not be made fit for the press: however, what there was of it, was made use of for another dictionary. But the heigh of his noble fancy and invention began now to be seriously and mainly employed in a subject worthy of such a muse, viz.: An heroic poem, entitled, Paradise Lost; the noblest, in the general esteem of learned and judicious persons, of any yet written ly any either ancient or modern. This subject was first designed a tragedy, and in the fourth book of the poem there are six verses, which, several years before the poem was begun, were shown to me, and some others, as designed for the very beginning of the said tragedy. The verses are these:

O thou that with surpassing glory crown'd!
Look'st from thy sole dominion, like the God
Of this new world; at whose sight all the stars

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