His eyes are faid never to have been bright; but, if he was a dexterous fencer, they must have been once quick.

In

His domeftick habits, fo far as they are known, were those of a severe ftudent. He drank little ftrong drink of any kind, and fed without excess in quantity, and in his earlier years without delicacy of choice. his youth he studied late at night; but afterwards changed his hours, and refted in bed from nine to four in the fummer, and five in winter. The course of his day was best known after he was blind. When he first rofe, he heard a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, and then ftudied till twelve; then took fome exercise for an hour; then dined, then played on the organ, and fung, or heard another fing; then ftudied to fix; then entertained his vifiters till eight; then fupped, and, after a pipe of tobacco and a glass of water, went to bed.

So is his life defcribed; but this even tenour appears attainable only in Colleges. He that lives in the world will fometimes have the fucceffion of his practice broken and confused. Vifiters, of whom Milton is reprefented to have had great numbers, will come and ftay unseasonably; business, of which every man has fome, must be done when others will do it.

When he did not care to rife early, he had fomething read to him by his bedfide; perhaps at this time his daughters were employed. He compofed much in the morning, and dictated in the day, fitting obliquely in an elbow-chair, with his leg thrown over the

arm.

Fortune appears not to have had much of his care, In the civil wars he lent his perfonal eftate to the parliament; but when, after the conteft was decided, he

folicited

folicited repayment, he met not only with neglect, but Sharp rebuke; and, having tired both himself and his friends, was given up to poverty and hopeless indignation, till he fhewed how able he was to do greater fervice. He was then made Latin fecretary, with two hundred pounds a year; and had a thousand pounds for his Defence of the People. His widow, who, after his death, retired to Namptwich in Cheshire, and died about 1729, is faid to have reported that he lost two thousand pounds by entrusting it to a fcrivener; and that, in the general depredation upon the Church, he had grasped an estate of about fixty pounds a year belonging to Westminster-Abbey, which, like other sharers of the plunder of rebellion, he was afterwards obliged Two thousand pounds, which he had placed in the Excise-office, were also loft. There is yet no reason to believe that he was ever reduced to indigence. His wants, being few, were competently supplied, He fold his library before his death, and left his family fifteen hundred pounds, on which his widow laid hold, and only gave one hundred to each of his daughters.

to return.

His literature was unquestionably great. He read all the languages which are confidered either as learned or polite; Hebrew, with its two dialects, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish. In Latin his fkill was fuch as places him in the first rank of writers and criticks; and he appears to have cultivated Italian with uncommon diligence. The books in which his daughter, who used to read to him, reprefented him as most delighting, after Homer, which he could almost repeat, were Ovid's Metamorphofes and Euripides. His Euripides is, by Mr. Cradock's kindness, now in

my

my hands: the margin is fometimes noted; but I have found nothing remarkable.

Of the English poets he fet most value upon Spenfer, Shakspeare, and Cowley. Spenfer was apparently his favourite: Shakspeare he may eafily be fuppofed to like, with every skillful reader; but I fhould not have expected that Cowley, whofe ideas of excellence were different from his own, would have had much of his approbation. His character of Dryden, who fometimes vifited him, was, that he was a good rhyinift, but no poet.

His theological opinions are faid to have been first Calviniftical; and afterwards, perhaps when he began to hate the Prefbyterians, to have tended towards Arminianifm. In the mixed queftions of theology and government, he never thinks that he can recede far enough from popery, or prelacy; but what Baudius fays of Eraf mus feems applicable to him, magis habuit quod fugeret, quam quod fequeretur. He had determined rather what to condemn, than what to approve. He has not affociated himself with any denomination of Proteftants: we know rather what he was not, than what he was.

He

was not of the church of Rome; he was not of the

Religion, of

To be of no church is dangerous. which the rewards are diftant, and which is animated only by Faith and Hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpreffed by external ordinances, by ftated calls to worship, and the falutary influence of example. Milton, who appears to have had full conviction of the truth of Chriftianity, and to have regarded the Holy Scriptures with the

* Peck is fo fanciful as to fuggeft that he was a Quaker..

pro

profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by an heretical peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the immediate and occafional agency, of Providence, yet grew old without any vifible wor-, fhip. In the diftribution of his hours, there was no hour of prayer, either folitary, or with his household; omitting publick prayers, he omitted all.

Of this omiffion the reafon has been fought, upon a fuppofition which ought never to be made, that men live with their own approbation, and justify their conduct to themselves. Prayer certainly was not thought fuperfluous by him, who reprefents our first parents as praying acceptably in the ftate of innocence, and efficaciously after their fall. That he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed; his ftudies and meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family was probably a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he intended to correct, but that death, as too often happens, intercepted his reformation.

His political notions were thofe of an acrimonious and furly republican, for which it is not known that he gave any better reafon than that a popular government. was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would fet up an ordinary commonwealth. It is furely very fhallow policy, that fuppofes money to be the chief good; and even this, without confidering that the fupport and expence of a Court is, for the most part, only a particular kind of traffick, by which money is circulated, without any national impoverishment.

A

Milton's republicanifm was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of greatnefs, and a fullen defire of independence; in petulance impatient of controul, and

pride disdainful of fuperiority. He hated monarchs in the ftate, and prelates in the church; for he hated all whom he was required to obey. It is to be fufpected, that his predominant defire was to destroy rather than establish, and that he felt not fo much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority.

It has been obferved, that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it. What we know of Milton's character, in domeftick relations, is, that he was fevere and arbitrary. His family con→ fifted of women; and there appears in his books fomething like a Turkish contempt of females, as fubordinate and inferior beings. That his own daughters might not break the ranks, he fuffered them to be depreffed by a mean and penurious education. He thought woman made only for obedience, and man only for rebellion.

Of his family fome account may be expected. His fifter, first married to Mr. Philips, afterwards married Mr. Agar, a friend of her first husband, who fucceeded him in the Crown-office. She had by her first husband Edward and John, the two nephews whom Milton educated; and by her fecond, two daughters.

His brother, Sir Chriftopher, had two daughters, Mary and Catherine; and a fon Thomas, who fucceeded Agar in the Crown-office, and left a daughter living in 1749 in Grosvenor-street.

* Both these perfons were living at Holloway, about the year 1734, and at that time poffeffed fuch a degree of health and ftrength, as enabled them on Sundays and Prayer-days to walk a mile up a steep hill to Highgate chapel. One of them was Ninety-two, at the time of her death. Their parentage was known to few, and their names were corrupted into Melton. By the Crown-office mentioned in the two laft paragraphs, we are to underftand the Crown-office of the Court of Chancery.