Milton had children only by his first wife; Anne, Mary, and Deborah. Anne, though deformed, married a master-builder, and died of her first child. Mary died fingle. Deborah married Abraham Clark, a weaver in Spital-fields, and lived feventy-fix years, to August 1727. This is the daughter of whom publick mention has been made. She could repeat the firft lines of Homer, the Metamorphofes, and fome of Euripides, by having often read them. Yet here incredulity is ready to make a stand. Many repetitions are neceffary to fix in the memory lines not understood; and why fhould Milton with or want to hear them fo often! These lines were at the beginning of the poems. Of a book written in a language not understood, the beginning raises no more attention than the end; and as those that understand it know commonly the beginning beft, its rehearsal will feldom be neceffary. It is not likely that Milton required any paffage to be fo much repeated as that his daughter could learn it; nor likely that he defired the initial lines to be read at all: nor that the daughter, weary of the drudgery of pronouncing unideal founds, would voluntarily commit them to memory.

To this gentlewoman Addison made a present, and promised fome establishment; but died foon after. Queen Caroline fent her fifty guineas. She had seven 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 East 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, firft at Holloway, VOL. II. L

and

and afterwards in Cock-lane near Shoreditch Church. She knew little of her grandfather, and that little was not good. She told of his harshness to his daughters, and his refufal to have them taught to write; and, in oppofition to other accounts, reprefented him as delicate, though temperate, in his diet.

In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had fo little acquaintance with diverfion or gaiety, that the 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 Tonfon, a man who is to be praised as often as he is named. Of this fum one hundred pounds was placed in the stocks, after fome debate between her and her husband in whofe name it fhould be entered; and the reft augmented their little ftock, 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 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 preferve, 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 lefs 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;

critick; but I have heard them commended by a mañ well qualified to decide their merit. The Latin pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delightwhich they afford is rather by the exquifite 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 exercifes on Gunpowder Treafon might have been fpared.

The English poems, though they make no promifes 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 verfes of others, they differ for the worfe; for they are too often diftinguished by repulfive harfhnefs; the combinations of words are new, but they are not pleafing; the rhymes and epithets feem to be laborioufly 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 finaller works are found as they were firft written, with the fubfequent corrections. Such reliques fhew how excellence is acquired; what we hope ever to do with ease, we may learn first to do with diligence.

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 that admirable which is only fingular. All that short compofitions can commonly attain is neatness and elegance. Milton never learned the art of doing little things with grace; he overlooked the milder excellence

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cellence of fuavity and softness; he was a Lion that had no skill in dandling the Kid.

One of the poems on which much praife has been bestowed is Lycidas; of which the diction is harsh, 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 allusions 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 paftoral, eafy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting; whatever images it can fupply, are long ago exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces diffatisfaction on the mind. When Cowley tells of Hervey that they ftudied together, it is eafy to fuppofe how much he muft mifs the companion of his labours, and the partner of his difcoveries; but what image of tenderness can be excited by thefe lines!

We drove a field, and both together heard.

What time the grey fly winds her fultry horn,
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night.

We know that they never drove a field, and that they
had no flocks no batten; and though it be allowed
that the reprefentation may be allegorical, the true
meaning is fo uncertain and remote, that it is never
fought because it cannot be known when it is found,
Among the flocks, and copfes, and flowers, appear
the heathen deities; Jovę and Phoebus, Neptune and
Eolus

olus, with a long train of mythological imagery, fuch as a College easily supplies. Nothing can lefs display knowledge, or lefs exercife invention, than to tell how a fhepherd has loft his companion, and must now feed his flocks alone, without any judge of his skill in piping; and how one god afks another god what is become of Lycidas, and how neither god can tell. He who thus grieves will excite no fympathy; he who thus praifes will confer no honour.

This poem has yet a groffer fault. With these trifling fictions are mingled the most awful and facred truths, fuch as ought never to be polluted with such irreverend combinations. The fhepherd likewife is now a feeder of fheep, and afterwards an ecclefiaftical paftor, a fuperintendant of a Chriftian flock. Such equivocations are always unskilful; but here they are indecent, and at least approach to impiety, of which, however, I believe the writer not to have been confcious.

Such is the power of reputation justly acquired, that its blaze drives away the eye from nice examination. Surely no man could have fancied that he read Lycidas with pleasure, had he not known its author.

Of the two pieces, L'Allegro and Il Penferofo, I believe, opinion is uniform; every man that reads them, reads them with pleasure. The author's defign is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to fhew how objects derive their colours from the mind, by reprefenting the operation of the fame things upon the gay and the melancholy temper, or upon the fame man as he is differently difpofed; but rather how, among the fucceffive variety of appearances, every difpofition of mind takes hold on those by which it may be gratified.