of Milton might well be excused from honouring it with his notice. But a regard to the cause of morals and the best interests of man seems to justify that indignation which would brand, again and again, the hand lifted in violation of the illustrious dead. The dead, indeed, are at rest from their labours; and, far from the reach of human malice, are in possession of their reward: but it is discouraging to the weakness of the living, and consequently calculated to diminish the incentives to virtuous exertion, when it is perceived that no endowments of nature, no accumulations of knowledge, no just and sacred appro priation of talents can secure the distinguished mortal from those insults of posthumous calumny, which may bring him down from the eminence that he has gained, and level him with the vulgar of the earth.

Though few, if any immediate references will be made in the following work to the modern biographers of Milton, to many of them the author must necessarily have contracted important obligations; of some of which he is conscious, though of others he may be ignorant. He takes therefore this opportunity of making a general acknowledgement to those who have preceded him on his subject, and particularly to the ac

curate Dr. Birch and the liberal Mr. Hayley. More solicitous to avoid the charge of deficiency than that of obligation, he has freely availed himself of assistance from whatever quarter it could be obtained; and if his circumstantial or imperfect detail should neither fatigue attention nor disappoint curiosity, his end will be accomplished and his wishes, of course, completely satisfied. His anxiety has been solely to display truth; and, not professing himself to be exempt from those prejudices which cling to every human being, he has been studious to prevent them from disturbing the rectitude of his line or from throwing their false tints upon his

canyass.

The lineage and ancestry of a great man are apt to engage inquiry; as we are desirous of knowing whether the virtue or the intellect, which we are contemplating, be a spring gushing immediately from the bosom of the earth, or a reservoir, (if the allusion may be permitted,) formed and supported by a long

* Toland's Life of Milton is an able and spirited work. Whatever may be the demerits of this author in some essential respects, his merit as the biographer of our great Poet is certainly considerable, and entitles him to an honourable station among the asserters of historic truth. The admirers of Milton are under great obligations to him.

continued stream. Of the family of Milton nothing more is known than that it was respectable and antient; long resident at Milton in Oxfordshire, and possessed of property which it lost in the wars between the rival houses of York and Lancaster. The fortune alone of a female, who had married into it, preserved it at this crisis from indigence. The first individual of the family, of whom any thing is mentioned, is John Milton, the grandfather of our author; and of him we are told nothing more than that he was under-ranger of the forest of Shotover in his native county; that he was a zealous catholic, and that he disinherited his son, whose name was also John, our author's father, for becoming a convert to the protestant faith. To whom the family property was bequeathed from the right heir, we are not informed; but we know that the son, on this disappointment of fortune, left his station at Christ Charch in Oxford, where he was prosecuting his studies, and sought the means of subsistence in London, from the profession of a scrivener; a profession which in those days united the distinct occupations of the lawagent, and the money-broker.

• Near Halton and Thame.

That he was not an ordinary man is evident from many circumstances. Under the constant pressure of a profession, peculiarly unfavourable to the cultivation of liberal knowledge or the elegant arts, his classical acquirements seem to have been considerable; and such was his proficiency in the science of music' that it entitled him to honourable rank among the composers of his age.

We are not informed of the precise time of his marriage; and there has even been a question respecting the maiden name and family of his wife. His grandson, Philips, who seems on this occasion to be the preferable authority, affirms that she was a Caston, of a family originally from Wales. We are assured that she was an exemplary woman, and was particularly distinguished by her numerous charities. From this union sprang John, our author, Christopher and Anne. Of the two latter, Christopher, applying himself to the study of the law, became a bencher of the Inner Temple, and at a very advanced period of his life was knighted and raised, by

'Burney's Hist. of Music, vol. iii. p. 134.

# Loudini sum natus, genere honesto, patre viro integerrimo, atre probatissimå et eleemosynis per viciniam potissimum nota. Def, Sec. P. W. v. 230.

James the Second, first to be a baron of the Exchequer, and subsequently, one of the judges of the Common Pleas. During the civil war he followed the royal standard; and effected his composition with the victors only by the prevailing interest of his brother. Christopher Milton is asserted, by his nephew Philips, to have been a person of a modest and quiet temper, in whose estimation justice and virtue were preferable to worldly pleasure and grandeur: but he seems to have been also, as he is represented in another account, 66 a man of no parts or ability." In his old age he retired from the fatigues of business, and closed in the country a life of study and devotion. His only sister, Anne Milton, was given by her father in marriage, with a considerable fortune, to Mr. Edward Philips, a native of Shrewsbury; who, coming young to London, obtained in a course of years the lucrative place of secondary in the Crown Office in Chancery: of the children, which she had by him, only two survived to maturity, Edward and John; the former of whom became the biographer, after having, with his brother, been the pupil of his uncle, our author. By a second husband, a Mr. Agar, she had two daughters, one of whom, Mary, died young;