conjugal society, was as solid a claim to a divorce as any other. His wife however saw her folly, and retrieved her error before it was too late. In an unexpected interview, contrived by some benevolent and judicious friends, she threw herself at his feet, and implored his forgiveness. Milton was not proof against a woman's tears, particularly those of one whom he so lately loved with an ardent affection:

-Soon his heart relented

T'wards her, his wife so late, and sole delight,
Now at his feet, submissive in distress.

PARADISE LOST.

The civil war now raging with the greatest fury, Milton was induced, by party zeal, to suspend the pursuits of elegant literature, and to enter into political discussion. But though his talents gave him a temporary reputation in this career, and indeed spread his fame all over Europe, his labours of this kind are now less celebrated; while his celebrity as a poet has been con tinually increasing, and will increase till time shall be no more. The political work which gained him the most extensive reputation, was his Defensio pro Populo Angli cano, or "Defence of the People of England;" in answer to Salmasius, who had composed a tract entitled Defensio Regis, or "Defence of the King." The asperity with which Milton wrote, is said to have broken the heart of his rival; but though our poet was rewarded with a thousand pounds for this piece of service, and made Latin secretary to Cromwell, he had little reason to triumph in his success. By too intense application, a disorder which had long affected his sight now terminated in total blindness. About this period, too, he lost his wife, who left him three daughters; and soon marrying another, in little more than a year he became a second time a widower.

After Cromwell had established his usurpation on

the ruins of the monarchy, Milton, who seems to have been as much inimical to ancient institutions of every sort as averse to arbitrary power, awed perhaps into silence by fear, or biassed by gratitude, acquiesced in the change that took place, and resumed his studies; but produced nothing more that deserves to be remembered, till after the Restoration.

At that era, he knew that the active part which he had taken would expose him to the most imminent danger; and prudently absconded till matters took another turn, and the fate of the most violent partisans of rebellion and usurpation had been decided. The abilities and the virtues of Milton, raised him friends on this emergency. By the interest of sir William Davenant, whose life he had formerly saved, he received the benefit of the act of amnesty; only his political writings were ordered to be burnt by the hands of the common hangman. It is gratifying to such as venerate the name of Milton to reflect, that in his highest exaltation he was moderate in his actions towards those who differed from him in politics, and that his memory is stained by nothing cruel or arbitrary. In him it was exemplified,

-ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes

Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.

that an intimate acquaintance with the liberal arts softens the manners, nor suffers them to be ferocious." He met with a recompense in the attachment of friends at a crisis of peculiar danger, and his example proves the wisdom of lenity and forbearance amidst the distractions of political fury.

Milton was now in the fifty-second year of his age, deprived of sight, borne down by infirmities, and depressed by the vicissitudes of his fortune; yet the vigour of his mind enabled him to rise, with elastic force, over this accumulation of ills. He appeared again in public; entered the third time into the marriage state, with a

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miss Minshul, a native of Cheshire; and, it is said, refused the place of Latin secretary to the king, notwithstanding the most pressing importunities of his new wife. When she urged him to comply with the times, and accept the royal offer, his answer is said to have been as follows: "You are in the right, my dear; like other women, you are ambitious to ride in your coach: while my whole aim is to live and die an honest man."

Soon after this third marriage, Milton removed to a house in Artillery-walk, leading to Bunhill-fields, where he resided till his death, except during the plague in 1665. On that awful calamity, he retired with his family to Chalfont St. Giles, in Buckinghamshire; where he put the last hand to his Paradise Lost, a work that had occupied his thoughts for a long series of years. It is said that Milton sometimes was incapable of producing a single line, and at other seasons his "unpremeditated verse" flowed with a felicity resembling inspiration. On those occasions, he immediately called his daughter, who acted as his amanuensis; and would dictate a considerable number of lines in a breath, which he afterwards polished and reduced. About the vernal and autumnal equinox, his poetical talent was said to be the most happy. Indeed few literary persons are insensible, that extremes of heat or cold are equally unfavourable to the exertions of the mind; few are unacquainted with periodical obscurations and brilliancies of genius.

was

After this immortal poem was ready for the press, it nearly suppressed by the ignorance or malice of the licenser, who found or fancied treason in the following noble simile:

As when the sun new-risen

Looks through the horizontal misty air

Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,

In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds

On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs.

Having overcome this obstacle, Milton sold the copy

right for five pounds ready money, five pounds more when one thousand three hundred of the books should be disposed of, and the same sum on the publication of a second and a third edition. From this agreement Milton received no more than fifteen pounds; and his widow afterwards transferred every claim, for the poor additional sum of eight pounds.

Such was the first destiny of a work that constitutes the glory and the boast of English poetry, and may be reckoned among the noblest efforts of human genius in any age or country. But Milton wrote for immortality, and he has not lost his reward. Like the sun bursting from the horizon of vapours, his Paradise Lost gradually rose to the zenith; and having long become stationary, has no decline to dread, unless worse than Gothic darkness should overspread the regions of taste.

About three years after the appearance of Paradise Lost, Milton produced his Samson Agonistes, a tragedy written on the purest Greek model: and Paradise Regained, which he is said to have preferred before his great work of Paradise Lost; but if this was his real opinion, it only shews how incompetent an author is to decide on the merits of his own productions. The Paradise Regained is said to have originated from a hint suggested by one Elwood, a quaker; who, on Milton's reading to him in manuscript his Paradise Lost, exclaimed: "You have now only to write Paradise Found:" but though it is a poem of considerable merit, and would have raised the reputation of any other man to an exalted degree, it was so wholly eclipsed by its sublime predecessor, that its merits are in a great measure obscured by the comparison. In fact, it resembles the lustre of the morning-star absorbed in the meridian blaze; it is the Odyssey of Milton, and falls far short of what may be called his Iliad.

A life of indefatigable study, and which had been exposed to various vicissitudes, hastened that hour which

neither the great nor the learned can escape.

Milton had

also been long afflicted with the gout and other infirmities, and was completely worn out. He died without a struggle, on the 10th of November, 1674, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. His remains were interred in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate; and his funeral was numerously and splendidly attended. A monument was, many years afterwards, erected to his memory in Wesminsterabbey; but a monument was needless to him whose fame fills the whole enlightened world.

Though imprudence is the general vice of poets, at least of those who vainly fancy that it is a proof of superior genius to spurn at little things, Milton through his prudent economy left behind him fifteen hundred pounds. We have therefore the consolation to reflect, that this illustrious bard was never in indigence, though he might be remote from affluence. His family, however, gradually sunk into the humbler spheres of life; and his line is generally supposed to be now extinct.

Milton was of the middling stature, formed with the most perfect symmetry; of a ruddy complexion, and light brown hair. In his youth he was eminently beautiful; and so delicate, that at Cambridge he went by the appellation of the lady of Christ's college." The marquis of Villa gives a high idea of Milton's beauty of person, in a neat Latin epigram; which has been thus translated:

So perfect thou in mind, in form, and face,
Thou'rt not of English, but angelic race.

Both his constitution and his taste led him to abstemiousness: the one was too weak to bear excesses, and the other too refined to indulge in them. In early youth he studied late at night, but afterwards completely altered his plan in this respect. In his occasional relaxations from literary pursuits, he amused himself with conversation and music, in which latter he was a proficient. After his blindness he taught his daughters to read the Hebrew,