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.

g

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.

Londini sum natus, genere honesto, patre viro integerrimo, matre probatissimâ 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, 6c 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;

and of the other, Anne, we know nothing more than that she survived till the year 1694.

JOHN MILTON, the illustrious subject of our immediate notice, was born, at his father's house in Bread Street, on the 9th and was baptized on the 20th of December, 1608. His promise of future excellence was made, as we are assured, at a very early period; and the advantages which he derived from the attentions of a father, so qualified as his to discover and to appreciate genius, must necessarily have been great. Every incitement to exertion and every mode of instruction, adapted to the disposition and the powers of 'the child, were unquestionably employed; and no means, as we may be certain, were omitted to expand the intellectual Hercules of the nursery into the full dimensions of that mental amplitude for which he was intended. We know that a portrait of him, when he was only ten years of age, was painted by the celebrated Cornelius Janssen; and, if we had not been positively told, on the authority of Aubrey," that he was then a poet, we should

h Aubrey, who is usually distinguished by the title of the Antiquarian, is the author of "Monumenta Britannica," and of a MS. Life of Milton, preserved in the Mus. Ash. Oxon. He was personally acquainted with our poet, and from him Wood professes to derive the materials of his account of Milton. It is but fair to state, that I owe my acquaintance with Aubrey prin

have inferred that the son, who was made the object of so flattering a distinction by a father, in competent indeed but by no means. in affluent circumstances, could not have been a common child.

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My father destined me," (our author says,) when I was yet a little boy, to the study of elegant literature, and, so eagerly did I seize on it that, from my twelfth year, I seldom quitted my studies for my bed till the middle of the night. This proved the first cause of the ruin of my eyes; in addition to the natural weakness of which organs, I was afflicted with frequent pains in my head. When these maladies could not restrain my rage for learning, my father provided that I should be daily instructed in some school abroad, or cipally to Mr. Warton; who speaks of the "Monumenta Britannica," as a very solid and rational work, and vindicates its author from the charge of fantastical, except on the subjects of chemistry and ghosts. Aubrey however, on the whole, is a weak and old-womanish writer; whose authority, on the present subject at least, is to be received with caution, and only where no other can be obtained,

"i Pater me puerulum humaniorum literarum studiis destinavit; quas ita avidè arripui, ut ab anno ætatis duodecimo vix unquam ante mediam noctem à lucubrationibus cubitum discede rem; quæ prima oculorum pernicies fuit: quorum ad naturalem debilitatem accesserant et crebri capitis dolores; quæ omnia cum discendi impetum non retardarent, et in ludo literario, et sub aliis domi magistris erudiendum quotidie curavit." Defen. Secun. P.W. v. 230.

by domestic tutors at home." How great are the obligations of Britain and of the world to such a father, engaged in the assiduous and well-directed cultivation of the mind of such a son!

But the reward of the father was ample; and no one, but a parent of taste and sensibility under circumstances of some resemblance, can form any estimate of the gratification which he must have felt from his child's increasing progress, and from the prospects which it gradually opened. How exquisite must have been his sensations on receiving, in that admirable Latin poem which is addressed to him, the fullest evidence of the learning, genius, taste, piety and grati tude which had unfolded beneath his eye! How pleased must he have been to accept immortality from the hand which he had himself fostered-to be assured of visiting posterity as the benefactor of his illustrious offspring, and of being associated, as it were, with him in the procession and expanding pomp of his triumph! We may imagine with what pleasure a father would read the following elegant compliment to his own peculiar talent from the pen of his accomplished and poetic son: