ful magnanimity*, "And I often reflect that, as many days of darkness, according to the wise man,† are allotted to us all, mine, which, by the singular favour of the Deity, are divided between leisure and study, are recreated by the conversation and intercourse of my friends, are far more agreeable than those deadly shades of which Solomon is speaking. But if, as it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God ‡,' why should not each of us likewise acquiesce in the reflexion, that he derives the benefits of sight, not from his eyes alone, but from the guidance and providence of

** "Illudque sæpe cogito, cum destinati cuique dies tenebrarum, quod monet sapiens, multi sint, meas adhuc tenebras, singulari Numinis benignitate, inter otium et studia, vocesque amicorum et salutationes, illis lethalibus multo esse mitiores. Quod si, ut scriptum est, non solo pane vivet homo, sed omni verbo prodeunte per os Dei, quid est, cur quis in hoc itidem non acquiescat, non solis se oculis, sed Dei ductu an providentiâ satis oculatum esse. Sane dummodo ipse mihi prospicit, ipse mihi providet quod facit, meque per omnem vitam quasi manu ducit atque deducit, ne ego meos oculos, quandoquidem ipsi sic visum est, libens feriari jussero. Teque, mi Philara, quocunque res ceciderit, non minus forti et confirmato animo, quam si Lynceus essem, valere jubeo.” Matthew, iv. 4.

† Eccles. xi. 8.

the same Supreme Being. Whilst He looks out, and provides for me, as he does, and leads me about, as it were with his hand, through the paths of life, I willingly surrender my own faculty of vision, in conformity to his good pleasure; and, with a heart as strong and as stedfast as if I were Lynceus himself, I bid you, my Philaras, farewel !"*

That the intellectual powers of Milton were expanded and invigorated by the firm belief which he entertained, that his loss of vision was more than made up to him by gifts of a higher nature, must be the conviction of every one who has studied either his prose or his poetry. He delights to enumerate the great and good whose infliction of blindness appears to have been thus compensated, and he derives from their history a grateful and enduring source of fortitude and consolation. + "Why," says he, "should I

Wrangham's Version in Symmons' Life of Milton. First edition, p. 335.

"Quidni autem feram, quod unumquemque ità parare se oportet, ut si acciderit, non ægrè ferat, quod et humanitus accidere cuivis mortalium, et præstantissimis quibusdam, atque optimis omni memoriâ viris accidisse sciam: sive illos memorem, vetustatis ultimæ priscos vates, ac sapientissimos: quo

not bear a calamity, which every man's mind should be disciplined, on the contingency of its happening, to bear with patience; a calamity, to the contingency of which every man by the condition of his nature, is exposed; and which I know to have been the lot of some of the greatest and the best of my species? Among those, I might reckon many of the wisest of the bards of remote antiquity, whose loss of sight, the Gods are said to have compensated with far more valuable endowments; and whose virtues mankind held in such veneration, as rather to choose to arraign Heaven itself of injustice, than to deem their blindness as proof of their having deserved it."*

We may, indeed, advance a step further, and affirm, that to the blindness of Milton, we are indebted for a large portion of that hallowed and exalted imagination, which has stamped upon his later poetry, a character of such peculiar and transcendent excellence; for it was the

rum calamitatem, et dii, ut fertur, multo potioribus donis com, pensarunt, et homines eo honore affecerunt, ut ipsos inculpare maluerint deos, quàm cæcitatem illis crimini dare."

* Wrangham's Version.

happy lot of Milton to be firmly persuaded, that, as one result of his privation of sight, he was blessed with a more intimate communication with the Deity, and that his exterior darkness was more than compensated by a mental illumination, emanating from the very Source and Fountain of light.

To the influence of this persuasion, therefore, I have no doubt, may be ascribed much of what distinguishes the poetry of Milton from that of any other writer; that more than mortal enthusiasm, as it were; that fervour, approaching to inspiration; that meekness, tenderness, and sublimity of devotion, which seems to conduct us, as by assured and steady steps, to the throne of God himself!

For it should be recollected, that the profession of this belief, of this peculiar favour of Heaven vouchsafed to the blind, is not with Milton the impulse of a merely heated imagination, but is insisted upon in his prose works, with an earnestness and seriousness of assertion which cannot but be attributed to satisfied and absolute conviction. Than the following passage from the Defensio Secunda, nothing can

indeed be more full and declaratory of his opinion on the subject; nor, in point of energy of language, or awful grandeur of sentiment, is it inferior, more especially in its close, to any portion of his works, not even excepting his celebrated address to Light, in the opening of the third book of Paradise Lost.

* "I feel it no source of anguish," he remarks," to be associated with the blind, the afflicted, the infirm, and the mourners; since I may thus hope, that I am more immediately under the favour and protection of my dread Father. The way to the greatest strength, an Apostle has assured us, lies through weakness:

* "Ego cœcis afflictis mœrentibus imbecillis tametsi vos id miserum ducitis aggregari me discrucior; quando quidem spes est, eo me propriùs ad misericordiam summi Patris atque tutelam pertinere. Est quoddam per imbecillitatem præcunte apostolo ad maximas vires iter: sim ego debilissimus ; dummodo in mea debilitate immortalis ille et melior vigor eo se efficacius exerat; dummodo in meis tenebris divini vultus lumen eo clarius eluceat, tum enim infirmissimus ero simul et validissimus cœcus eodem tempore et perspicacissimus; possim ego infirmitate consummari, hac perfici possim in hac obscuritate sic ego irradiari. Et sane haud ultima Dei cura cæci sumus; qui nos quo minus quicquam aliud præter ipsum cernere valemus, eo clementius atque benignius respicere dig

natur.

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