"To defcant on the misfortunes of a perfon fallen from fo high a dignity, who hath alfo paid his final debt, both to nature and his faults, is neither of itself a thing commendable, nor the intention of this difcourfe. " Those who fairly confider the exafperated ftate of the contending parties, when Milton wrote, and compare his political compofitions with the favage ribaldry of his opponents, however mistaken they may think him in his ideas of government, will yet find more reason to admire his temper than to condemn his afperity.. If in a quiet ftudy, at a very advanced period of life, and at the diftance of more than cen tury from the days of the republic; if a philofopher fo fituated could be hurried by political heat to speak of Milton with fuch harsh intemperance of language, though writing under the friendly title of his biographer, with what indulgence ought we to view that afperity in Milton himself, which arofe from the immediate preffure of public oppreffion and of private outrage; for his fpirit had been enflamed, not only by the fight of many national vexations, but by feeing his own moral character attacked with the most indecent and execrable calumny that can incite the indignation of infulted virtue. If the fascinating powers of his facred poem, and the luftre of his integrity, have failed to foften the virulence of an aged moralift against him in our days, what muft he not have had to apprehend from the raging paffions of his own time, when his poetical genius had not appeared in its meridian splendor, and when most of his writings were confidered as recent crimes against thofe, who were entering on their career of triumph and revenge? Johnson, indeed, afferts in his barbarous cenfure of Milton's exquifite picture of his own fituation, that the poet, in speaking of his danger, was ungrateful and unjuft; that the charge itself seems to be falfe, for it would be hard to recollect any reproach caft upon him, either ferious or ludicrous, through the whole remaining part of his life; yet Lauder, once the affociate of Johnson in writing against Milton, exprefsly affirms, that it was warmly debated for three days, whether he should fuffer death with the regidices or not, as many contended that his guilt was fuperior to theirs. Lauder, indeed, mentions no authority for his affertion; and the word of a man fo fupremely infamous would deferve no. notice, were not the circumstance rendered probable by the rancor and atrocity of party fpirit. To what deteftable exceffes this fpirit could proceed we have not only an example in Lauder himself (of whofe malignity to the poet I fhall have subsequent occafion to speak) but in that collection of virulent invectives againft Milton, compofed chiefly by his contemporaries, which Lauder added as an appendix to his own most malignant pamphlet. The moft fingular and indecent of these invectives, whofe fcurrility is too الله grofs to be transcribed, has been imputed to that very copious writer, Sir Roger L'Eftrange; and if a pen employed fo favagely against Milton could obtain public encouragement and applause, he might surely, without affectation or timidity, think himself expofed to the dagger of fome equally hoftile and more fanguinary royalift. L'Estrange, for fuch fufferings in the cause of royalty as really entitled him to reward, obtained, not long after the restoration, the revived but unconftitutional office of licenfer to the prefs. It was happy for literature that he poffeffed not that oppreffive jurifdiction when the author of the Paradise Loft was obliged to folicit an imprimatur, fince the excefs of his malevolence to Milton might have then exerted itself in fuch a manner as to entitle both the office and its poffeffor to the execration of the world. The licenfer of that period, Thomas Tomkyns, chaplain to archbishop Sheldon, though hardly fo full of rancor as L'Eftrange (if L'Eftrange was the real author of the ribaldry afcribed to him) was abfurd or malignant enough to obftruct, in fome meafure, the publication of Paradife Loft. "He 2 among other frivolous exceptions (fays Toland) would needs fupprefs the whole poem, for imaginary treafon in the following lines: -as when the fun new rifen Looks thro' the horizontal mifty air Shorn of his beams, or from behind the moon On half the nations, and with fear of change By what means the poet was happily enabled to triumph over the malevolence of an enemy in office we are not informed by the author, who has recorded this very interefting anecdote; but from the peril to which his immortal work was expofed, and which the mention of a licen fer to the press has led me to anticipate, let us return to his personal danger: the extent of this danger, and the particulars of his escape, have never been completely discovered. The account that his nephew gives of him at this momentous period is chiefly contained in the following fentence: "It was a friend's houfe in Bartholomew Close where he lived till the act of oblivion came forth, which, it pleafed God, proved as favorable to him as could be hoped or expected, through the interceffion of fome that ftood his friends both in council and parliament; particularly in the House of Commons, Mr. Andrew Marvel, a member for Hull, acted vigorously in his behalf, and made a confiderable party for him." Marvel, like the fuperior author whom he fo nobly protected, was himself a poet and a patriot. He had been affociated with Milton in the office of Latin fecretary in 1657, and cultivated his friendship by a tender and respectful attachment. As he probably owed to that friendship the improvement of his own talents and virtues, it is ,,, highly pleafing to find, that he exerted them on different occafions in eftablishing the fecurity, and in celebrating the genius of his incomparable friend. His efforts of regard on the prefent emergency are liberally defcribed in the preceding expreffion of Philips; and his friendly verses on the publication of the Paradife Loft deserve no common applaufe; for the records of literature hardly exhibit a more juft, a more fpirited, or a more generous compliment paid by one poet to another. But the friendship of Marvel, vigilant, active, and beneficial as it was, could not fecure Milton from being seized and hurried into confinement. It appears from the minutes of the House of Commons, that he was prisoner to their ferjeant on the 15th of December. The particulars of his imprisonment are involved in darkness; but Dr. Birch (whofe copious life of Milton is equally full of intelligence and candor) conjectures, with great probability, that on his appearing in public after the act of indemnity, and adjournment of Parliament, on the 13th of September, he was feized in confequence of the order formerly given by the Commons for his profecution. The exact time of his continuing in cuftody no researches have ascertained. The records of Parliament only prove, that on the 15th of December the House ordered his release; but the fame upright and undaunted spirit, which had made Milton in his younger days a refolute |