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namely, that he used to compose his poetry chiefly in winter, and on his waking in a morning dictated to her sometimes twenty or thirty verses; that Spenser, Shakspeare, and Cowley, were his favourite English poets; and that he pronounced Dryden to be a rhymist rather than a poet. Dryden's best poems, however, had not then appeared. To Dryden, who often visited him, it must be added, Milton acknowledged that Spenser was his original. Nor must Phillips's relation here be overpassed: "There is a remarkable passage in the composure of Paradise Lost, which I have a particular occasion to remember; for, whereas I had the perusal of it from the very beginning, for some years as I went from time to time to visit him, in a parcel of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time, which, being written by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction as to the orthography and pointing; having, as the summer came on, not been shewn any for a considerable while, and desiring to know the reason thereof, was answered, that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal, and that whatever he attempted was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much; so that in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have spent but half his time therein." Dr. Johnson ridicules the notion that a writer should suppose himself influenced by times or seasons; but while he has thus

Life of Milton, p. xxxvi.

hastily decided on the intellectual impulses of Milton, he has also contradicted himself.

Lastly, it may be remarked that Milton's favourite doctrine of the superiority of man to woman, which indeed he strenuously asserts in his theological treatise as well as in his poetry, and in other parts of his works, contributed perhaps to the circumstance of his first wife's temporary abandonment of him, and to the desire of his daughters, in his later days, to quit the attention which they had been used to pay him. But his last wife" appears to have treated him with all the kindness which his blindness and infirmities required. Yet his favourite doctrine had not been acted upon without publick notice: for thus an antagonist addresses him. The wife is subject to her husband, one to one; yet no vassal, unless Mr. Milton's doctrine of divorce may be admitted, that he may turn her off as soon, or as oft, as his wayward spirit can find no delight in her. The children are subject to their parents, yet no slaves."

66 n

To the concluding note of Mr. Warton in the SEVENTH SECTION, in which Caleb Clarke the grand

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"He [Johnson] here admits an opinion of the human mind being influenced by seasons, which he ridicules in his writings." Boswell's Life of Johnson, 3d. edit. vol. ii. p. 264.

m See what is before said of this wife, and of his daughters.

n

The Duty of Kingship, in answer to Mr. Milton, &c. By G. S. 1660, p. 71.

B b

son of Milton (who migrated to the East Indies) is mentioned, I am enabled to add from the kind communication of Sir James Mackintosh, that he was Parish-Clerk of Madras. His children were the last descendants of the poet; but of them nothing further is known.

In the EIGHTH SECTION I have so fully considered the Theological Treatise of Milton, as to render unnecessary any other observation than that the spirit, in which it has been framed, presents him to our view, and to our respect, becoming gradually more tolerant of the supposed errors of others, as the period drew near when he must answer for his own before an unerring tribunal."

66 0

• Dr. Sumner's Introduct. p. xxvi.

D

APPENDIX

CONTAINING

AN INQUIRY

INTO THE

ORIGIN OF PARADISE LOST.

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