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1844, April 5.

CAMBRIDGE: FOLSOM, WELLS, AND THURSTON,

PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.

SONNET TO

CHARLES LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER,

ON HIS PUBLICATION OF

MILTON DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA.

As one whose footsteps by some ancient stream,
Tiber, or old Ilissus, chance upturn,

Of time forgotten, sculptur'd trunk or urn,
Work of the Phidian chisel, as may seem
Inimitable; straight as from a dream

Waketh, nor hasteneth onward, till he learn,
Wondering, each grace, each beauty :-so did burn
My heart, when first by thee disclos'd, the gleam
It caught of Milton's page, by envious crime
Forgotten or deform'd. Oh! well hast thou
And fitliest, paid the debt, though late, that prime
And holy song1 requiting, by old time

Remember'd, which twin-lustre sheds e'en now
On thee and elder WINTON's mitred brow.

Benhall, Nov. 1831.

J. M.

1 See Miltoni Eleg. in Obitum Pres. Wintoniensis.

ADVERTISEMENT.

ON being requested to compose a brief Memoir of the Life of Milton, adapted to the edition to which it was to be attached, I naturally searched for information among the former biographers of the Poet.

Though the present Life is too contracted in its plan, and, perhaps, too slender in its materials, to pretend to rank among the laboured and established biographies of Milton, yet I must observe that in the arrangement of the subject, in the opinions delivered, or the inferences drawn, it is dependent on none that has preceded it. I have consulted all the former writers for information, without copying them; and I have attended respectfully to their reasoning, without servilely adhering to it. After being indebted to them for the necessary facts, and for occasional expressions, the remainder of the narrative has been the result of my own inquiries, and formed from the conclusions of my own judgment. To the poetry of Milton from my earliest youth down to the commencing autumn of my life, I have ever looked with a reverence and love not easily to be surpassed; for the sentiments adopted and avowed by him on the great and complicated questions of civil liberty and political rights, I have, as becomes my situation, and is suitable to the habits of my mind, expressed myself with that temperance of opinion and

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