gained." I am not surprised to find that he was displeased when any one spoke of it "as much inferior to Paradise Lost."

This poem, if inferior to "Paradise Lost" as to sublimity and originality of conception, is certainly more than equal to it for simplicity and spirituality of statement. It is, in fact, a close exposition of the inspired account of our Lord's temptation in the wilderness, into which he had been led immediately after his baptism by John the Baptist, "in the river Jordan," to be tried by the devil, as recorded by Matthew, in the fourth chapter of his gospel. It strikes me, that the graphic descriptions which he has given of “the false glories of the world;" and of the geography of "all the kingdoms of the earth," as shown to the Messiah "from the pinnacle of the temple,' displays most extensive and correct worldly knowledge, and religious sentiment. It is also much better suited to convey information as to real life, than the fanciful descriptions which he has drawn, in his "Paradise Lost," from the heathen mythology, or the highly-wrought poetical sketches of Hell-of the birth of Sin and Deaththe Garden of Eden-and the war among the Angels in Heaven. The supposed replies given by our Saviour to the flatteries of Satan, are conceived in the highest degree of nature; and the easy conquest obtained by Him, who "though in all

of my compatriots, you should have believed me likewise, as you write me word, in consequence too of some rumour or other, to have fallen a victim, excites in me no surprise: and if that rumour owed its currency among you, as it seems to have done, to an anxiety for my welfare, I feel flattered by it, as an instance of your friendly regard. Through the providence of God, however, who had provided me with a safe retreat in the country, I still live, and am well; and would that I could add, not incompetent to any duty which it may be my future destiny to discharge.

“But that, after so long an interval, I should have recurred to your recollection, is highly gratifying to me; though, to judge of your eloquent embellishments of the matter, when you profess your admiration of so many different virtues united in my single person, you seem to furnish some ground for suspecting I have indeed escaped from your remembrance. From such a number of unions, in fact, I should have cause to dread a progeny too numerous, were it not admitted, that in disgrace and adversity the virtues principally increase and flourish. One of them, however, has not made me any very grateful return for her, entertainment, for she whom you call the political, (though I had rather you had termed her love of country,) after seducing me with her fine name, has nearly, if I may so express myself,

deprived me of a country. The rest, indeed, harmonize more perfectly together. Our country is wherever we can live as we ought.

"Before I conclude, I must prevail on you to impute whatever incorrectness of orthography or of punctuation in this epistle to my young amanuensis, whose total ignorance of Latin has imposed on me the disagreeable necessity of actually dictating to him every individual letter.

"That your deserts, as a man, consistently with the high promise with which you raised my expectations in your youth, should have elevated you to so eminent a station in your sovereign's favour, gives me the most sincere pleasure; and I fervently pray and trust that you may proceed and prosper. Farewell.

"London, August, 1666."

It appears that he had, several years before this, commenced writing his History of Britain: this he had found leisure to complete, at least so far as the Norman Conquest. It was published in 1670, but not as it came out of the hands of its honest author: "For," says Toland, "the licensers, those sworn officers to destroy learning, liberty, and good sense, expunged several passages of it, wherein he had exposed the superstition, pride, and cunning, of the Popish monks in the Saxon times, but which were applied, by the

X

sagacious licensers, to the bishops of Charles II." Well, I do not wonder they should have thought it to have been a parody! And what could have so galled the bishops, who had been at the bottom of the Act of Uniformity, and all the other persecuting statutes of that infamous and dissolute reign, as a picture of Saxon episcopal superstition, craft, and cunning? Toland says, "the rejection of those passages put me in mind of a reply to a certain person by SIR ROBERT HOWARD, a gentleman of great generosity, a patron of letters, a hearty friend to the liberty of his country, and a great admirer of MILTON, and his steady friend to his dying day. MILTON having been charged in some publication with having whipped the Protestant clergy on the back of the heathen and popish priests, SIR ROBERT asked: 'What they had to do there?"" It is not said how he obtained the publication of this History at such a time as was the year 1670; but we are told that he bestowed a copy of the manuscript, while unlicensed, on the Earl of Anglesey, who in common with several of the nobility and gentry, was his constant visitor. "It is," adds Toland, "an irreparable loss to this most potent nation, that MILTON did not find leisure to bring down his history to his own times." There were other powerful causes for this "irreparable loss" than the want of leisure. If the reverend licen

sers of the press would not suffer the History of the Saxons before the Conquest to be written fully out, what would they have said to a history written by the unbought and unpurchasable MILTON of the times after the Restoration? The fairly written history of the intrigues of the bishops at the Savoy conference, and to procure the expulsion of two thousand Presbyterian confessors, would have been such an exposure of "superstition, pride, and cunning," as would have driven Dr. Seth Ward, and some others of the episcopal bench, stark raving mad!

MILTON, finding he could not have fair play shown him as a writer of history, employed himself in composing elementary school books—as a Latin Grammar, also a work entitled, "Artis Logica plenior Institutio ad Petrie Rami methodum concinnata." He was permitted to publish too, "A brief History of Muscovy, and other less known Countries lying eastward of it as far as Cathay, collected from the relation of several Travellers." He translated from the Latin the Declaration of the Poles concerning the Election of their King, John III. containing an account of the virtues and merits of that prince. He published also SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S "Prince, or Maxims and Aphorisms of State;" and his "Cabinet Council." His biographer, Toland, evidently pained at heart that the bigotry of the