of strong excitement

9** dued; it was his ardent

ty aspiration after a liberty render all men equal by exalting all.

quil meditations, in the loneliest retire

as home, when oppressed with care and →s, and wearied with the vicissitudes of fortune nis passion was still as burning as in his earliest youth; the evil days and times on which he was fallen bowed his spirit, but diminished not its thirst for freedom; and when he saw his fondest hopes disappointed in the destruction of the commonwealth, he appears to have cherished a bitterness of feeling, as well as a heavy wearing sorrow, that must have materially assisted in shortening his days. The death of this illustrious man took place on the 10th of November, 1674, at his residence in Bunhill-row. He was buried in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, in the chancel of the church, and the funeral was attended by a great number of noblemen, as well as by a large concourse of the populace. In 1737 a monument was raised to his memory in Westminster Abbey, and a few years back another small one was placed in the church where he lies interred.

Milton's person is described as of the middle size, and his countenance as remarkable for mildness and beauty of expression. When at Cambridge, he was called the lady of Christ's College, and there is an anecdote told of his having captivated, by his singular beauty, the heart of some unknown female of rank, who happened to see him sleeping under a tree. In his advanced age he suffered so acutely that his hands became almost deformed with chalk stones, and his face of a sickly paleness. His habits were, as it has been said, extremely temperate, and those of a diligent student, to the last year of his life. He was accustomed to retire to rest about nine, and to rise at four in the summer and five in winter. The first thing which he did on getting up, was to hear a chapter of the Hebrew Bible read to him; he then studied the subjects he was occupied upon till twelve. after which he took an hour's exercise, and then dined. With playing on the organ, an hour or two's

further study, and the

's conversation with day was concluded,

his friends, the remainder and having eaten a few chives, smoked his pipe, and drunk a glass of water, he retired to rest.

Milton had five children; four by his first and one by his second wife; of these, the three daughters whom he had by the former survived him, the others died in infancy. The last surviving of the daughters died in August, 1727. She was married to a Spitalfields' weaver of the name of Clarke, by whom she had seven sons and three daughters, Of these only two had children; and there is at present no lineal descendant of the poet living.

But I turn from this brief review of the poet's life to as brief a consideration of the magnificent talents by which his immortality is established. The genius of Milton has not yet, perhaps, met with its proper observer. His great fame has made him too sacred an object in the eyes of general readers to let them think of any thing but implicit veneration; and the men of letters who have been professedly his critics, have been more intent on correcting or illustrating the text by their learning than on unfolding the veil which partially hides the grandeur and uncomprehended beauty of all true poetry. Almost the only one among them who has written with the express purpose of employing a more general and philosophical species of criticism is Addison, a man of elegant taste and accomplished mind, but possessing little of that depth of thought, or vigour of intellect, which is necessary to the character of a critic. Johnson, again, strong as was his mind, was as little fitted for the office he had assumed; for he was as deficient in depth of perception and feeling as Addison was in intellectual power. Much, therefore, as has been done towards illustrating the works of Milton, the praise or blame he has received has not proceeded from any very elevated principles of criticism.

Milton is the most learned of our English poets. There is no work of either this or any other country on which so much profound erudition has been expended as on Paradise Lost. The learning of all

ages, the opinions of the wisest men, the superstitions of the most benighted nations, the truths of philosophy and science, and the most solemn mysteries of religion, were all explored by the great author, and he poured out the whole vast treasure of his mind into the golden vase his imagination had formed. But to decide upon the true character of his genius, we must not be content with the examination of his larger works. They were composed after his mind was more than furnished, after it was enveloped with learning; and it is sometimes, therefore, not clear whether knowledge have not mastered thought instead of being its auxiliary.

From the earlier poems of Milton we are able to discover, with some degree of certainty, the principal and original characteristics of his genius. In them we trace the love of truth, the creative imagination, the power over language, which form the features of his subsequent productions. But we see them in their origin. With him the love of truth was the offspring of a tranquil but noble soul, and from the dawning of his mind it was the object he most earnestly sought. But he sought it chiefly among books, or among those who derived their materials of thinking solely from them. The fashion of the times was not in favour of original thinking, and hence he, like the other great men of the period, principally employed himself in heaping together all the knowledge which the accumulated learning of ages could afford. One consequence of this was the subjection of passion, thought, and feeling, to memory; and there is, therefore, to be discovered no beauty of a sentimental kind, even in his freshest and earliest poems. The same cause will also account for the absence of that heartreaching, spiritual eloquence with which poetry sometimes awakens us. There are scarcely any thoughts to be found in Milton which can be ascribed to his sympathy with individual suffering, or to his consideration of human nature in its simple but deep workings. He gave himself no time for this unincumbered view of humanity. He sought the true philosophy of nature, but it was in the

history of sects and kingdoms; and he learnt to excite wonder but not passion. Whatever, there fore, might have been the tendencies of his nature truth in his poetry is a reflected not primitive truth; the truth which learning searches for and discovers, not what every heart feels and recognizes. But Milton possessed an imagination of the highest order; an imagination which could combine or create at will the noblest objects of contemplation. His early poeris sufficiently attest the energy of this divine power in his mind. The classical style of his verses never affect its originality; and they run like a stream of light and beauty wherever the imagination is free to operate. All the other faculties of his intellect received their tone from this. His power of description was raised by it into a creative faculty; the objects of memory passed through it, and became godlike and eternal. It elevated his thoughts to other worlds of beings, which it alone could make visible; and reason in ber severest moods was led by it to take her weapons from the splendid and ethereal armoury of poetry. In Comus, the Allegro, and Penseroso, and the religious Odes, we see all this power of the imagination operating, but producing only beautiful and holy forms; we are entertained with the sight of nature suffused with heavenly light, with the discourse of bright and spiritual beings, and with the view of past scenes, over which hangs the cloud of divine glory. All here is fresh and spring-like. The poet's imagination was a bird of Paradise, that had not strength of wing to explore the dark world beyond it.

When years, continued study, and experience of the world, had altered the general tone of his feelings, this distinguishing power of his genius assumed, with increasing strength, a severer character. The world of interminable being was all before it, and it chose out of the tremendous wilderness of space the most fearful spot it could discover. Here it rejoiced in its power. The great void grew instinct with life. The universe of thought became substantial, and night and ruin stood palpably dis. tinct in the outflooding and creating light of heaven.

C

No mortal ever saw that vision so distinct as Milton, and seeing it he could but write as he did. His imagination was a sense, not the result of emotion. It was from sight, not feeling, his inspiration came, and hence the grandeur, but coldness, of his genius -the distinctness and reality of his creations-the cramped scholasticism of his philosophy.

There are other points of a minor but highly interesting nature in considering the genius of Milton. His deficiency of passion was the only element which was wanting to the perfection of his poetic character. When we examine it in respect to every other, we find it full and complete; perfect, not only in the higher and rarer requisites of genius, but in those lighter qualities from which inferior minds derive their sole claim to consideration. Milton had as perfect a knowledge of the art of poetry as any cold, formal writer of verses, who has no other means of gaining respectability. He had also an equal degree of judgment in arranging the different parts of his subject, and while there was no species of learning which he had not pursued, there was no, not even the commonest kind of, information which he could not accommodate, with the nicest skill, to his purpose. But of all these minor features of his genius, that which most deserves consideration is the exquisite power he possessed over every kind of metre. The versification of his shorter poems is the most beautiful specimen we possess of the music of our language. The blank metre of Paradise Lost is more various, more rich in the melody of cadences, than that of any other English poem. This, perhaps, is owing to a circumstance not generally observed, that Milton is almost the only writer in blank verse who had previously made himself a perfect master of rhyme and the rhyming

measures.