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The Life of Milton.

By John Mitford.

OHN MILTON, magnum et venerabile nomen, the fon of John Milton and Sarah Caftor, a woman of incomparable virtue and goodness, and exemplary for her liberality to the poor, was born1 in London, on the 9th of December, 1608. To ufe his own words"Londini fum natus, genere honefto, Patre, viro integerrimo, matre probatiffima, et eleemofyne per viciniam potiffimum nota." "His father was an eminent scrivener, and lived at the fign of the Spread Eagle3 (the armorial

1 Baptized the xx Dec. 1608, according to the Register of Allhallows, Bread Street. Named John, as his father and grandfather had been before him.

2 v. Defenfionem fecundam. His mother was buried in the Church of Horton, Bucks. The house where Milton lived in that village was pulled down a few years fince. In the garden of the present house is an old decayed apple tree faid to be of the poet's planting.

3 This house wherein he was born, and which strangers used to vifit before the fire, was part of his estate as long as he lived. v. Toland's Life, p. 148, On his mother's family. See Birch's Life of Milton, P. II. The family of the, Caftors originally derived from Wales, as Philips tells us; but Wood afferts that she was of the ancient family of the Bradshaws, and a still later account informs us that she was a Haughton, of Haughton Tower, in Lancashire, as appeared by her own arms, &c. Both Toland and Philips date Milton's birth in 1606, but erroneously,

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