son; and perhaps Englishmen, in these days of Legitimacy, are not generally aware, that, while they attribute the disturbance of their favourite doctrine to a modern Frenchman, it was long ago imputed, by Frenchmen themselves, to one of the most legitimate, because one of the most tyrannical, English monarchs, that ever sat upon a throne. The havoc made by Henry the eighth, in the religious and political establishments of his empire, is considered as the great cause of the divisions, which have since distracted both church and state. God was willing, says Bossuet, that mankind should, for once, be turned loose, in order to let them see, by the confusion and violence which must ensue, how much better it had been, if they could only have remained quiet. 'Il voulait découvrir par un grand example tout ce qui peut l'héresie, combien elle est naturallement indocile et INDEPENDENT, combien fatale à la royauté, et tout antorité LEGETIME.' It was natural, that this spirit of independence, when first escaped from the cavern, should rush over the earth, with indiscriminate fury. The earlier advocates of free government had no distant views beyond the subversion of present establishments. The old edifices were first to be prostrated: and, without calculating what should be erected on their ruins, it was thought enough for one generation to pull down and lay waste. Indeed, so far as their object can be ascertained at all, perhaps the class of writers, to which Milton belongs, had little fear for mankind, if they were once set free from the present bondage of laws and authority. The insolence of despotism had brought the very name of government into discredit; and those, who resolved to bear the burthen no longer, could see no distinction between licentiousness and independence,— and thought, that, to be free, it was only necessary to be lawless. This spirit, in all its excess, is still to be found among the visionaries of political philo sophy; and we suppose, a certain fellow feeling with the genius of Milton may, in part, have induced Mr. Godwin to enter upon a literary undertaking, for which, we think, he has shown himself peculiarly unfitted.* It is certainly the leading tenet of this Whatever may be his merits as a writer of romances or of political essays, we suspect, he will never succeed as a critic of poetry. We know, Mr. Godwin has a right to be pleased with what gives us no pleasure at all; but there are certain subjects, upon which the decision of time has confirmed the preference of taste; and, when a man sets up his own judgment in opposition to such a sentence, he does not disagree with a single individual,-but contradicts the whole world. It was hardly to have been expected, at this time of day, that a man should deliberately tell the readers of poetry how vastly superior the Homer of Chapman is to that of Pope, and how infatuated they must be to prefer Dryden's Virgil to Phaer's. Yet all this is done by Mr. Godwin. He even places the parallel pas sages by the side of each other; and calls upon the public to observe how the old translations rise above the new. We shall not forbid him this mode of appeal; and our readers are to understand, therefore, that the subjoined specimens are taken from passages, which Mr. Godwin repeatedly calls wonderful. The subversion of Troy is thus described by Phaer: Then verily right abroad I saw whole Ilion castle sinke In fires, and upside down all Troy from bottom turn'd to brinke. Virgil's description of Æneas' lamentation is thus given : -That in my parlour fires Mine enemies I must see to kill my folks, Ascanius my child, my wife Creusa, my father olde, It seems, that Numaus was of the order of knighthood: Then with a sound from deadly bowe The swift shaft whistling fled, and thro' Sir Numaus' temples twain It grisly shake. We hear of the 'Trojan Fort:' and the Sun says to Ascanius, that's my peerless lad.' But the cap-sheaf is still behind. How magnificent,' exclaims Mr. Godwin, is the address of Ascanius to the Spring-old Euryalus!" But, as for thee, O Lad, to whom my years do creep, Thou reverent stately child, how deep in breast I thee receive. Thou ever art my mate. gentleman, that all the crimes and vices of mankind may be traced to the laws, with which they have, in some way or other, contrived to hamper themselves. He seems, at one and the same time, to have the worst, and the best, opinion of mankind. He heartily despises them for tolerating such things as laws and authority; and yet he has no doubt, that they are noble and virtuous enough to keep society in order, by their own mere sense of right and wrong. It is the laws, which make them villains; for, were there no laws to break, would there be any crimes to punish? But, perhaps, the reader will better catch the spirit of his philosophy, from the following passage, in the book, which we have had such frequent occasion to cite. 'Nothing,' says he, can be more odious to a liberal mind, than the practice which unhappily takes place, in some degree, in all courts of justice, of measuring the words of the persons arraigned before them, and requiring them to speak in what is called, the manner befitting their unhappy situation.' The insolence of the judges, the delight they apparently feel in interrupting, in checking, in rebuking, in trampling upon, the prisoners brought before them, which we more or less perceive in the reading of all trials, certainly conduces to none of the ends of justice. They expect to be emphatically thanked for their generosity, if they practice any degree of decency towards the man whose cause they are appointed to hear, and if they consent to put him to death with any sort of gentility. They look for a canting and hypocritical profession of offence and of sorrow; and hold out a lure, often a fallacious one, that such professions shall be considered in mitigation of punishment. They are more anxious to degrade and dishonour, than to inflict the censure of the law. If a man fairly asserts his own conception of his case, and refuses to acknowledge offence, where, whatever may be the judg ment of the ministers of the law, he finds none, this is treated as a pernicious aggravation of his guilt; and many a one has paid the forfeit of his life, merely because he has spoken upon his trial that firm language, which is calculated to honour his memory to the latest posterity."* It remains to give a brief account of Milton's family. He had no children by the second and third wives; and the children by the first were all daughters. Anne, the eldest, married a master builder, and died of her first child. Mary, who was the most like her mother, died single. Deborah married Mr. Abraham Clark, a weaver in Spital-fields;† and lived till August, 1727. Addison made her a present; and Queen Caroline sent her fifty guineas. She had seven sons and three daughters; but none except Caleb and Elizabeth ever had children. Caleb went to the East Indies, and is known to have had two sons. Elizabeth married Thomas Foster, a weaver in Spital-fields; and had seven children, who died young. She kept a grocer's shop, until April 5, 1750; when Comus was played for her benefit; and, a hundred pounds being added to her stock, she retired, with her husband, to Islington. Dr. Johnson wrote the prologue on this occasion; and he tells us, she had so little acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was intended when a benefit was offered her.' The avails were invested in the stocks; and Dr. Johnson does not fail to mention the circumstance, that there was a dispute between herself and her husband Lives of the Phillipses, p. 68. There is some confusion in the accounts of her marriage. Warton says, she went to Ireland with a lady in the lifetime of her father; and Aubrey tells, that she married Mr. Clark, a silk mercer in Dublin. Wart. note to the Nuncup. Will. Aub ap. Godw. p. 338. Warton afterwards says, her daughter married a weaver in Spital-fields. She must either have had two husbands, or the biographers have mistaken her daughter's marriage for her own. about the name in which the sum should be entered. We are indebted to Mr. Godwin for an account of the lives and writings of Milton's nephews. Johnson makes Edward Phillips the youngest; but both Aubrey and Edward Phillips himself tell us a different story. Edward was born in 1630; and John, in the following year.* They were educated by their uncle; and Edward entered Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1648. He seems to have become, in all respects, a cavalier at college; and he left the university without a degree. What became of John, in the mean time, is not certainly known; though it is conjectured, by Mr. Godwin, that, when Milton received his office from the parliament, the younger nephew became his under secretary. Both swerved from the principles, which must have been instilled into their minds by Milton; and, though Edward at last repented and returned, his brother persevered to the end in reviling his old schoolmaster. Edward appears to have liked the profession of his uncle; and, in the latter years of his life, he kept a school in the Strand. John became a politician; and continued through life to write books and pamphlets, now for the whigs, and now for the tories. The elder died about the year 1697; the younger, between 1704 and 1706.§ • Godw. p. 4. + Ibid. p. 230. +Ibid. pp. 12, 15. |