and in deed a Turkish one, That euery warlike Prince should rather destroy his greatest men of Warre, than suffer his owne glory to be obscured by them. For this cause did Baiaret the second dispatch Bassa Acomat: Selim strangle Bassa Mustapha; and most of those Princes bring to ruine the most of their Visiers. Of the Spanish Nation, the great Gonsaluo, who draue the French out of Naples and Ferdinando Cortese, who conquered Mexico, were crowned with nettles, not with Lawrell. The Earles of Egmond and Horn, had no heads left them to weare garlands on. And that the great Captaines of all Nations haue been payd with this copper Coine; there are examples more than too many."

Knolles, author of the General History of the Turks, whose work was published in the year of James's accession to the crown of England, must have a place in our catalogue, in consideration of the encomium pronounced upon him by Dr. Johnson. Johnson, in the hundred and twenty second number of his Rambler, attempts to vindicate the literary honours of his country, as having possessed "historians, whom we may venture to place in comparison with any that the neighbouring nations can produce.' For this purpose he mentions Raleigh and Clarendon : and then proceeds as follows:

"But none of our writers can, in my opinion,

justly contest the superiority of Knolles, who in his history of the Turks, has displayed all the excellencies that narration can admit. His stile, though somewhat obscured by time, and sometimes vitiated by false wit, is pure, nervous, elcvated and clear.-There is nothing turgid in his dignity, nor superfluous in his copiousness.

"Nothing could have sunk this author in obscurity but the remoteness and barbarity of the people whose story he relates. It seldom happens, that all circumstances concur to happiness or fame.. The nation, which produced this great historian, has the grief of seeing his genius employed upon a foreign and uninteresting subject; and that writer, who might have secured perpetuity to his name, by a history of his own country, has exposed himself to the danger of oblivion, by recounting enterprises and revolutions, of which none desire to be informed."

The following specimen may not perhaps be found fully to correspond to this lofty eulogium.

"This citie Mahomet thought to haue taken vnprouided; and so vpon the suddaine to haue carried it; but was therein much deceiued, finding it strongly fortified and manned both by the Venetians and Scanderbeg. Where when he had spent there some time, and to his great losse in vaine attempted the cittie, hee rise vpon the suddaine : and retiring into EPIRVS, came and sat downe

againe before CROIA, of purpose by his suddaine comming to haue terrified the citizens: and vainely persuaded, that he had left Scanderbeg in DIRRACHIVM, for that in the assailing thereof he had discouered many of Scanderbeg his men, and thereby supposed him to haue been there also; the greatest cause why he so suddenly rise and came to CROIA. At his first comming he offered great rewards and large priuiledges vnto the cittizens, if they would forthwith yeeld vp their cittie; otherwise he threatened vnto them all the calamities of warre, vowing neuer to depart thence before he had it: whereunto he received no other answere out of the cittie than was sent him by the mouth of the cannon, or brought him by many most, braue sallies. Scanderbeg in the meane while continually molesting his campe, and euery night falling into one quarter or another thereof." p. 402,

SECT. II.

MILTON AND CLARENDON.

THE age which, next after that of Queen Elizabeth, has obtained the suffrage of the critics, is that of Charles the second. Fanciful observers found. a certain resemblance between it and the age of Augustus, the literary glory of which has sometimes been represented as owing to this circumstance, that its wits were bred up in their youth in the lap

of republican freedom, and afterwards in their riper age received that polish which is to be derived from the splendour and refinement of a court. Just so, the scene amidst which the wits of king Charles's days passed their boyish years, was that of civil war, of regicide, or of unrestrained republican speculation; which was succeeded by the manners of a gay and licentious court grafting the shoots of French refinement, upon the more vi. gorous and luxuriant plant of English growth. It is indeed easy to trace in the adventurous sallies of the authors of this period, the remnant and tincture of republican audaciousness.

We will begin with Milton, the oldest of those writers, by whom the reign of Charles the second has been made illustrious. Milton was more than fifty years old at the period of the Restoration, and, though all his larger poetical works were written subsequently to that event, his prose is is almost entirely of an earlier date.

As a specimen of Milton's style, it may be worth while to select that passage from his Reason of Church-Government Urg'd against Prelaty, published more than twenty years before the Paradise Lost, in which he speaks, in little less than a prophetic spirit, of what he purposed to execute, to give substance to his own talent, and for the ornament of his country.

"Although a Poet," says he, "soaring in the

high region of his fancies, with his garland and singing robes about him, might, without apology, speak more of himself than I mean to do; yet for me sitting here below in the cool element of prose, a mortall thing among many readers of no Empyreall conceit, to venture and divulge unusual things of my selfe, I shall petition to the gentler sort, it may not be envy to me. I must say therefore, that after I had from my first yeres, by the ceaselesse diligence and care of my father, whom God recompence, bin exercis'd to the tongues, and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and teachers both at home and at the schools, it was found, that whether ought was impos'd me by them that had the overlooking, or betak'n to of my own choise in English, or other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly this latter, the stile by certain vital signes it had, was likely to live. But much latelier in the privat Academies of Italy whither I was favour'd to resort, perceiving that some trifles which I had in memory, compos'd at under twenty or thereabout (for the manner is, that every one must give some proof of his wit and reading there) met with acceptance above what was lookt for, and other things which I had shifted in scarsity of books and other conveniences to patch up amongst them, were receiv'd with written Encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow