" interceffion of friends on both fides, foon

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brought him to an act of oblivion and a firm "league of peace." It were injurious to omit, that Milton afterwards received her father and her brothers in his own house, when they were diftreffed, with other Royalists.

He published about the fame time his Areopagitica, a Speeb of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed Printing. The danger of fuch unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the fcience of Government, which human undertanding feems hitherto unable to folve. If nothing may be publifhed but what civil authority fhall have previously approved, power must always be the ftandard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his projects, there can be no fettlement; if every murmurer at government may diffufe difcontent, there can be no peace; and if every fceptick in theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The remedy against thefe evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed that every fociety may punish, though not prevent, the publication of opinions, which that fociety fhall think pernicious but this punishment, though it may crush the author, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards cenfured, than it would be to fleep with doors unbolted, becaufe by our laws we can hang a thief.

But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestick, poetry was never long out of his thoughts. About this time (1645) a collecti

on

on of his Latin and English poems appeared, in which the Allegro and Penferofo, with fome: others, were first published.

He had taken a larger house in Barbican for the reception of scholars; but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted refuge for a while, occupied his rooms. In time, however, they went away; and the "house again," fays Philips, now looked "like a house of the Mufes only, though the "acceffion of scholars was not great. Poffi

bly by his having proceeded fo far in the "education of youth, may have been the oc"cafion of his adverfaries calling him peda

gogue and school-master; whereas it is well. "known he never fet up for a publick school,. to teach all the young fry of a parish; but only was willing to impart his learning and knowledge to relations, and the fons of gen"tlemen who were his intimate friends; and "that neither his writings nor his way of teaching ever favoured in the least of pe

dantry.'

Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and what might be confeffed without difgrace. Milton was not a man who could become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his warmeft friends feem not to have found; they therefore shift and palliate. He did not fell literature to all comers at an open fhop; he was a chambermilliner, and measured his commodities only to his friends.

Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this ftate of degradation, tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise his character

racter again, has a mind to invest him with military splendour: "He is much mistaken," he fays, if there was not about this time a defign of making him an adjutant-general "in Sir William Waller's army. But the "new-modelling of the army proved an ob"ftruction to the defign." An event cannot be fet at a much greater diftance than by having been only defigned, about fome time, if a man be not much mistaken. Milton fhall be a pedagogue no longer; for, if Philips be not miftaken, fomebody at fome time defigned him for a foldier.

About the time that the army was new-modelled (1645) he removed to a fmaller house in Holbourn, which opened backward into Lincoln's-Inn-Fields. He is not known to have published any thing afterwards till the king's death, when, finding his murderers condemned by the Prefbyterians, he wrote a treatise to justify it, and to compofe the minds of the people.

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He made fome Remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the Irish Rebels. While he contented himself to write, he perhaps did only what his confcience dictated and if he did not very vigilantly watch the influence of his own paffions, and the gradual prevalence of opinions, firft willingly admitted and then habitually indulged, if objections, by being overlooked, were forgotten, and defire fuperinduced conviction, he yet shared only the common weakness of mankind, and might be no lefs fincere than his opponents. But as faction feldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him, Milton is fufpect

ed

ed of having interpolated the book called Icon Bafilike, which the Council of State, to whom he was now made Latin fecretary, employed him to cenfure, by inferting a prayer taken from Sidney's Arcadia, and imputing it to the king; whom he charges, in his Iconoclastes, with the use of this prayer as with a heavy crime, in the indecent language with which profperity had emboldened the advocates for rebellion to infult all that is venerable or great: "Who would have imagined fo little fear in "him of the true all-feeing Deity-as, im

mediately before his death, to pop into the " hands of the grave bishop that attended him, "as a fpecial relique of his faintly exercises, a prayer ftolen word for word from the "mouth of a heathen woman praying to a "heathen god?"

The papers which the king gave to Dr. Juxon on the fcaffold the regicides took away, fo that they were at least the publishers of this prayer; and Dr. Birch, who examined the queftion with great care, was inclined to think them the forgers. The use of it by adaption was innocent; and they who could fo noifily cenfure it, with a little extenfion of their malice could contrive what they wanted to accufe.

King Charles the Second, being now fheltered in Holland, employed Salmafius, profesfor of Polite Learning at Leyden, to write a defence of his father and of monarchy; and, to excite his industry, gave him, as was reported, a hundred Jacobufes. Salmafius was a man of skill in languages, knowledge of antiquity, and fagacity of emendatory criticism,

almost

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almost exceeding all hope of human attainment; and having, by exceffive praises, been confirmed in great confidence of himself, though he probably had not much confidered the principles of fociety or the rights of government, undertook the employment without diftruft of his own qualifications; and, as his expedition in writing was wonderful, in 1669 published Defenfio Regis.

To this Milton was required to write a fufficient anfwer; which he performed (1651) in fuch a manner, that Hobbes declared himfelf unable to decide whofe language was beft, or whofe arguments were worft. In my opinion, Milton's periods are fmoother, neater, and more pointed; but he delights himself with teizing his adversary as much as with confuting him. He makes a foolish allufion of Salmafius, whofe doctrine he confiders as fervile and unmanly, to the stream of Salmacis, which whoever entered left half his virility behind him. Salmafius was a Frenchman, and was unhappily married to a fcold. Tu es Gallus, fays Milton, et, tu aiunt, nimium gallinaceus: But his fupreme pleasure is to tax his adverfary, fo renowned for criticism, with vitious Latin. He opens his book with telling that he has used Perfona, which according to Milton, fignifies only a Mask, in a fense not known to the Romans, by applying it as we apply Perfon. But as Nemefis is always on the watch, it is memorable that he has enforced the charge of a folecism by an expreffion in itself grofsly folecistical when, for one of those supposed blunders, he fays, propino te grammatiflis tuis vapulandum. From vapulo, which has a paf