land had done it before him, whofe remarks would hardly have been feconded in the new narrative, if the author had not had fome fellow-feeling of the re-. proach of Milton's adverfaries; a circumstance that gave us fome efpecial wonder that the Doctor fhould be fo much afbamed of the whipping story retailed from Aubrey.

Concerning this part of Milton's Life, Mr. John Philips muft, out of all comparifon, be the most authentic hiftorian: He was Milton's pupil from the beginning; and they who attend to the feries of facts in his account will perceive how much Dr. Johnfon's fpeculations on vagrant inattention, fluggish indifference, and abfurd mifapprehenfion, introduced by way

of confuting those facts, might have been

spared.

"We are told," fays the new narrative, "that in the art of education he per"formed wonders; and a formidable lift "is given of the authors Greek and "Latin that were read in Alderfgate"street by youth between ten and fifteen "or fixteen years of age." And then follows the wife obfervation, that "no"body can be taught fafter than he can "learn *."

But who were these youth? Even his fifter's two fons, (perhaps only one of them, the younger); as appears by what Philips fays after he had specified the formidable lift.

*New Narrative, p. 27.

" Now

"Now perfons," fays he, "fo far ma"nuducted into the highest paths of lite"rature, both divine and human, had "they received his documents with the "fame acutenefs of wit and apprehen"fion, the fame induftry, alacrity, and "thirst after knowledge, as the inftruc"tor was indued with, what prodigies. "of wit and learning might they have "proved! the scholars might, in fome "degree, have come near to the equal"ling the mafter, or at leaft have in "fome fort made good what he seems to "predict in the close of an elegy he made "in the feventeenth year of his age, upon the death of one of his fifter's "children (a daughter) who died in her E 3. 66 in

"infancy." The last couplet of which

elegy is,

This if thou do, he will an offspring

give

That to the world's laft end shall make thy name to live *.

Hence it is clear that the perfons fo manuduced were only, at the most, the two Philipfes, the offspring of Milton's fifter, whofe name would be little connected with the proficiency of a promifcuous number of boys in a boardingfchool.

In the next place, Mr. Philips is before-hand with Dr. Johnfon in affigning the caufes of the little comparative

*Philips, p. xix.

pro

proficiency made by the perfons fo manuduled; where common good-manners would reftrain him from taxing the hebetude, the idlencfs, the indolence, and indifference, of any ftudents, except of himself or his brother. And indeed it plainly appears, that the addition of "fome scholars *" was pofterior to the courfe of reading Milton went through with his nephews, and was one of thofe feveral occafions of increasing his family, apparently after he had written the tracts above-mentioned.

If Toland, and Milton's Biographers, fubfequent to Philips, made more of this matter than Philips's hiftory authorized, we do not commend them. But it was

* Philips, p. xxi.

E 4

furely