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ciendam, aut summum officium deserendum: occurrebantque animo bina illa fata, quæ retulisse Delphis consulentem de se matrem narrat Thetidis filius.

Διχθαδίας κῆρας φερέμεν θανάτοιο τέλοσδε·

Εἰ μὲν κ' αὖθι μένων Τρώων πόλιν ἀμφιμάχωμαι,
Ὤλετο μὲν μοι νόστος, ἀτὰρ κλέος ἀφθιλον ἔσται.
Εἰ δέ κεν οἴκαδ ̓ ἵκωμαι φίλην ἐς πατριδα γαῖαν,
Ωλετό μοι κλέος ἐσθλόν, ἐπὶ δηρὸν δὲ μοι αἰών

Εσσεται.

Unde sic mecum reputabam, multos graviore malo minus bonum, morte gloriam, redemisse; mihi contrà majus bonum minore cum malo proponi: ut possem cum cæcitate solâ vel honestissimum officii munus implere; quod ut ipsâ gloriâ per se est solidius, ità cuique optatius atque antiquius debet esse. Hâc igitur tam brevi luminum usurâ, quantâ maximâ quivi cum utilitaté publicâ, quoad liceret, fruendum esse statui. Videtis quid prætulerim, quid amiserim, quâ inductus ratione: desinant ergò judiciorum Dei calumniatores maledicere, deque me somnia sibi fingere: sic denique habento; me sortis meæ neque pigere neque pœnitere; immotum atque fixum in sententiâ perstare; Deum iratum neque sentire, neque habere, immò maximis in rebus clementiam ejus et benig

nitatem erga me paternam experiri atque agnoscere."

"So that when the task of replying to the "Defence of the King" was publicly committed to me, at a time when I had to contend with ill-health, and when one of my eyes being nearly lost my physicians clearly predicted that, if I undertook the laborious work, I should soon be deprived of both, undeterred by the warning, I seemed to hear a voice not of a physician or issuing from the shrine of Epidaurian Æsculapius, but of some internal and more divine monitor; and conceiving that by some fatal decree the alternative of two lots was proposed to me, that I must either lose my sight or must desert a high duty, the two destinies occurred to me, which the son of Thetis reports to have been submitted to him by his mother from the oracle of Delphi.

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"For, as the goddess spake who gave me birth,

Two fates attend me whilst I live on earth.

If fix'd, I combat by the Trojan wall,
Deathless my fame, but certain is my fall:
If I return,-beneath my native sky
My days shall flourish long-my glory die."

P. W. v. 216.

Reflecting therefore with myself that many· had purchased less good with greater evil, and had even paid life as the price of glory; while to me the greater good was offered at the expence of the less evil, as merely by incurring blindness I might satisfy the most honourable demand of duty; which, intrin sically of more worth even than glory itself, ought to be the first and dearest object of every man's regard; I determined to dedicate the short enjoyment of my eyesight, with as much effect as I could, to the public advantage. You see then what I have preferred, what I have lost, what motives influenced my conduct. Let my slanderers. therefore desist from their calumnies, nor make me the subject of their visionary and dreaming fancies: let them know that I am far from regretting my lot, or from repenting of my choice: let them be assured that my mind and my opinions are immoveably the same; that I am neither conscious of the anger of God, nor believe that I am exposed to it; but, on the contrary, that I have experienced in the most momentous events of my life, and am still sensible of his mercy and paternal kindness."

Equally unascertained with that of his blindness is the precise date of his second

marriage; which took place, as we are informed, about two years after his entire loss of sight. The lady, whom he chose on this occasion, was Catherine the daughter of a captain Woodcock of Hackney. She seems to have been the object of her husband's fondest affection; and, dying, like her predecessor, in childbed, within a year after her marriage, she was lamented by him in a pleasing and pathetic sonnet. The daughter, whom she bore to him, soon followed her to the tomb. As I shall insert the sonnet, which will be felt by every sensitive bosom, it may not be irrelevant to remark that the thought in its concluding line, which on a cursory view may be branded as a conceit, is strictly correct and just. In his dreams a blind man may expatiate in the full blaze of the sun," and the morning, in which he awakes, unquestionably restores him to his darkness. The fault is in the expression alone,

"I waked-she fled: and I replunged in night,"

would perhaps be sufficiently unexcep

tionable.

" So Lucretius, lib. iv. 458.

et noctis caligine cæcâ

Cernere censemus solem, lumenque diurnum,

ON HIS DECEASED WIFE.

Methought I saw my late espoused saint,

Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint:
Mine, as whom, wash'd from spot of childbed taint,
Purification in the old law did save,

And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in heaven without restraint;
Came, vested all in white, pure as her mind:

Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But O! as to embrace me she inclined,

I waked; she fled, and day brought back my night.

During this period of his domestic history, the powers of Milton were vigorously and efficaciously employed in the hostilities of controversy. In 1652, the " Regii Sanguinis Clamor," &c. a work replete with the most virulent abuse against the English, and with the most atrocious invectives and calumnies against Milton, was published, as we have before noticed, at the Hague. Fearful of avowing a production, which might expose him at that juncture to more than literary peril, Du Moulin, who afterwards professed himself to be the writer of this violent work, sent it in manuscript to Salmasius; and by

• This fact is related by Du Moulin himself in the prefatory epistle, from which I have made an extract in one of the subsequent pages.

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