APPENDIX N (PAGE 144)

Milton is not mentioned by Baxter (Warton's Milton's Poems, p. 573) or, I think, by Clarendon in his History or Life. Dryden, in 1674, described Paradise Lost as 'undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced.' Works, v. 112.

In 1678 Rymer wrote of 'that Paradise Lost of Milton's, which some are pleased to call a poem.' The Tragedies of the Last Age, p. 143. In 1680 Roscommon praised it. Eng. Poets, xv. 91, 92.

In 1685 Temple, in his essay Of Poetry, wrote:-After these three [Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser] I know none of the moderns that have made any achievements in heroic poetry worth recording.' Works, iii. 420.

Before 1688 Somers (afterwards Lord Chancellor) encouraged Tonson to print 'a new and elegant edition of Paradise Lost [the fourth].' There were above 500 subscribers. Atterbury, in 1687, sent Tonson thirty-one names from Oxford. Dryden wrote for it his lines on Milton. Malone's Dryden, i. 202.

Tonson, in the duodecimo edition of 1711, says of this 'elegant edition,' that 'notwithstanding the price of it was four times greater than before, the sale increased double the number every year. The work is now generally known and esteemed.' See also Richardson's Explanatory Notes, &c., Pref. p. 118; Masson's Milton, vi. 784.

Jonathan Richardson, born about 1665, had in his youth honoured Shakespeare, Cowley, Dryden, and other poets, but had never heard of Milton. 'I happened,' he writes, 'to find Paradise Lost in Mr. Riley's painting-room [Riley died in 1691]. From that hour all the rest (Shakespeare excepted) faded in my estimation or vanished.' Richardson's Explanatory Notes, &c., Pref. p. 118.

Burnet wrote of Paradise Lost before 1705:-'Tho' Milton affected to write in blank verse without rhyme, and made many new and rough words, yet it was esteemed the beautifullest and perfectest poem that ever was writ, at least in our language.' History, ed. 1724, i. 163.

Shaftesbury, in 1710, described Paradise Lost as 'our most approved heroick poem.' Characteristics, 1714, i. 276.

Milton is not mentioned in Pope's Essay on Criticism, published in 1711.

In 1711-12 Addison's series of papers on Paradise Lost appeared in The Spectator. Post, ADDISON, 162.

Dennis wrote (Original Letters, 1721, p. 174):-' Paradise Lost had been printed forty years before it was known to the greatest part of England that there barely was such a book.'

Swift wrote of it in 1732:-'Few either read, liked, or understood it ; and it gained ground merely by its merit.' Works, xvii. 396.

The same year Bentley, in the Preface to his edition of Paradise Lost, says that 'for above sixty years it has passed upon the whole nation for a perfect, absolute, faultless composition.' Bentley, however, wished to prove the need of emendations.

In The Table of Modern Fame in Dodsley's Museum, Sept. 13, 1746, i. 489, supposed to be by Akenside, after Pope has been seated Milton

is granted the last seat but one. 'He is now admitted for the first time, and was not but with difficulty admitted at all. But have patience.. he may perhaps at last obtain the highest, or at least the second place.' See also Warton's Essay on Pope, ii. 54.

Newton's edition of Paradise Lost, published in 1749, reached its eighth edition by 1775. Newton's Works, ed. 1782, i. 50.

Johnson, in 1750, in his Prologue for Milton's granddaughter,

says:

'At length our mighty bard's victorious lays

Fill the loud voice of universal praise.' Works, i. 115. Warburton wrote in 1757'The present fashion for Milton makes us as ready to learn our religion from the Paradise Lost; though it be certain he was as poor and fanciful a divine as Shakespeare was a licentious historian.' Warburton's Pope, iv. 154.

'In 1763 I calculate,' writes Professor Masson, 'Paradise Lost was in its forty-sixth edition....There had been four translations into German, two into Dutch, three into French, and two into Italian, and at least one into Latin.' Masson's Milton, vi. 789. The British Museum Catalogue shows that it has been translated also into Armenian, Bohemian, Danish, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Manx, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Welsh. For Milton's reputation as a poet in his lifetime see Masson's Milton, vi. 776. It is rash to differ from Professor Masson; I think, however, that he exaggerates this reputation. See on this subject an interesting note in Cunningham's Lives of the Poets,

i. 124.

APPENDIX O (PAGE 159)

'Deborah Clarke,' writes Dr. Birch, 'gave Dr. Ward, Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, who saw her not long before her death, the following account, which he communicated to me, Feb. 10, 1737-8 "She informed me that she and her sisters used to read to their father in eight languages, which by practice they were capable of doing with great readiness and accuracy, though they understood what they read in no other language but English; and their father used often to say in their hearing :-'One tongue was enough for a woman.' None of them were ever sent to school, but all taught at home by a mistress kept for that purpose. Isaiah, Homer, and Ovid's Metamorphoses were books which they were often called to read to their father; and at my desire she repeated a considerable number of verses from the beginning of both these poets with great readiness. I knew who she was upon the first sight of her, by the similitude of her countenance with her father's picture. And upon my telling her so, she informed me that Mr. Addison told her the same thing, upon her going to wait on him. For he, upon hearing she was living, sent for her, and desired, if she had any papers of her father's, she would bring them with her, as an evidence of her being Mr. Milton's daughter. But immediately upon her being introduced to him, he said, 'Madam, you need no other voucher; your face is a sufficient testimonial whose daughter you are.' And he then made her a handsome present of a purse of guineas, with a promise

of procuring her an annual provision for her life; but he dying soon after, she lost the benefit of his generous design. She appeared to be a woman of good sense and a genteel behaviour, and to bear the inconvenience of a low fortune with decency and prudence."' T. BIRCH, Milton's Works, 1753, Preface, p. 76. See also Gent. Mag. 1776, p. 200; Newton's Milton, Preface, p. 81; Bentham's Works, x. 52.

APPENDIX P (PAGE 192)

Milton, in the Preface to Paradise Lost, speaks of 'the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming.'

Two or three years earlier than Milton's Preface, Boileau had written:—

Satires, ii. 53.

'Maudit soit le premier, dont la verve insensée Dans les bornes d'un vers renferma sa pensée, Et donnant à ses mots une étroite prison, Voulut avec la rime enchaîner la raison.' Shakespeare, to shun the pains of continual rhyming, invented that kind of writing which we call blank verse, into which the English tongue so naturally slides that in writing prose it is hardly to be avoided.' DRYDEN, Works, ii. 136. 'Whatever cause Milton alleges for the abolishing of rhyme, his own particular reason is plainly this, that rhyme was not his talent.' Ib. xiii. 20. 'He who can write well in rhyme may write better in blank verse.' Ib. xiv. 211.

'Je me souviendrai toujours que je demandai au célèbre Pope, pourquoi Milton n'avait pas rimé son Paradis perdu, et qu'il me répondit:-"Because he could not, parce qu'il ne le pouvait pas."" VOLTAIRE, Œuvres, xxxv. 435. 'Un poète anglais est un homme libre qui asservit sa langue à son génie; le Français est un esclave de la rime.... L'Anglais dit tout ce qu'il veut, le Français ne dit que ce qu'il peut.' Ib. i. 310.

Cowper wrote, after finishing The Task:-'I do not mean to write blank verse again. Not having the music of rhyme, it requires so close an attention to the pause and the cadence, and such a peculiar mode of expression, as render it, to me at least, the most difficult species of poetry that I have ever meddled with.' Southey's Cowper, v. 105. See also ib. p. 89.

Tennyson said to Allingham on Sept. 2, 1880:-'It is much easier to write rhyme than good blank verse.' Allingham MSS. Addison describes how Milton

'Unfettered in majestic numbers walks.'

Addison's Works, i. 24.

'He that writes in rhymes dances in fetters.'

PRIOR, Eng. Poets, xxxiii. 207.

'For rhyme with reason may dispense,
And sound has right to govern sense.'

Ib. p. 155.

BUTLER'

F the great author of Hudibras there is a life prefixed to the 1 later editions of his poem by an unknown writer, and therefore of disputable authority; and some account is incidentally given by Wood3, who confesses the uncertainty of his own narrative: more, however, than they knew cannot now be learned, and nothing remains but to compare and copy them.

SAMUEL BUTLER was born in the parish of Strensham * 2 in Worcestershire, according to his biographer, in 16125. This account Dr. Nash finds confirmed by the register. He was christened Feb. 146.

His father's condition is variously represented. Wood mentions 3 him as competently wealthy', but Mr. Longueville, the son of Butler's principal friend, says he was an honest farmer with some small estate, who made a shift to educate his son at the grammar school of Worcester, under Mr. Henry Bright, from whose care he removed for a short time to Cambridge; but for a want of money was never made a member of any college. Wood leaves us rather doubtful whether he went to Cambridge or Oxford; but at last makes him pass six or seven years at Cambridge, without knowing in what hall or college 10: yet it can hardly be imagined that

4

5

he lived so long in either university, but as belonging to one house or another, and it is still less likely that he could have so long inhabited a place of learning with so little distinction as to leave his residence uncertain. Dr. Nash has discovered that his father was owner of a house and a little land, worth about eight pounds a year, still called 'Butler's tenement '.'

Wood has his information from his brother, whose narrative placed him at Cambridge, in opposition to that of his neighbours which sent him to Oxford. The brother's seems the best authority, till, by confessing his inability to tell his hall or college, he gives reason to suspect that he was resolved to bestow on him an academical education; but durst not name a college for fear of detection 2.

He was for some time, according to the author of his Life, clerk to Mr. Jefferys of Earl's-Croomb in Worcestershire, an eminent justice of the peace 3. In his service he had not only leisure for study, but for recreation; his amusements were musick and painting, and the reward of his pencil was the friendship of the celebrated Cooper. Some pictures, said to be his, were shewn to Dr. Nash, at Earl's Croomb, but when he enquired for them some years afterwards he found them destroyed, to stop windows, and owns that they hardly deserved a better fate.

him at schoole was as much education as he was able to reach to.... He never was at the university.' Brief Lives, i. 135. The author of the Life says that being become an excellent school-scholar, he went for some little time to Cambridge, but was never matriculated.' Grey's Hudibras, Preface, p. 5.

Nash's Worcestershire, ii. 391.

'He went, as his brother now living affirms, to the University of Cambridge; yet others of the neighbourhood say to Oxon, but whether true I cannot tell. After he had continued in Cambridge about six or seven years, but in what college or hall his brother knows not,' &c. Ath. Oxon. iii. 875.

Grey's Hudibras, Preface, p. 5. 4 'Butler's love to and skill in painting made a great friendship between him and Mr. Samuel Cowper (prince of limners of this age).... He [Butler] painted well, and made it

(sometime) his profession.' AUBREY, Brief Lives, i. 135, 138. Evelyn, in 1662, 'had the honour to hold the candle whilst this rare limner [Cooper] was crayoning of the King's face and head to make the stamps for the new milled money now contriving.' Diary, i. 381. Cooper painted Mrs. Pepys. He is a most admirable workman, and good company.' PEPYS, Diary, iv. 484. His wife was sister of Pope's mother. Walpole's Anec. of Painting, 1782, iii. 115; Pope's Works (Elwin and Courthope), v. 5.

5 This sentence is not in the first edition. Nash saw them in 1738. 'In 1774 I found they had served to stop up windows and save the tax; and indeed they were not fit for much else.' NASH, Worcestershire, ii. 391.

The tax (1775) rose gradually from twopence on every window, the lowest rate, upon houses with not more than seven windows, to two