"O how transform'd!

"How much unlike that Hector, who return'd "Clad in Achilles' spoils!

"From thence a thoufand leffer poets Sprung "Like pretty princes from the fall of Rome."

Sometimes the weight of rhyme is laid upon a word too feeble to fuftain it :

"Troy confounded falls

"From all her glories: if it might have stood "By any power, by this right hand it shou'd. "And though my outward ftate misfortune "bath

"Depreft thus low, it cannot reach my faith." Thus, by his fraud and our own faith o'er

66 come,

"A feigned tear deftroys us, against whom Tydides nor Achilles could prevail, "Nor ten years conflict, nor a thousand fail."

He is not very careful to vary the ends of his verses: in one paffage the word die rhimes three couplets in fix.

Moft

Most of these petty faults are in his first productions, when he was lefs fkilful, or at leaft lefs dexterous in the use of words; and though they had been more frequent they could only have leffened the grace, not the ftrength of his compofition. He is one of the writers that improved our taste, and advanced our language, and whom we ought therefore to read with gratitude, though, having done much, he left much to do.

MILTON.

T

HE Life of Milton has been already

written in fo many forms, and with fuch minute enquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented myself with the addition of a few notes to Mr. Fenton's elegant Abridgement, but that a new narrarative was thought neceffary to the uniformity of this edition.

JOHN MILTON was by birth a gentleman, defcended from the proprietors of Milton near Thame in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his eftate in the times of York and Lancafter. Which fide he took I know not; his defcendant inherited no veneration for the White Rofe.

His grandfather John was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous papist, who difinherited his fon, because he had forfaken the religion of his ancestors.

His father, John, who was the son difinherited, had recourfe for his fupport to the profeffion of a fcrivener. He was a man eminent for his fkill in mufick, many of his compofitions being ftill to be found; and his reputation in his profeffion was fuch, that he grew rich, and retired to an eftate. He had probably more than common literature, as his fon addreffes him in one of his moft elaborate Latin poems. He married a gentlewoman of the name of Cafton, a Welsh family, by whom he had two fons, John the poet, and Chriftopher who studied the law, and adhered, as the law taught him, to the King's party, for which he was awhile perfecuted; but having, by his brother's intereft, obtained permiffion to live in quiet, he supported himself fo honourably by chamberpractice, that, foon after the acceffion of King James, he was knighted and made a Judge; but, his conftitution being too weak

for business, he retired before any difreputable compliances became neceffary.

He had likewise a daughter Anne, whom he married with a confiderable fortune to Edward Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rofe in the Crown office to be secondary : by him she had two fons, John and Edward, who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only authentic account of his domestic manners.

John, the Poet, was born in his father's house, at the Spread-Eagle in Bread-street, Dec. 9, 1608, between fix and feven in the morning. His father appears to have been very folicitous about his education; for he was inftructed at firft by private tuition under the care of Thomas Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburgh, and of whom we have reafon to think well, fince his fcholar confidered him as worthy of an epistolary elegy.

He was then fent to St. Paul's School, under the care of Mr. Gill; and removed, in the beginning of his fixteenth year, to Chrift's