that the speed of the beft horfeman must be limited by the power of his horfe,' yet, were Dr. Johnson to ride a fox-chace, he would find that his fpeed would depend not only upon the power of his horse, but also upon the choice of his ground.

The purpose of Milton, as it feems, was to teach fomething more folid than the common literature of fchools, by reading those authors that treat of phyfical fubjects; fuch as the Georgic, and aftronomical treatifes of the ancients. This was a fcheme of improvement which feems to have bufied many literary projectors of that age, Cowley, who had more means than Milton of knowing what was wanting to the embellishments of life, formed the fame plan of education in his imaginary college.

But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and of the íciences which that knowledge requires or includes, is not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or converfation, whether we wish to be useful or pleafing, the first requifite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with thofe examples which may be faid to embody truth, and prove by events the reafonableness of opinions. Prudence and juftice are virtues, and excellencies, of all times, and of all places; we are perpetually moralifts, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is neceffary: our fpeculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leifure. Phyfical knowledge is of fuch rare emergence, that one man may know another half his life without being able to estimate his skill in hydrostatics or aftronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears.

Thofe authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that fupply moft axioms of prudence, moft principles of moral truth, and moft materials for converfation; and thefe purposes are beft ferved by poets, orators, and hiftorians.

Let me not be cenfured for this digreffion as pedantic or paradoxical; for if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my fide. It was his labour to turn philofophy from the study of nature to fpeculations upon life, but the innovators whom I oppofe are turning off attention from life to nature. They feem to think, that we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the ftars. Socrates was rather of opinion, that what we had to learn was, how to do good, and avoid evil.

Ὅτι τοι ἐν μεγάροισι κακόν' ἀγαθύλε τέτυκται.

That those authors are to be read at fchools which fupply most axioms of prudence, moft principles of moral truth, and moft materials of converfation, is too evident to be denied: that these purposes are beft ferved by poets, orators, and hiftorians, fuch as are commonly read at fchools, may be doubted. It may be doubted alfo how far the prefent queftion can be any way influenced by the example of Socrates. His methods of inftruction feem to differ as much from the modes of education which Dr. Johnson means to defend, as it is poffible for Milton's

to

to do. We thould apprehend the innovators who are here oppofed, never intended to turn off attention from life to nature :' they seem to have been actuated by the more rational idea of uniting the study of nature with the knowledge of life. Does not our Author, with refpect to Milton, in fome degree acknowledge as much? One part of his method, fays he, deferves general imitation. He was careful to inftruct his fcholars in religion. Every Sunday was spent upon theology.

Of inftitutions we may judge by their effects. From this wonder-working academy, I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a fmall Hiftory of Poetry, written in Latin by his nephew, of which perhaps none of my readers has ever heard.'

When it is confidered how fmall muft have been the number of Milton's scholars, it is matter of wonder rather than of reproach, that even one fhould ever rife to literary distinction. Were the hiftory of all the fchools through the kingdom to be enquired into, we should not find above one scholar in five hundred that ever attains to a like degree of eminence.

Milton, as may naturally be fuppofed, was an advocate for the liberty of the prefs. He published a book on that subject, intituled, Areopagitica, a speech of Mr. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing.

The danger, fays his Biographer, of fuch unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the fcience of government, which human understanding seems hitherto unable to folve. If nothing may be published but what civil authority fhall have previously approved, power must always be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his pro jects, there can be no fettlement; if every murmurer at government may diffufe difcontent, there can be no peace; and if every fceptic in theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The remedy against these evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed that every fociety may punifu, though not prevent, the publi cation of opinions, which that fociety fhall think pernicious but this punishment, though it may crush the author, promotes the bock; and it feems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unreftrained, because writers may be afterwards cenfured, than it would be to fleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.'

To those who with not to favour the defigns of arbitrary power, no fuch problem is to be found in the whole fcience of government. The arguments by which it is attempted to make this grand queftion problematical might be allowed to have fome weight, provided they were altogether true. That every dreamer of innovations propagates his projects is acknowledged; is it therefore true that there is no fettlement? That every mur

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murer at government diffufes his difcontent is acknowledged likewife; but have we, therefore, no peace? That every sceptic in theology teaches his follies is not to be denied; yet Dr. Johnfon will furely not be fo hardy as to affirm that we have no religion. In those countries where the prefs is reftrained have they more religion? Or, indeed, have they fo much? So far from fufpecting that religion is injured by the liberty which every one enjoys of diffufing his own opinions, we are rather difpofed to believe fhe is benefited by it. Were doubt and objection never to be ftarted, it is probable that truth would be but feldom inquired into: were not error to be confuted, truth could never be established: were the attack of the sceptic and infidel to be fufpended, the champions of religion would forget the use of their weapons; the centinel would fometimes fleep. upon guard. It is by a fcrutiny into the principles of religion that the duties of religious obligation are more forcibly impreffed upon the mind; and were it not for the fceptic in theology, fuch a fcrutiny would be but rarely thought of or attended to. The illustration of his argument is by no means analogous: an author's motives for publication may be many and laudable; a thief can enter your houfe from no motive but to steal: if an author offend against the laws of fociety, he may be detected and punished; or if he escape, his bondfmen, as we, may call them, the printer and publisher, are refponfible for his crime. A thief may break into your houfe, and it is true that you may hang him, provided he be caught. But what fecurity is there that he will be caught, or if not, who is there to make compenfation for the injury he may have done you? All this is to be fuppofed before the analogy between the thief and the author can hold good. Were it, indeed, to be the cafe, there would be as little to apprehend from the one as the other. If the moment we were robbed the thief were certain to be detected and hanged, a bolt to our doors would be an unneceffary precau

tion.

Milton's character is drawn in no amiable colours. According to Dr. Johnfon, he labours under a fufpicion of fuch atrocious villany as ought not, but upon the ftrongest grounds, to be admitted of any man.

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, first willingly admitted and then habitually indulged, if objections, by being overlook ed, were forgotten, and defire fuperinduced conviction, he yet fhared only the common weakness of mankind, and might be no lefs fincere than his opponents. But as faction feldom leaves a man honeft, however it might find him, Milton is fufpe&ted 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 ufe of this prayer as with a heavy crime, in the indecent lan guage 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-fecing Deity-as, immediately before his death, to pop into the hands of the grave Bishop that attended him, as a fpecial relique of his faintly exercifes, 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 scaffold the regicides took away, fo that they were at least the publishers of this prayer; and Dr. Birch, who examined the question with great care, was inclined to think them the forgers. The ufe of vit by: adaptation was innocent; and they who could fo noifdy cenfure it, with a little extenfion of their malice could contrive what they wanted to accufe.'

That the regicides were not the forgers of the prayer in queftion, if we may judge from fuch evidence as appears, is more; likely than that they were. That, the use of it by adaptation was innocent, nobody will deny. To charge the author of Icon Bafilike with the ufe of this prayer as with a heavy crime, was illiberal and indecent. But what circumftance in the life of Milton can warrant the fufpicion that he either inferted it himfelf, or was privy to the infertion of it by others? Whatever might be his political errors, his moral character has been ever unimpeached; his regard for truth feems to have been inviolable; his religion appears to be free from every taint of hypo crify; he lived in a confirmed belief of the immediate and occafional agency of Providence;' how can we imagine then that he had fo little fear in him of the true all-feeing Deity, as to be the perpetrator of fuch deliberate iniquity? But fetting every argument that may be drawn from thefe confiderations afide, there was a meanness in it too defpicable for the pride of Milton ever to have fubmitted to.

The most culpable part of Milton's conduct feems to be his adulation of Cromwell.

Whoever has read Milton's life will recollect the circumstance which is related by his nephew Philips, that his vein never hap pily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal. This dependence of the foul upon the feafons is very justly ridiculed by his prefent hiftorian; and yet we think it not impoffible but the fact might have been true; though we are far from fuppofing it originated from any immediate influence of the feafons. It is well known that the activity of the mind will, in many cafes, be reftrained by the indifpofition of the body. In the latter part of life Milton was much afflicted with the gout. The languor and oppreffion of fpirits, that in a greater or lefs degree

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attend the accumulation of the gouty matter, previous to a regular fit, are generally acknowledged. In thofe habits, in which this diforder is regular, the gouty matter ufually accumulates during the summer and autumnal months: the fit generally commences in the winter, and abates as the spring advances. During the continuance of the fit, and for fome time after it abates, the fpirits of the arthritic are, for the most part, light and cheerful. If this folution be admitted, it will reconcile what Milton told Philips with what he fays in his Elegies, which were probably written before he was ever fubject to any periodical attacks of the malady in question, where he declares that with the advance of fpring he feels the increase of his poetical force-Redeunt in carmina vires;' though, probably, he had little meaning when he made ufe of the expreffion, as it contains nothing more than one of those common place ideas which one poet adopts from another without thought or inquiry.

The flow fale and tardy reputation of the Paradife Loft have always been mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of literary fame. Dr. Johnfon proves that the cafe has not been truly ftated, and that lamentation and wonder have been lavished on an evil that was never felt.

That in the reigns of Charles and James the Paradife Left received no public acclamations is readily confeffed. Wit and literature were on the fide of the Court: and who that folicited favour or the fashion would venture to praife the defender of the regicides? All that he himself could think his due, from evil tongues in evil days, was that reverential filence which was generoully preferved. But it cannot be inferred that his poem was not read, or not, however unwillingly, admired.

The fale, if it be confidered, will juftify the Public. Thofe. who have no power to judge of patt times but by their own, fhould always doubt their conclufions. The fale of books was not in Milton's age what it is in the present. To read was not then a general amufement; neither traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themfelves difgraced by ignorance. The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was every houfe fupplied with a closet of books. Those indeed, who profeffed learning, were not lefs learned than at any other time; but of that middle race of ftudents who read for pleafure or accomplishment, and who buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was then comparatively small. To prove the paucity of readers, it may be fufficient to remark, that the nation had been fatisfied, from 1623 to 1664, that is, forty-one years, with only two editions of the works of Shakespeare, which probably did not together make one thoufand copies.

The fale of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in oppofition to fo much recent enmity, and to a style of verfification new to all and difgufting to many, was an uncommon example of the preva lence of genius. The demand did not immediately encrease; for

many