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proficiency made by the perfons fo manu

ducted; where common good-manners

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would reftrain him from taxing the hebetude, the idleness, the indolence, and, indifference, of any ftudents, except of himfelf 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.

* Philips, p. xxi.

But it was

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furely the bufinefs of a new narrative to correct their inaccuracies, and not invidiously to represent Milton as performing wonders, which it is not pretended by him, who knew the beft, that he did perform; and then to fhew the impracticability of the thing by remarks borrowed from his informer, and put upon the reader as the product of his own fagacity.

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In another place the Doctor fays * "From this wonder-working academy I "do not know that there ever proceeded (6 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 per

* Johnson, p. 31.

3

"haps

"haps none of my readers has ever

"heard."

Every writer may prefume, conjecture, and believe, as much as he pleases in all cafes where he cannot be contra

dicted; and so may we. Our answers to

this then are,

There

1. Bernardus non vidit omnia. may have been men and things of which Dr. Johnson hath no knowledge. Wood fays, both Milton's nephews were writers; and there may be ftill more genuine products of Milton's fcholaftic inftitution than Dr. Johnfon ever heard of.

2. From this reflection it may be inferred, that Milton's pupils were not fo

* Ath. Oxon, vol. I. Fasli, p. 263.

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numerous as the Doctor's hypothefis requires they fhould have been.

3. The ftudents in Milton's academy (being the fons of men of like fpirit and principles with their mafter) would not, upon leaving his boarding-fchool, vapour away their patriotifm in writing books; but proceed to scenes of action not very favourable to the Muses, or philofophical fpeculation.

Though fome of Milton's pupils might, in the days of their maturity, write like angels, their performances in favour of Liberty would be execrated into obfcurity and contempt, upon the turn of the times, by the able proficients in the noble science of licenfing.

The

The Doctor, fpeaking of Milton's Areopagitica, fays, "The danger of "fuch unbounded liberty [of unlicensed

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printing], and the danger of bound

"ing it, have produced a problem, in "the science of government, which bu"man understanding feems unable to "folve *."

Let us then have recourse to a divine understanding for the folution of it. Let both the tares and the wheat grow together till the harveft, left while ye gather up the tares, ye root up alfo the wheat with them.

Next follows a curious fee-faw of the arguments pro and con.

New Narrative, p. 45.

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