ciety in West-street, for the relief of their poor neighbours,' who were to be sought out by the visitors,-of a supply of food and employment to cottagers' families at Mongewell,of the introduction of the Straw Platt at Avebury.-(Mr. Bernard speaks in high terms of the effects of this manufacture, and endeavours to obviate every objection which had been urged against it,)-and of the Ladies' Schools, and some other charities at Leeds. To these accounts, are added Hints for the manufacture of Split Straw, and Advice to Foundling Apprentices, on the termination of their apprenticeship.

In No. 21 we have accounts of a contagious fever at Kingston upon Hull-of the mode of introducing the new Rumford Cottage Grates in Cottages (an useful paper)*,-of the Montgomery and Pool House of Industry,-of a Sunday school, at Kirkstall, near Leeds, - and of a school for poor children, at Fincham. To these are added a Copy of the regulations of the Society in West-street,' mentioned in the preceding number, and a statement as to the reception and management of the children in the Foundling-hospital at London.' statement is highly creditable to the Governors of this useful charity.

This

No. 22. relates to the Ladies' Committee for promoting the education and employment of the Female Poor,-to a Lying-in Charity, at Woolwich, -to the provision made for the poor at Weymeswould,-to a Charitable Bank at Tottenham for the savings of the poor (how tantalizing !)-to the parochial returns lately made with regard to the state of education in Ireland to a school in the Borough-road, in which education

is

* Mr. Plumtree remarks; In many places, money is expended by gentlemen to purchase firing for the poor; but I really believe that 5s. for a Rumford grate, and the loan of the money for fixing it, to be paid by installments, would go farther in warmth, comfort, and neat appearance, than ten bushels of coals, and that not only for one year, but for every succeeding year.'

+ These returns are from 202 parishes: the evidence collected from which is that above two-thirds of the poor in Ireland are entirely without instruction or the means of education; that whole parishes are without a bible; that some uncharactered itinerants wander from parish to parish, and teach the poor in some ditch, covered with heath and furze, for want of a school-room; and that the Irish poor at the present time are extremely anxious that their children should have the benefit of instruction. Mr. Bernard re. marks on this report that the state of Ireland evinces something defective in point of true policy, and that individual exertions to

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remedy

is conducted with singular economy and dispatch,-and to the House of Refuge at Dublin, a benevolent ayslum. A long Appendix is subjoined, the articles of which we must be excused from enumerating.

The 23d Number is occupied by describing the Mortlake Friendly Society for Women,-a School near Hawkstone, in the County of Salop,-a provision lately made in the island of Tortola; with several papers by way of Appendix, &c.

No. 24 (being the last of this volume) relates to the mode of employing the parish children at Birmingham, and to a Provision for the Poor at Ongar during Sickness. The Appendix includes, among other articles, Lists of the Committee, and Subscribers to this Society.

It is pleasing to trace, in these communications, the benevolent exertions of individuals; and to observe the various efforts made by Christian charity, to correct the vices and miseries of the times.

ART. XI. The Life of John Milton. By Charles Symmons, D.D. of Jesus College, Oxford. 8vo. pp. 565. Ios. 6d. Boards.

Johnson, &c.

OF

FTEN as the biographical canvas has been covered with portraits of the author of "Paradise Lost," we cannot regard this additional delineation of him as superfluous. Indeed, could the departed spirit of Milton himself be conscious of sublunary transactions, it would derive no inconsiderable gratification from this generous and masterly exertion in behalf of his injured fame: it would contemplate with high satisfaction a clergyman of the Established Church boldly standing forwards to repel the shafts of party-malice and detraction, and assidu ously occupied in bestowing ample justice on his distinguished talents and virtues: it would perceive that the cordatior atas, which his prophetic soul anticipated, and the prospect of which solaced him in "the evil days" of which he complained, was no visionary anticipation, but that the bright beams of his reputation were destined to dissipate those mists and clouds which his enemies had raised to sully or obscure their effulgence. Every measure, which the ingenuity of narrow-minded hostility could invent, has been employed to undermine his character; and prejudice has feasted with delight on the slan ders and insinuations, which, in the shape of history, bio. remedy the evil will be ineffectual without the concurrent and re. gular support of Government.

graphy, and criticism, have been levelled against this our distinguished countryman: but, as truth always gains strength and glory from the contests which error imprudently provokes, so men of great and virtuous minds rise ultimately in the regard and estimation of the world, in consequence of the mean attempts of time-serving detractors.

Hume, Warton, and Johnson in particular, looked with eyes askance" on the stern republican Milton; and because they did not approve of his political and religious principles, they have been unjust to his memory. A zealous and an able advocate, however, here volunteers the defence of our great epic poet against all his enemies; and in the ample view which is taken of his life and writings, Dr.Symmons has composed what we may venture to pronounce a complete and finished picture of him. Being a professed whig, and enamoured of the principles of civil and religious liberty, which are interwoven with and constitute the golden threads of the British Constitution, Dr. S. enters on his office con amore; he venerates the character which he undertakes to represent; and he apologizes for the republican of the time of Charles I., without fear of being branded as a preacher of republicanism at the present day, when we enjoy a form of government fraught with blessings which no republic or purely democratic system is calculated to bestow. We are disposed to offer no ordinary measure of approbation of the magnanimity and ingenuousness with which this biographer avows his principles, and on the line of conduct which he has pursued in the memoir before us.

For the political sentiments discoverable in my work (says Dr. S.) I am neither inclined, nor, indeed, able to offer an apology. They flow directly from those principles which I imbibed with my first efforts of reflection, which have derived force from my subsequent reading and observation, which have " grown with my growth, and strengthened with my strength." If they should, therefore, unhappily be erroneous, my misfortune, as I fear, is hopelessly irremediable, for they are now so vitally blended with my thought and my feelings, that with them they must exist or must perish. The nature of these principles will be obviously and immediately apparent to my readers; for I have made too explicit an avowal of my political creed, with reference to the civil and the ecclesiastical system, of which I am fortunately a member, to be under any apprehensions of suffering by misconstruction. If any man should affect to see more deeply into my bosom than I profess to see myself; or to detect an ambush of mischief which I have been studious to cover from observation,-that man will be the object, not of my resentment, but of my pity. I shall be assured that he suffers the infiction of a perverted head or a corrupt heart, and to that I shall contentedly resign him after expressing a simple perhaps, but cer

tainly a sincere wish for his relief from what may justly be considered as the severest of human evils.

I belong to a fallible species, and am, probably, to be numbered with the most fallible of its individuals: but I am superior to fraud, and am too proud for concealment. TRUTH, religious, moral, and political, is what alone I profess to pursue; and if I tancied that I discerned this prime object of my regard by the side of the Mufti or the grand Lama, of the wild demagogues of Athens or the ferocious tribunes of Rome, I would instantly recognise and embrace her. As I find her, however, or find a strong and bright resemblance of her in my own country, I feel that I am not summoned to propitiate duty with the sacrifice of prudence, and that, conscious of speaking honestly, I can enjoy the satisfaction of speaking safely. Without acknowledging any thing in common, but a name, with that malignant and selfish faction which, surrendering principle to passion, inflicted in the earlier periods of the last century, some fatal wounds on the constitution, or with those men, who in later times, have struggled, in the abandonment of their party and its spirit, to retain its honourable appellation,- glory as I profess myself to be a wHIG, to be of the school of SOMMERS and of LOCKE, to arrange myself in the same political class with those enlightened and virtuous statesmen, who framed the BILL OF RIGHTS and the ACT OF SETTLEMENT, and who, presenting a crown, which they had wrested from a pernicious bigot and his family, to the House of HANOVER, gave that most honourable and legitimate of titles, the FREE CHOICE OF THE PEOPLE, to the Sovereign, who now wields the imperial sceptre of Britain.'

Such a writer is peculiarly calculated to be the biographer of Milton; especially when he brings to the task diligence of research, and a mind replete with learning and taste, chastised by sound judgment.

Though Mr. Hayley, in his Life of Milton, prefixed to an edition of his Poetical Works, (of which we gave some account, Vol. xvi. N. S. p. 121.) has been actuated by a motive equally honourable with that of the present author, he was not so minute in his examination, and in the display of justificatory evidence, nor so forcible in argument. Dr. Symmons does not, however, arrogate superiority on that head, but vindicates. his publication of this new memoir on the ground that

The cause of morals, and of the best interests of man, seems to justify that indignation, which would brand, again and again, the hand lifted in violation of the illustrious dead. The dead, indeed, are at rest from their labours, and, far from the reach of human malice, are in possession of their reward; but it is discouraging to the weakness of the living, and is consequently calculated to diminish the incentives to virtuous exertion, when it is perceived that no endowments of nature, no accumulations of knowledge, no just and sacred appropriation of talents, can secure the distinguished mortal from those in-. sults of posthumous calumny, which may bring him from the emi

F3

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nence that he has gained, and may level him with the vulgar of the earth.'

In Dr. S. are combined the biographer, the historian, and the critic in the first of these characters, he presents us with the circumstances of Milton's life; in the second, he animadverts on the prominent features and characters of the times in which he lived and in the last, he judiciously comments on his prose and poetical works.

It is not necessary for us to follow the writer through the several incidents of our great poet's life, which are well known: but the remarks which they suggest often merit attention, as well for their vigor as for their accuracy; and on on some disputed points, the arguments and documents here produced appear to us very satisfactory. After Dr. S.'s examination, the idle tale of Milton having been corporeally punished at college will be no more repeated; and the reasons for the part which he acted on his return from Italy, at the commencement of the civil wars, can be no longer mistaken. It is well known that Dr. Johnson, (Lives of English Poets, Vol. i. p. 141.) in adverting to the conduct of Milton on this occasion, exults on his apparent inactivity, and hastily pronounces that "this is the period of Milton's life from which all his biographers are inclined to shrink :" but Dr. Symmons brings evidence to repel the sneer of the tory at the republican. He clearly proves, from a passage in the Defensio Secunda, that the part which Milton assigned to himself was taken with much deliberation, and is justified by the reasons which he alleges for his choice. We shall give the passage of his present biographer relative to this point, together with a quotation from the Defensio Secunda, which is now little known; and which probably Dr. Johnson never read, since otherwise he could not have affected such merriment at Milton's "great promises and small performance."

• Determined, from his first acquaintance with the struggles of his country, to devote himself to her service, he did not hesitate with respect to the part which he was to act. Conscious of his own proper strength, and sensible that genius, armed with knowledge, was a power of far greater and more extensive efficiency than the bodily force of any individual, he decided in favour of the pen against the sword; and stationed himself in the closet, where he was himself an host, rather than in the field, where every muscular common man would be his superior. This is substantially the account which we have from himself; and the motives of his conduct must obtain our approbation as honourable and wise.*'

It

Atque illi quidem Deo perinde confisi, servitutem honestissimis armis pefulere: cujus laudis etsi nullam partem mihi vindico, á reprehensione

tamen