he may easily be supposed to like, with every fkilful reader; but I fhould not have expected that Cowley, whofe ideas of excellence were different from his own, would have had much of his approbation. His character of Dryden, who fometimes visited him, was, that he was a good rhymist, but no poet.

His theological opinions are faid to have been first Calvinistical; and afterwards, per-, haps when he began to hate the Prefbyteri ans, to have tended towards Arminianism. In the mixed queftions of theology and government, he never thinks that he can recede far enough from popery, or prelacy; but what Baudius fays of Erafmus feems applicable to him, magis habuit quod fugeret, quam quod fequeretur. He had determined rather what to condemn, than what to approve. He has not affociated himself with any denomination of Proteftants; we know rather what he was not than what he was. He was not of the Church of Rome; he was not of the Church of England.

To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and

which is animated only by Faith and Hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by ftated calls to worship, and the falutary influence of example. Milton, who appears to have had a full conviction of the truth of Chriftianity, and to have regarded the Holy Scriptures with the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by any heretical peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the immediate and occafional agency of Providence, yet grew old without any vifible worship. In

the diftribution of his hours, there was no hour of prayer, either folitary, or with his household; omitting publick prayers, he

omitted all.

Of this omiffion the reafon has been fought, upon a fuppofition which ought never to be made, that men live with their own approba tion, and justify their conduct to themselves. Prayer certainly was not thought fuperfluous by him, who reprefents our firft parents as praying acceptably in the state of innocence, and efficaciously after their fall. That he lived without prayer can hardly be affirmed;

his ftudies and meditations were an habitual prayer. The neglect of it in his family was probably a fault for which he condemned himself, and which he intended to correct, but that death, as too often happens, intercepted his reformation.

His political notions were thofe of an acrimonious and furly republican, for which it is not known that he gave any better reason than that a popular government was the most frugal; for the trappings of a monarchy would fet up an ordinary commonwealth. It is furely very fhallow policy, that fuppofes money to be the chief good; and even this, without confidering that the fupport and expence of a Court is, for the most part, only a particular kind of traffick, for which money is circu lated, without any national impoverishment.

Milton's republicanifm was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of greatnefs, and a fullen defire of independence; in petulance impatient of controul, and pride dif dainful of fuperiority, He hated monarchs in the state, and prelates in the church; for he hated all whom he was required to obey.

It is to be fufpected, that his predominant defire was to destroy rather than establish, and that he felt not fo much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority.

It has been obferved, that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it. What we know of Milton's character, in domeftic relations, is, that he was fevere and arbitrary, His family confifted of women; and there appears in his books fomething like a Turkish contempt of females, as fubordinate and inferior beings. That his own daughters might not break the ranks, he fuffered them to be depreffed by a mean and penurious education. He thought woman made only for obedience, and man only for rebellion.

Of his family fome account may be expected. His fifter, first married to Mr. Philips, afterwards married Mr. Agar, a friend of her firft hufband, who fucceeded him in the Crown-office, She had by her first husband Edward and John, the two nephews whom Milton educated; and by her second, two daughters.

1

His brother, Sir Chriftopher, had two daughters, Mary and Catherine *; and a fon Thomas, who fucceeded Agar in the Crownoffice, and left a daughter living in 1749 in Grofvenor-ftreet.

Milton had children only by his first wife; Anne, Mary, and Deborah. Anne, though deformed, married a master-builder, and died of her first child. Mary died fingle. Deborah married Abraham Clark, a weaver in Spital-fields, and lived feventy-fix years, to August 1727. This is the daughter of whom publick mention has been made. She could repeat the first lines of Homer, the Metamorphofes, and fome of Euripides, by having often read them. Yet here incredulity is

* Both these perfons were living at Holloway about the year 1734, and at that time poffeffed fuch a degree of health and strength as enabled them on Sundays and Prayer-days to walk a mile up a steep hill to Highgate chapel. One of them was Ninety-two at the time of her death. Their parentage was known to few, and their names were corrupted into Melton. By the Crown-office mentioned in the two laft paragraphs, we are to understand the Crown-office of the Court of Chancery. H.

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