time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems appeared, in which the Allegro and Penferofo, with fome others, were first published.

He had taken a larger houfe in Barbican for the reception of fcholars; but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted refuge for a while, occupied his rooms. In time, however, they went away; and the "houfe again," fays Philips, 66 now "looked like a houfe of the Muses only, though the acceffion of fcholars was "not great. Poffibly his having pro"ceeded fo far in the education of "youth, may have been the occafion of "his adverfaries calling him pedagogue "and school-mafter; whereas it is well

"known

"known he never fet up for a publick "school, to teach all the young fry of "a parifh; but only was willing to im"part his learning and knowledge to "relations, and the fons of gentlemen "who were his intimate friends; and "that neither his writings nor his way "of teaching ever favoured in the leaft "of pedantry."

Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and what might be confeffed without dif grace. Milton was not a man who could become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his warmeft friends seem not to have found; they therefore shift and palliate. He did not fell literature to all comers at an open fhop; he was a cham

a chamber-milliner, and measured his commodities only to his friends.

Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this ftate of degradation, tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise his character again, has a mind to invest him with military splendour: "He is much mistaken," he fays, "if there was not about this time a defign of making him an adjutant

66

'general in Sir William Waller's army. "But the new-modelling of the army

66

proved an obstruction to the defign."

An event cannot be fet at a much greater diftance than by having been only defigned, about fome time, if a man be not much mistaken. Milton fhall be pedagogue no longer; for, if Philips

be

be not mistaken, somebody at fome time defigned him for a foldier.

About the time that the army was new-modelled (1645) he removed to a fmaller houfe in Holbourn, which opened backward into Lincoln's Inn-Fields. He is not known to have published any thing afterwards till the king's death, when, finding his murderers condemned by the Prefbyterians, he wrote a treatise to justify it, and to compofe the minds of the people.

He made fome Remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the Irish Rebels. 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, firft willingly admitted and then habitually indulged, if objections, by being overlooked, 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 fufpected 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,

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