Was clemency in Charles beyond compare:
And yet thy doom doth prove more grievous far.
Old, sickly, poor, stark blind, thou writest for bread:
So for to live thou'dst call Salmasius from the dead."

Ilnes, which I have here cited, it would be easy to produce many more effusions of malevolence, of which Milton was the object during his life time; and which fully justify his complaints, and our execration of the malignity of party.

As a story, which I have seen in print, (but by whom told or on what authority I know not,) is in perfect harmony with the point and spirit of these verses, it shall be inserted for the amusement of my readers. It bears some internal marks of authenticity, and exhibits very justly the gay and the gloomy malignity of the two royal brothers, Charles and James.

"The Duke of York, as it is reported, expressed one day to the king his brother a great desire to see old Milton of whom he had heard so much. The king replied that he felt no objection to the Duke's satisfying his curiosity: and accordingly, soon afterwards James went privately to Milton's house; where, after an introduction which explained to the old republican the rank of his guest, a free conversation ensued between these very dissimilar and discordant characters. In the course however of the conversation, the Duke asked Milton whether he did not regard the loss of his eye-sight as a judgment inflicted on him for what he had written against the late king. Milton's reply was to this effect; "If your Highness thinks that the calamities which befall us here are indications of the wrath of Heaven, in what manner are we to account for the fate of the king your father? The displeasure of Heaven must upon this supposition have been much greater against him than against me—for I have lost only my eyes, but he lost his head."

Much discomposed by this answer, the Duke soon took his leave and went away. On his return to Court, the first words which he spoke to the king were,-" Brother, you are greatly to blame that you don't have that old rogue Milton hanged." Why-what is the matter, James," said the King, "you seem

But the moderation of his wants still kept him at a distance from poverty; and they, who could suppose him to be unhappy, must have been ill acquainted with the consolations of conscious rectitude, or with the exquisite gratification to be enjoyed by a mind affluent in knowledge, and by an imagination which could range without controll through the spacious walks of the universe.

Soon after Milton's establishment in Jewin street, Ellwood the quaker was introduced to his acquaintance by Doctor Paget. Ellwood, who is one of the most considerable of the writers of his sect, has left behind him a history of his life; and, from his accidental intercourse with the author of Paradise Lost, he is raised into an object of our particular regard. He was the son of an Oxfordshire magistrate; and falling at an early period of life into the opinions of quakerism he incurred the displeasure of his family, and ex

in a heat. What? have you seen Milton?" "Yes," answered the Duke, "I have seen him." "Well," said the King, "in what condition did you find him?" "Condition? why he is old and very poor." "Old and poor! Well, and he is blind toois he not?"-" Yes, blind as a beetle." Why then," observed the King," you are a fool, James, to have him hanged as a pu nishment: to hang him will be doing him a service; it will be taking him out of his miseries-No-if he be old, poor, and blind, he is miserable enough:-in all conscience, let him live!"

posed himself to a variety of distressful incidents. To an ardent zeal for the tenets of his peculiar sect he united a strong passion for literature; which, having been removed prematurely from school by the œconomy of his father, he had hitherto been indulged with few opportunities of gratifying. With the hope of advancing himself in classical knowledge, he now solicited an introduction, in the character of a reader, to Milton; and in this great man, conciliated by the ingenuousness of his manners and by the goodness of his heart, Ellwood soon found a friend as well as an instructor. If the beneficial commerce indeed had not experienced frequent interruptions in consequence of those misfortunes, to which he was subjected as the member of a sect at that juncture the object of particular and violent persecution, the defects of the young quaker's education would probably have been soon and affluently supplied. For the purpose of being near to his new friend, Ellwood settled himself in a lodging in the vicinity of Jewin street; and attended on every afternoon, that of sunday excepted, to read such Roman authors as his patron was desirous of hearing.

In the commencement of this intercourse, Milton was studious to form his reader's

tongue to the foreign pronunciation of the
latin, assigning, as a reason for his conduct,
the impossibility of conversing with foreigners
without this condescension to the habit of
Whether the object were really

their ears.
of the magnitude attributed to it by Milton,
I should be much inclined to question: but
it was not, of course, disputed by Ellwood;
whose perseverance, though with consider-
able difficulty, finally achieved it and suc-
ceeded in accommodating his accents to his
master's taste. As he proceeded in reading
the classics his tones would frequently betray
his ignorance of what he read, and Milton
would then stop him to explain the passage
which seemed not to be understood. This re-
ciprocality of service and reward was soon
however suspended by a severe fit of illness,
which obliged Ellwood to retire to the house
of a friend in the country. On his recovery
he returned to town, and resumed his situa-
tion as reader in our author's study, where he
uniformly experienced the kindness of a friend
and the instructions of a master.
After a
short interval, he was again separated from
this beneficial connexion by the circumstance
of his being scised in a quaker meeting by
a party of soldiers, and detained for a consi¬
derable time with his associates in a succes-

tion

sion of prisons. When he was liberated from these most iniquitous inflictions, he obtained admission into the family of an opulent quaker, at Chalfont in Buckinghamshire, in the quality of instructor to his son: and in this situation, when the plague was ravaging the metropolis, Ellwood was enabled to show his regard for Milton by hiring a small house for him at Chalfont St. Giles.

Here, after another period of absence occasioned by a second imprisonment, the young quaker called upon his friend, and received from him at their first interview a manuscript, which the author desired him to carry home and to read at his leisure. This manuscript was that of Paradise Lost. "After I had with the best attention read it through," says the respectable Ellwood, "I made him another visit, and returned him his book, with due acknowledgment of the favour he had done me in communicating it to me. He asked me how I liked it, and what I thought of it: which I modestly and freely told him; and, after some further discourse, I pleasantly said to him, Thou hast said much here of Paradise lost; but what hast thou to say of Paradise found? He made me no answer, but sat some time in a muse: then broke off that discourse, and fell upon ano