ther subject. After the sickness was over, and the city well cleansed and become safely habitable again, he returned thither; and when afterwards I went to wait upon him, (which I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions led me to London,) he showed me his second poem, called Paradise Regained, and in a pleasant tone said to me, this is owing to you, for you put it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which before I had not thought of."

The term of Milton's residence at Chalfont has not been precisely specified; but from the circumstances to which it was accommodated, the prevalence and the extirpation of the plague in the capital, we may infer that it extended from the June or the July of 1665 to the March or the April of the following year. In this period, as I fully concur in opinion with its editor, Mr. Dunster, was the poem of Paradise Regained not only begun, but brought to its conclusion. It was shown, as we have just been informed, to Ellwood on his first visit to London after the author's return from Chalfont; and there is nothing in the poem, whether we respect its length or the style of its composition, evidently marked with the characters of haste, which can induce us to reject as improbable

the fact of its production, by a mind like Milton's, in the space of ten months.

Though he was destined at this juncture of his party's disgrace to experience the neglect if not the enmity of his ungrateful countrymen, Milton still lived in the estimation of the learned and the illustrious of other nations; by whom his safety, in this fatal season, was acknowledged to be an object of solicitous interest. A rumour had been circulated of his having fallen under the desolating disease; and his foreign friends were anxious to have their apprehensions relieved, and to express their gratification on the event of his escape. Of this we possess authentic evidence in the last of his familiar epistles, written in answer at this time to Peter Heimbach;' a learned German, who had formerly, as it would appear, been assisted by our author's instructions, and who was now advanced to a station of dignity and trust in the Electoral government of Brandenburgh. The letter in question is of a

I have seen a gratulatory address to Cromwell, written in Latin by this Peter Heimbach, and printed in London in 1656. Of this production I cannot speak in terms of high commendation. Violence of praise may be indulged to a professed panegyric: but the whole composition is stiff and inflated, and in a taste very different from that of his great correspondent.

nature to merit insertion, and fully to compensate the reader for its short interruption of the narrative.

Ornatissimo Viro Petro Heimbachio, Electoris Brandenburgici Consiliario.

Si inter tot funera popularium meorum, anno tam gravi ac pestilenti, abreptum me quoque, ut scribis, ex rumore præsertim aliquo credidisti, mirum non est; atque ille rumor apud vestros, ut videtur, homines, si ex eo quod de salute meâ soliciti essent increbuit, non displicet; indicium enim suæ erga me benevolentiæ fuisse existimo. Sed Dci benignitate, qui tutum mihi receptum in agris paraverat, et vivo adhuc et valeo; utinam ne inutilis, quicquid muneris in hâc vitâ restat mihi peragendum. Tibi verò tam longo intervallo venisse in mentem mei, pergratum est: quanquam, prout rem verbis exornas, præbere aliquem suspicionem videris, oblitum mei te potius esse, qui tot virtutum diversarum conjugium in me, ut scribis, admirere. Ego certè ex tot conjugiis numerosam nimis prolem expavescerem, nisi constaret in re arctâ rebusque duris virtutes ali maximè et vigere: tametsi earum una non ità bellè charitatem hospitii mihi reddidit: quam

enim politicam tu vocas, ego pietatem in patriam dictam abs te mallem, ea me pulchro nomine delinitum prope, ut ita dicam, expatriavit. Reliquarum tamen chorus clarè concinit. Patria est, ubicunque est benè. Finem faciam, si hoc prius abs te impetravero, ut, si quid mendosè descriptum aut non interpunctum repereris, id puero, qui hæc excepit, latinè prorsus nescienti velis imputare; cui singulas plane literulas annumerare non sine miseriâ dictans cogebar. Tua interim viri merita, quem ego adolescentem spei eximiæ cognovi, ad tam honestum in principis gratiâ provexisse te locum, gaudeo, cæteraque fausta omnia et cupio tibi, et spero. Vale..

Londini, Aug. 15, 1666.

To the most accomplished Peter Heimbach, Coun sellor of State to the Elector of Brandenburgh.

"That, in a year so pestilential and so fatal as the present, amidst the deaths of so many of my compatriots, you should have believed me likewise, as you write me word, in consequence too of some rumour or other, to have fallen a victim, excites in me no surprise: and if that rumour owed its currency

among you, as it seems to have done, to an anxiety for my welfare, I feel flattered by it as an instance of your friendly regard. Through the goodness of God however, who had provided me with a safe retreat in the country, I still live and am well; and, would that I could add, not incompetent to any duty which it may be my further destiny to discharge.

But that after so long an interval I should have recurred to your remembrance, is highly gratifying to me; though to judge from your eloquent embellishments of the matter, when you profess your admiration of so many different virtues united in my single person, you seem to furnish some ground for suspecting that I have indeed escaped from your recollection. From such a number of unions, in fact, I should have cause to dread a progeny too numerous, were it not admitted that in disgrace and adversity the virtues principally increase and flourish. One of them however has not made me any very grateful return for her entertainment; for she whom you call the political, (though I would rather that you had termed her love of country,) after seducing me with her fine name, has nearly, if I may so express myself,