one hundred

the contempo

and from the latter, a present, improperly called royal, of fifty guineas. She strongly

this small sun resembled her father's portrait, and possessed wretchedness, good sense with genteel manners. By the

and the obsd affection, also, which she discovered for her as I am infor father, many years after his death, she seems to have been intitled to that partial regard may, 1754 ; a with which he is reported to have distinguished'her. Of her seven sons and three daughters

, two only left any offspring; Caleb, who, marrying in the East Indies, had two sons, whose history cannot be traced; and Elizabeth, who married Thomas Foster,of the same profession with her father, and had by him three sons and four daughters, who all died young

and without issue. In

penury

and
age,

she was discovered in a little chandler's shop, and brought forward to the public notice by the active benevolence of Doctor Birch and Doctor Newton. In consequence of this awakened attention to the grand-daughter of Milton, Comus was “ acted for her benefit, and Johnson, associated, at that time as he was, in the injurious labours of the infamous Lander, did not hesitate to supply the occasional prologue. The produce of this benefit was only

bable, expired mortal Milto

Some of 4 supplied resp family, seem the fact of h bed we hav Philips but, sonnet on he

to its cause;

this lady die of more tha in. When I the birth

P was also m

* This parag

Thomas Hollis,

« On Thursd 66th

year of her sustained with Foster, granddau

Mine, Purificat

as

one hundred and thirty pounds; and, with this small sum between her and her former

wretchedness, she relapsed into indigence ties and the obscurity of her shop. She died, : as I am informed by a paragraph” in one of

the contemporary newspapers, on the 9th of may, 1754; and with her, as it is highly probable, expired the last descendant of the immortal Milton.

Some of the little information, which she si cater supplied respecting her grandfather and his Wiados

family, seems to have been erroneous. For the fact of his second wife's dying in childbed we have the testimony, not only of Philips but, of Milton himself, who in the sonnet on her death makes a direct"allusion to its cause; and yet Mrs. Foster affirmed that this lady died of a consumption, at a period of more than three months after her lyingin. When Mrs. Foster mentioned France, as the birth place of our author's father, she was also mistaken; and she was again un

.

resembled hit ticular intel] ous of minu

nile

Reynolds, a

* This pictu

questionably wrong if she affirmed, as it is said, that her mother and her aunts had not been taught, and were unable to write. When she mentioned, however, that her grandfather portraits of seldom went abroad during the latter years rous engravi of his life, and was, at that time, constantly them, may f visited by persons of distinction among his poems countrymen and foreigners, her relation is

in the “ Meil supported by its probability and by the con

On the b currence of his contemporary biographers. Cooper, (whị She spoke of three portraits of her great ancestor, which had been painted at different

very erroneo periods of his life; the first when he was at school; the second when he was about the age of twenty-five, and the last when he was advanced in years.

The first of these portraits is that painted rity of Aub in 1618, by Cornelius Jansen, which we have noticed in one of the first pages of our works. It is a half-length picture of the boy Milton; and, having been first purchased by Mr. Charles Stanhope from the executors of Milton's widow, became, at the sale of Mr. Stanhope's effects, the property of the late Mr. Hollis, with whose family, it remains. Of the two other portraits, unless the last be that crayon drawing by Fairthorne, for which Milton sate in his sixty-second year and which is reported to have the most strongly

who was hen this circums of a fact, wl

Milton's a spread ea and beaked

these arms,

seal his letto

the possessi

On the pic affected by the exclamations,

ste resembled him,' I can communicate no par

ticular intelligence. They who are desir

ous of minute information respecting the *** portraits of this great man, and the nume

rous engravings which have been made from them, may find it in the edition of his juvenile poems published by Mr. Warton, and in the “ Memoirs of Thomas Hollis."!

On the back of the miniature picture by T Cooper, (which was purchased by Sir Joshua

Reynolds, and is said, though, as I conceive, very erroneously, to be of Milton,) is written,

“ This picture belonged to Deborah Milton, c. te wa

who was her father's amanuensis.” I adduce this circumstance as an additional attestation of a fact, which I have related on the authority of Aubrey and Wood.

Milton's armorial bearings were, argent, a spread eagle, with two heads, gules, legged and beaked sable. A small silver seal with these arms, with which he was accustomed to seal his letters, is still preserved. It came into the possession of the late Mr. John Payne on

the death of Foster, the husband of Milton's granddaughter; and was sold by Mr. Payne to Mr. Thomas Hollis, in 1761, for three guineas.