Of Hobbes as a man, our estimate must be much less favourable. Vain to a ridiculous excess of his talents,-unable to endure contradiction, contemptuous towards his opponents,-expecting all men to bow implicitly to his decisions, while he himself would listen to none,pertinacious in adhering to his opinions, even after they had been proved by mathematical demonstration to be incorrect, an advocate of doctrines in theory which his life denied in practice,-a deserter of his country whenever her troubles began,-a deserter of his sovereign exiled in a foreign land,-in youth, licentious," in manhood, selfish and arrogant,-in old age, morose and obstinate, he presents a lamentable instance of the insufficiency of mere talent to constitute a true philosopher.

As we have already mentioned his principal works, it will be unnecessary to repeat them here. There is no complete edition of them; but the largest collections are the one printed at Amsterdam during his life-time, and one published at London, 1758, in a folio volume, entitled the Moral and Political works of Thomas Hobbes.' Both are now very scarce and valuable. The Leviathan' has been several times reprinted, but not of late years.

John Milton.

BORN A. D. 1608.-DIED A.D. 1674.

JOHN MILTON, the champion of English liberty, and the glory of English literature, was born in London on the 9th of December, 1608. His ancestry was respectable in descent, and possessed considerable property; but the father of our poet, having displeased his father by embracing the doctrines of the reformation, had been disinherited by him, and compelled to gain his subsistence in the profession of the law, in which, however, he realised such a fortune as enabled him soon to retire from business into the country. The mother of our poet is said by Wood, on the authority of Aubrey, to have been a Bradshaw; but her own grandson, Phillips, in his life of Milton, affirms that she was a Caston, and of Welsh descent. Milton's father had enjoyed the education of a gentleman at Christ-church, Oxford; and that he continued attached to elegant literature throughout his life, is apparent from the beautiful Latin verses in which his son has addressed him. He was also a capital musician, and a voluminous composer of music. His scientific skill has been praised by Hawkins and Burney, and it would appear that he sometimes composed the words of his madrigals and songs.

Young Milton received his first instruction at the hands of a private tutor. The person selected for this charge was Thomas Young, whom Aubrey contemptuously describes as "a puritan in Essex, who cutt his haire short." That the puritan tutor so conducted himself as to win the respect and affection of his pupil, we have good evidence in the writings of the latter. From the tuition of Mr Young, Milton was re

10 This is very delicately hinted in the Vita Hobbesii, "Etate adhuc intra juventutis terminos constanti (liceat rerum fateri) nec abstemius fuit nec proves."

moved to St Paul's school, then under the care of Alexander Gill This was probably about the year 1623, in which year Milton's domes. tic preceptor is known to have gone abroad with the view of obtaining larger freedom of conscience than he could enjoy in his native country. It was in this year also that Milton produced his first recorded poetical essays, the Translations of the 114th and 136th Psalms.' His ode 'On the death of a fair Infant,' written soon after, displays more evident dawnings of real genius.

6

In February, 1624-5, Milton was admitted of Christ's college, Cambridge, where he enjoyed the tuition of William Chappel, afterwards bishop of Cork and Ross, in Ireland. Hayley says, that he was "at first an object of partial severity, but afterwards of general admiration, in his college." Probably our young student evinced too great a leaning towards the puritanic principles which were at that time beginning to manifest themselves within the walls of his college, to the no small alarm and uneasiness of many of the university dignitaries. It appears that he also ventured to differ considerably in opinion with some of the college authorities as to the plan of studies he ought to pursue. But whatever was the cause of his cool treatment at first, he soon extorted the applause of his tutors and fellow students by the beauty and elegance of his college exercises, particularly his Latin verses. "Many of his elegies," says Dr Johnson, "appear to have been written in his eighteenth year, by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with nice discernment. I once heard Mr Hampton, the translator of Polybius, remark, what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman who, after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classic elegance." Aubrey has left on record a gossipping story about our poet having suffered the indignity of corporal punishment while at Cambridge, but there is no evidence whatever that Milton ever underwent any severer college discipline than that of a temporary removal, or 'rustication,' from Cambridge, and that not for any immoral irregularity, but on account of some little petulance or stubbornness of temper, which on one occasion he exhibited towards Dr Bainbridge, then master of Christ's church.2

In 1632, having taken the degree of M.A., Milton finally quitted Cambridge, and retired to his father's country house at Horton, near Colnebrook, in Buckinghamshire. Here he spent five years, during which period he read over the Greek and Latin classics, and is believed to have written those matchless pieces, the Arcades,' Lycidas,' 'L'Allegro,' 'Il Penseroso,' and 'Comus.' There is indeed a tradition that Milton wrote most of his pastoral pieces at Forest Hill, a small village about three miles from Oxford, but the weight of evidence on this subject is in favour of Horton.

In 1637, Milton's mother died, and in the following year he proceeded to the continent, chiefly with the view of visiting Italy, to whose modern, as well as ancient literature, he was passionately attached. After staying a few days in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Grotius, he pursued his route to Nice, where he embarked for Genoa, and thence proceeded to Pisa, Florence, Rome, and Naples. While at Florence he visited the celebrated Galileo, whose philosophical doctrines

MS. Mus. Ashm. Oxon.

See Warton's observations on this point.

had been pronounced rank heresies by the papal court, and who was now suffering a species of voluntary exile at Arcetri. Rolli, in his life of Milton, suggests that the poet must have caught some ideas in the 'Paradise Lost,' approaching towards the later philosophy of Newton, from his converse with the Italian astronomer, or some of his disciples, at Florence. From Florence he passed to Rome, where he resided two months, feasting his senses on the glorious productions of ancient and modern art which that city contained, and enjoying the acquaintance and friendship of many distinguished scholars. It was originally his intention to have extended his tour to Sicily and Greece, but the rumour of civil dissensions reached his ears from his native country, and the spirit of the patriot proved too strong for the taste of the scholar, and he determined instantly to return and share the fortunes of the friends of liberty in England.

After an absence of fifteen months, Milton found himself again in London, at the moment when Charles was about to embark on his second expedition against the Scotch. Johnson affects to ridicule Milton for the mode in which he chose to exhibit his patriotisin at this juncture. He would have had him to fight the battle of freedom on the field, and not from the closet. But Milton knew where his strength lay, and he brought to the assistance of his fellow-patriots at this crisis of his country's fate what was better than a host of armed men. "On his return from travelling," he tells in his 'Second Defence,' "he found all mouths open against the bishops, some complaining of their vices, and others quarrelling at the very order; and thinking, from such beginnings, a way might be opened to true liberty, he heartily engaged in the dispute, as well to rescue his fellow-citizens from slavery, as to help the puritan ministers, who were inferior to the bishops in learning." His first efforts in the field which he had thus chosen for himself as the arena on which he would fight the great battle of his country's liberty and of human freedom, was the publication of a work entitled, Of Reformation in England, and the causes that hitherto have hindered it.' In this work, though frequently disfigured with the bitterness and abusiveness which seems almost inseparable from polemical controversy, we meet with many noble passages, in splendour of composition as well as justness of sentiment, fully worthy of John Milton. We must make room for a single specimen. "But to dwell no longer in characterising the depravities of the church, and how they sprung, and how they took increase; when I recall to mind at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the church,-how the bright and blissful reformation (by divine power) struck through the black and settled night of ignorance and antichristian tyranny, methinks a sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that reads or hears, and the sweet odour of the returning gospel imbathe his soul with the fragrancy of heaven. Then was the sacred Bible sought out of the dusty corners where profane falsehood and neglect had thrown it, the schools opened,-divine and human learning raked out of the embers of forgotten tongues, the princes and cities trooping apace to the new erected banner of salvation, the martyrs, with the unresistible might of weakness, shaking the powers of darkness, and scorning the fiery rage of the old red dragon."

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Archbishop Usher and Bishop Hall replied to Milton and the other writers on the same side, the former in his Apostolical Institution of Episcopacy,' and the latter in An Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament.' In the course of the same year Milton answered both. He refers to these replies, and to two other productions of his indefatigable pen, in the following passage from his Second Defence:' "Afterwards, when two bishops of superior distinction vindicated their privileges against some principal ministers, I thought that on those topics, to the consideration of which I was led solely by my love of truth and my reverence of Christianity, I should not probably write. worse than those who were contending only for their own emoluments and usurpations. I therefore answered the one in two books, of which the first is inscribed, Concerning Prelatical Episcopacy,' and the other, 'Concerning the mode of Ecclesiastical Government;' and I replied to the other in some ، Animadversions,' and soon after in an ، Apology.' On this occasion it was supposed that I brought a timely succour to the ministers, who were hardly a match for the eloquence of their opponents; and from that time I was actively employed in refuting any answers that appeared." The Animadversions' were directed against a defence of Hall's Humble Remonstrance,' supposed to have been written either by the bishop's son or his nephew.

In 1643, Milton entered into the married state. His wife was Mary Powel, a young lady of good extraction, but the match, which appears to have been a hasty made up one, proved unfortunate, and the lady having obtained permission to visit her relatives very soon after her marriage, refused to return to her husband's house. Phillips says that she was instigated to this conduct by her cavalier relatives, who abhorred the political sentiments of her husband. Aubrey alleges that she found her husband's mode of life too solitary and studious for her, “who had been brought up and bred where there was a great deal of company and merriment." Whatever was the cause of her desertion of her husband, she soon saw reason to repent of her indiscretion, and flung herself upon his generosity. Her appeal was listened to, and Milton, though he had, provoked by the conduct of his wife, already laid his views on the subject of divorce before the public, and come to the conclusion that the nuptial tie was dissoluble, not less on account of hopeless incompatibility of temper than for positive adultery, not only received his penitent wife again to his bed and board, but soon after, when her family, who had countenanced her desertion, were involved in the general ruin of the royal cause, took the whole of them into his house, and exerted his influence for their protection.

At the beginning of the changes, Milton had chosen the intolerancy of the bishops for the subject of his attack, and had written with incomparable energy and eloquence against the corrupt hierarchy. As soon as he saw his opinions on this subject, and on religious toleration in general, beginning to prevail, he abandoned the posts he had thus taken and fortified to the defence of other hands, and assailed some new outworks of the great system of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny. In 1644, he published an eloquent treatise on Education, in which he argued vigorously for a large and liberal course of study, eminently fitted to imbue the minds of youth with sentiments of rational liberty. In the same year he published a still nobler treatise, his Areopagiti

ca, a Speech for the liberty of unlicensed printing,'-a work with which every Englishman should be familiar. Its object was to establish the freedom of the press against the sentiments of the Presbyterian party who contended for an Imprimatur.' Hitherto he had fought the battle of the Presbyterians against prelacy; but he no sooner discovered their hostility to liberty of thought, than he turned his mighty weapons against them. We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of quoting one passage from this sublime treatise :-" I deny not," says he, "but that it is of greatest concernment in the church and commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve, as in a phial, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons' teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. It is true no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse. We should be wary, therefore, what persecution we raise against the living labours of public men, how we spill that seasoned life of man, preserved and stored up in books; since we see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom; and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that etheral and essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than a life." Of this treatise it has been truly said," It is the finest specimen extant of generous scorn. And very remarkable it is that Milton, who broke the ground on this great theme, has exhausted the arguments which bear upon it. He opened the subject; he closed it. And were there no other monument of his patriotism and his genius, for this alone he would deserve to be held in perpetual veneration."3

In 1645 was published the first collection of Milton's early poems, both English and Latin. The publisher was Humphrey Moseley, who tells the reader, in his Address, that "the author's more peculiar excellency in these studies was too well known to conceal his papers, or to keep me from attempting to solicit them from him. Let the event guide itself which way it will, I shall deserve of the age by bringing into the light as true a birth as the muses have brought forth since our famous Spencer wrote, whose poems, in these English ones, are as rarely imitated as sweetly excelled." It is highly probable that Moseley did suggest this publication to Milton, who at this time was more desirous of arousing his countrymen to vindicate and secure their civil

The Gallery of Portraits, vol. i. p. 47.