our opinion, is not a little defective in moral and metaphyfical fcience; nor has he, in every inftance, overtaken the latest difcoveries and hypothetical theories. Yet the work before us is well adapted to the purpofe for which it is defigned, an easy and popular introduction, for the ufe of ladies and others, to the ftudy of nature. Dr. Gregory has the happy talent of communicating his ideas, even on abftrufe fubjects, in a precife, intelligible, and perfpicuous manner. THE ART. VI. Hayley's Life of Milton. [Concluded from our loft Number. ] HE name of Milton's mother, we are informed, was, Cafton, of Welsh extraction. She was a woman of exemplary character, and particularly distinguished by her extenfive charity. His father, though immerfed himfelf in a lucrative fituation, feems to have retained great elegance of mind, and to have amufed himself with literature and mufic. A parent who could enliven the drudgery of a dull profeffion by a variety of elegant purfuits, muft have been happy to difcern, and eager to cherish, the firft dawnings of genius in his child. In this point of view we may contemplate, with peculiar delight, the infantine portrait of Milton, by that elegant and faithful artist, Cornelius Janfen. Aubrey, the antiquarian, obferving, in his manufcript memoirs of our author, that he was ten years old when this picture was drawn, affirms, that he was then a poet.' This expreffion may lead us to imagine, that the portrait was executed to encourage the infant author; and if fo, it might operate as a powerful incentive to his future exertion. The permanent bias of an active spirit often originates in the petty incidents of childhood; and as no human mind ever glowed with a more intenfe, or with a purer flame of literary ambition, than the mind of Milton, it may not be unpleafing to conjecture how it first caught the fparks that gradually mounted to a blaze of unrivalled vehemence and splendour. His education, as Dr. Newton has well obferved, united the oppofite advantages of private and public instruction.' Mr. Hayley gives an account of the education of Milton, his travels abroad, the acquaintance he made with illuftrious characters, the adventures that befel him, and the ftate and progress of his mind in different periods and fituations. On his return to England in 1640, he procured a refidence in London, ample enough for himfelf and his books, and felt happy in renewing his interrupted ftudies. · At At that time the current of popular opinion ran with great vehemence against epifcopacy. He was prepared to catch the spirit of the time, and to become an advocate for ecclefiaftical reformation, by having peculiar and domeftic grounds of complaint against religious oppreffion. His favourite preceptor had been reduced to exile, and his father difinherited, by intolerance and fuperftition. He wrote, therefore, with the indignant enthusiasm of a man resenting the injuries of those who are most entitled to his love and veneration. The ardour of his affections confpired with the warmth of his fancy to enflame him with that puritanical zeal which blazes fo intenfely in his controverfial productions. No lefs than four of these were publifhed within two years after his return; and he thus fpeaks of the motives that led him to this fpecies of compofition, in his Second Defence. Being animated by this univerfal outcry against the bishops, as I perceived that men were taking the true road to liberty, and might proceed with the utmost rectitude from thefe beginnings to deliver human life from all bafe fubjection, if their difcipline, drawing its fource from religion, proceeded to morals and political institutions ; as I had been trained from my youth to the particular knowledge of what belonged to divine, and what to human jurifdiction; and as I thought I should deferve to forfeit the power of being useful to mankind, if I now failed to affift my country and the church, and fo many brethren, who, for the fake of the gospel, were expofing themselves to peril, I refolved, though my thoughts had been preengaged by other defigns, to transfer to this object all my talents and all my application. First, therefore, I wrote of reformation in England two books addreffed to a friend; afterwards, when two bifhops of eminence had afferted their caufe against the leading minifters of the oppofite party, as I conceived that I could argue, from a love of truth and a fenfe of Chriftian duty, not lefs forcibly than my antagonists (who contended for lucre and their own unjuft dominion), I answered one of them in two books with the following titles, Of Prelatical Epifcopacy'-' Of Church Government;' and the other, firft in Animadverfions upon the Remonftrant's Defence against Smectymnuus;' and, fecondly, in my Apology.' As the minifters were thought hardly equal to their opponent in eloquence, I lent them my aid, and from that time, if they made any farther reply, I was a party concerned.' I have inferted this paffage at full length, because it gives us a clear infight into the motives of Milton on his firft engaging in controverfy, and discovers the high opinion which he entertained both of the Chriflian purity and the argumentative powers of his own culti vated mind. The ambition of Milton was as pure as his genius was fub. lime. His first object, on every occafion, was to merit the approbation of his confcience and his God. When this molt important point was fecured, he feems to have indulged the predominant paffion of great minds, and to have exulted, with a triumph proportioned to his toil, in the celebrity he acquired. He must have been infenfible, indeed, indeed, to public applause, had he not felt elated by the fignal honours which were paid to his name in various countries, as the eloquent defender of the English nation. This I can truly affirm,' fays Milton, in mentioning the reception of his great political performance, that as foon as my defence of the people was published, and read with avidity, there was not, in our metropolis, any ambaffador from any ftate or fovereign, who did not either congratulate me if we met by chance, or expreís a defire to receive me at his house, or vifit me at mine.' In a fortunate efcape from the grafp of triumphant and vindictive power, Milton may be confidered as terminating his political life. Commencing from his return to the continent, it had extended to a period of twenty years; in three of thefe he had been afflicted with partial but increafing blindness, and in fix he had been utterly blind. His exertions, in this period of his life, had expofed him to infinite obloquy; but his generous and enlightened country, whatever may be the ftate of her political opinions, will remember, with becoming equity and pride, that the fublimest of her poets, though deceived, as he certainly was, by extraordinary pretenders to public virtue, and subject to great illufion in his ideas of government, is entitled to the firft of encomiums, the praife of being truly an honeft man: fince it was affuredly his conftant aim to be the steady, difinterested adherent and encomiaft of truth and juftice: hence we find him continually difplaying thofe internal bleflings, which have been happily called, the clear witneffes of a benign nature,' an innocent confcience, and a fatisfied understanding. Such is the imperfection of human existence, that mistaken notions and principles are perfectly compatible with elevation, integrity, and fatisfaction of mind. The writer must be a flave of prejudice, or a fycophant to power, who would represent Milton as deficient in any of thefe noble endowments. Even Addifon feems to lofe his rare Chriftian candour, and Hume his philofophical precifion, when these two celebrated, though very different authors, fpeak harfhly of Milton's political character, without paying due acknowledgment to the rectitude of his heart. I truft, the probity of a very ardent but uncorrupted enthufiaft is, in fome measure, vindicated in the course of thefe pages, happy if they promote the completion of his own manly with to be perfectly known, if they impress a just and candid estimate of his merits and mistakes on the temperate mind of his country. I lament that the neceffity of inveftigating many misreprefentations, and of correcting much afperity against him, has frequently obliged me to fpeak rather in the tone of an advocate, than of a common biographer; but I may fay, in the words of the great Roman author, pleading the caufe of a poet infinitely lefs entitled to On the restoration of Charles II. Milton had been Latin fecretary to Cromwell, and written in defence of the protector and commonwealth. ENG. REV. VOL. XXVIII. NOV. 1796. Hh love love and admiration, Hunc ego non diligam, non admirer, non omni ratione defendendum putem? Atque fic a fummis hominus eruditiffimifque accepimus, cæterarum rerum ftudia et doctrina, et præceptis, et arte conftare; poetam natura ipfa valere, et mentis viribus excitari, et quafi divino quodam fpiritu afflari.'-If poetical powers may ever deferve to be regarded as heavenly infpiration, fuch undoubtedly were thofe of Milton; and the ufe to which he applied them was worthy of the fountain whence they flowed. He is preeminent in that class of poets, very happily deferibed in the two following verfes by the amiable Lord Falkland: Who, while of heav'n the glories they recite, It is by the epic compofitions of Milton alone that England may efteem herself as a rival to antiquity in the highest province of literature; and it appears therefore juft, that the memory of the man, to whom he is indebted for the pureft, the most extenfive, and permanent glory, fhould for ever excite her affectionate ve neration.' EXTRACT from Mr. HAYLEY's Conjectures on the Origin of Paradife Loft. When Voltaire vifited England in the early part of his life, and was engaged in foliciting a fubfcription for his Henriade, which firft appeared under the title of The League,' he published, in our language, an effay on epic poetry; a work which, though written under fuch difadvantage, poffeffes the peculiar vivacity of this extraordinary writer, and is indeed fo curious a fpecimen of his versatile talents, that although it has been fuperfeded by a French compofition of greater extent, under the fame title, it ought, I think, to have found a place in that fignal monument to the name of Voltaire, the edition of his works in ninety-two volumes. As my reader may be gratified in feeing the English ftyle of this celebrated foreigner, I will transcribe, without abridgment, what he fays of Andreini: Milton, as he was travelling through Italy in his youth, faw at Florence a comedy called Adamo, writ by one Andreini, a player, ⚫ and dedicated to Mary de Medicis, Queen of France. The fubject of the play was the Fall of Man; the actors, God, the devils, the angels, Adam, Eve, the Serpent, Death, and the feven mortal fins. That topic, fo improper for a drama, but fo fuitable to the abfurd genius of the Italian ftage (as it was at that time), was handled in a manner entirely conformable to the extravagance of the defign. The fcene opens with a chorus of angels, and a che. rubim thus fpeaks for the reft:- Let the rainbow be the fiddleftick of the fiddle of the heavens ! let the planets be the notes of our mufic! let time beat carefully the measure, and the winds make the harps, &c. Thus the play begins, and every scene rises above Milton pierced through the abfurdity of that performance to the hidden majefty of the fubject, which, being altogether unfit for the ftage, yet might be (for the genius of Milton, and for his only) the foundation of an epic poem. He took from that ridiculous trifle the first hint of the nobleft • work which human imagination has ever attempted, and which he executed more than twenty years after. In the like manner Pythagoras owed the invention of music to the noise of the hammer of a blacksmith; and thus, in our days, Sir Ifaac Newton, walking in his garden, had the first thought of his fyftem of gravitation upon feeing an apple falling from a tree.' It was thus that, in the year 1727, Voltaire, then studying in England, and collecting all poffible information concerning our great 'epic poet, accounted for the origin of Paradife Lost.' In this work Mr. Hayley rather appears in the light of a commentator on the writings, and an apologist for the principles and the conduct of the great MILTON, than in that of his biographer. He has quoted a great many authors on the subject of the life and writings of our great poet, and criticifed them with candour and judgment. The falfehoods of the convicted and condemned Lauder, and the bitter calumnies and mifreprefentations of the prejudiced Johnson, provoke his indignation, but do not provoke his wrath and here he may be faid to enjoy the triumph of temper.' The number of inftances in which he convicts. Johnfon, not only of a moft extraordinary virulence and acrimonious petulance towards Milton, but also of most glaring inconfiftencies, is incredible. In his ftrictures on the time-ferving Warburton, who most injuriously, and indeed impudently (for him), accuses Milton of felf-interestedness and venality-Mr. Hayley, in his cenfures of Warburton, and the quotations he produces from Milton delineating the priestly character of a worshipper of courts, one who sticks at nothing that may contribute to his preferment, has clearly in his eye a bustling and badgering bifhop of our times, who has obtained the character of a zealous churchman without piety, and of a philofopher without proficiency in fcience.-This work, the ground of which is, profefledly, narration, is fo overloaded with differtation, that the reader forgets that he is perufing the life of Milton, and does not eafily return to the ftream of the narrative. Yet, as copious as Mr. Hayley is in his collections, of Hh 2 \ an |