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time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems appeared, in which

the Allegro and Penferofo, with fome others, were first published.272i si

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He had taken a larger houfe in Bar bican for the reception of fcholars but the numerous relations of his wifej to whom he generously granted refuger

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for a while, occupied his rooms. In time, however, they went away; and ther "houfe again," fays Philips,

now "looked like a house of the Muses only,

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though the acceffion, of fcholars was "not great. Poffibly his having pro "ceeded fo far in the educationof: "youth, may have been the occafion of ", his adverfaries calling him pedagogue "and school-mafter; whereas it is well! " known

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known he never fet up for a publiek "school, to teach all the young fry of "a parifh; but only was willing to im66 part his learning and knowledge to "relations, and the fons of gentlemen who were his intimate friends; and that neither his writings nor his way of teaching ever favoured in the leaft "of pedantry."

Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and what might be confeffed without difgrace. Milton was not a man who could become mean by a mean employment. This, however, his warmeft friends feem not to have found; they therefore shift and palliate. He did not fell literature to all comers at an open fhop; he was a cham

a chamber-milliner, and measured his commodities only to his friends.

Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this ftate of degradation, tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise his character again, has a mind to inveft him with military fplendour: "He is much mistaken," he says, "if there was not about this time a de

fign of making him an adjutant"general in Sir William Waller's army. "But the new-modelling of the army "proved an obstruction to the defign." An event cannot be fet at a much greater diftance than by having been only defigned, about fome time, if a man be not much mistaken. Milton fhall be a pedagogue no longer; for, if Philips

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be not mistaken, fomebody at fome time defigned him for a foldier.

About the time that the army was new-modelled (1645) he removed to a fmaller houfe in Holbourn, which opened backward into Lincoln's Inn-Fields. He is not known to have publifhed any thing afterwards till the king's death, when, finding his murderers condemned by the Prefbyterians, he wrote a treatise to juftify it, and to compofe the minds of the people.

He made fome Remarks on the Articles of Peace between Ormond and the Irish Rebels. While he contented himself to write, he perhaps did only what his confcience dictated; and if he did not very vigilantly watch the influence of

his own paffions, and the gradual prevalence of opinions, firft willingly admitted and then habitually indulged, if objections, by being overlooked, were forgotten, and defire fuperinduced conviction, he yet fhared only the common weakness of mankind, and might be no lefs fincere than his opponents. But as faction feldom leaves a man honeft, however, it might find him, Milton is fufpected of having interpolated the book called Icon Bafilike, which the Council of State, to whom he was now made Latin fecretary, employed him to cenfure, by inferting a prayer taken from Sidney's Arcadia, and imputing it to the king; whom he charges, in his Iconoclaftes, with the ufe of this prayer as with a heavy crime,

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