St. Paul's School, to complete his acquaintance with the classics, under the care of Dr. Gill; and after a short stay there, was transplanted to Christ's College in Cambridge, where he distinguished himself in all kinds of academical exercises. Of this society he continued a member till he commenced Master of Arts; and then, leav ing the university, he returned to his father, who had quitted the town, and lived at Horton in Buckinghamshire, where he pursued his studies with unparalleled assiduity and success.

After some years spent in this studious retirement, his mother died, and then he prevailed with his father to gratify an inclination he had long entertained of seeing foreign countries. Sir Henry Wotton, at that time Provost of Eton College, gave him a letter of advice for the direction of his travels. Having employed his curiosity about 4wo years in France and Italy, on the news of a civil war breaking out in England, he returned without taking a survey of Greece and Sicily, as at his setting out the scheme was projected. At Paris the Lord Viscount Scudamore, Ambassador from King Charles I. at the Court of France, introduced him to the acquaintance of Grotius, who at that time was honoured with the same character there by Christiana, Queen of Sweden. In Rome, Genoa, Florence, and other cities of Italy, he contracted a familiarity with those who were of

highest reputation for wit and learning, several of whom gave him very obliging testimonies of their friendship and esteem.

Returning from his travels, he found England on the point of being involved in blood and confusion. He retired to lodgings provided for him in the City; which being commodious for the reception of his sister's sons, and some other young gentlemen, he undertook their education.

In this philosophical course he continued, without a wife, till the year 1643: when he married Mary, the daughter of Richard Powell, of Foresthill in Oxfordshire, a gentleman of estate and reputation in that country, and of principles so very opposite to his son-in-law, that the marriage is more to be wondered at than the separation which ensued, in little more than a month after she had cohabited with him in London. Her desertion provoked him both to write several treatises concerning the doctrine and discipline of divorce, and also to o pay his addresses to a young lady of great wit and beauty; but, before he had engaged her affections to conclude the marriage treaty, in a visit at one of his relations, he found his wife prostrate before him, imploring forgiveness and reconciliation. It is not to be doubted but an interview of that nature, so little expected, must wonderfully affect him; and perhaps the impressions it made on his imagination, contributed much to the painting of

that pathetic scene in Paradise Lost,* in which Eve addresseth herself to Adam for pardon and peace. At the intercessions of his friends, who were present, after a short reluctance, he generously sacrificed all his resentment to her tears:

-Soon his heart relented

Tow'ards her, his life so late and sole delight,
Now at his feet submissive in distress.

And after this reunion, so far was he from retaining any unkind memory of the provocations which he had received from her ill conduct, that when the king's cause was entirely suppressed, and her father, who had been active in his loyalty, was exposed to sequestration, Milton received both him and his family to protection and free entertainment in his own house, till their affairs were accommodated by his interest in the victorious faction.

A commission to constitute him AdjutantGeneral to Sir William Waller was promised, but soon superseded, by Waller's being laid aside, when his masters thought it proper to new-model their army. However, the keenness of his pen had so effectually recommended him to Cromwell's esteem, that when he took the reins of govern

* Book X.

ment into his own hand, he advanced him to be Latin Secretary both to himself and the Parliament; the former of these preferments he enjoyed both under the usurper and his son, the other until King Charles II. was restored. For some time he had an apartment for his family at Whitehall: but his health requiring a freer accession of air, he was obliged to remove from thence to lodgings which opened into St.-James's Park. Not long after his settlement there his wife died in child-bed, and much about the time of her death, a gutta serena, which had for several years been gradually increasing, totally extinguished his sight. In this melancholy condition, he was easily prevailed with to think of taking another wife? who was Catharine, the daughter of Captain Woodcock, of Hackney; and she too, in less than a year after their marriage, died in the same unfortunate manner as the former had done: and in his twenty-third sonnet he does honour to her memory.int

Being a second time a widower, he employed his friend Dr. Paget to make choice of a third consort, on whose recommendation he married Elizabeth, the daughter of Mr. Minshul, a Cheshire gentleman, by whom he had no issue. Three daughters, by his first wife, were then living; the two elder of whom are said to have been very serviceable to him in his studies: for having been

instructed to pronounce not only the modern, but also the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, they read, in their respective originals, whatever authors he wanted to consult, though they understood none but their mother-tongue.

We come now to take a survey of him in that point of view, in which he will be looked upon by all succeeding ages with equal delight and admiration. An interval of about twenty years had elapsed since he wrote the Mask of Comus, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Lycidas, all in such an exquisite strain, that though he had left no other monuments of his genius behind him, his name had been immortal; but neither the infirmities of age and constitution, nor the vicissitudes of fortune, could depress the vigour of his mind, or divert it from executing a design he had long conceived of writing an heroic poem.* The fall of man was a subject that he had some years before fixed on for a tragedy, which he intended to form by the models of antiquity; and some, not without probability, say, the play opened with that speech in the fourth book of Paradise Lost, 1. 32, which is addressed by Satan to the Sun. Were it material, I believe I could produce other passages, which more plainly appear to have been originally intended for the scene: but whatever truth there

Paradise Lost, Book IX, line 26.