from his subjects, than an exaction by him."

However vehement the enmity of various persons against Milton might have been, during the tumult of passions on the recent restoration, there is great reason to believe, that his extraordinary abilities and probity so far, triumphed over the prejudices against him, that, with all his republican offences upon his head, he might have been admitted to royal favor had he been willing to accept it. Richardson relates, on very good authority, that the post of Latin secretary, in which he had obtained so much credit as a scholar, was again offered to him after the Restoration; that he rejected it, and replied to his wife, who advised his acceptance of the appointment,-" You, as other women, would ride in your coach; for me, my aim is to live and die an honest man." Johnson discovers an inclination to discredit this story, because it does honor to Milton, and seemed inconsistent with his own ideas of probability. "He that had shared authority, either with the parliament, or

Cromwell," says Johnson, " might have forborne to talk very loudly of his honesty." How miserably narrow is the prejudice, that cannot allow perfect honesty to many individuals on both sides in a contest like that, which divided the nation in the civil wars. Undoubtedly there were men in each party, and men of great mental endowments, who acted, during that calamitous contention, according to the genuine dictates of conscience. Those who examine the conduct of Milton with impartiality will be ready to allow, that he possessed not only one of the most cultivated, but one of the most upright minds, which the records of human nature have taught us to revere. His retaining his employment under Cromwell has, I trust, been so far justified, that it can no more be represented as a blemish on his integrity. His office, indeed, was of such a nature, that he might, without a breach of honesty, have resumed it under the king; but his return to it, though not ab solutely dishonorable, would have ill accorded with that refined purity and eleva

tion of character, which, from his earliest youth, it was the noblest ambition of Milton to acquire and support. He would have lost much of his title to the reverence of mankind for his magnanimity, had he accepted his former office under Charles the Second, whom he must have particularly despised as a profligate and servile tyrant, as ready to betray the honor of the nation as he was careless of his own; a personage whom Milton could never have beheld without horror, on reflecting on his singular barbarity to his celebrated friend, that eccentric but interesting character, Sir Henry Vane. The king, so extolled for his mercy, had granted the life of Sir Henry to the joint petition of the Lords and Commons; but, after promising to preserve him, signed a warrant for his execution-one of the most inhuman and detestable acts of duplicity that was ever practised against a subject by his sovereign. It is to the fate of Vane, with others of that party, and to his own personal sufferings, that the great poet al

ludes in the admirable reflections, assigned to the chorus in his Sampson Agonistes:

Many are the sayings of the wise

In antient and in modern books enroll'd,
Extolling patience as the truest fortitude,
And to the bearing well of all calamities,
All chances incident to man's frail life,
Consolatories writ

With studied argument, and much persuasion sought,
Lenient of, grief and anxious thought;

But with th' afflicted in his pangs their sound

Little prevails, or rather seems a tune

Harsh and of dissonant mood from his complaint,

Unless he feel within

Some source of consolation from above,

Secret refreshings that repair his strength,

And fainting spirits uphold.

God of our fathers! what is man?

That thou towards him with hand so various,

Or might I say contrarious,

Temperest thy Providence through his short course
Not evenly, as thou rul'st

The angelic orders, and inferior creatures mute,
Irrational and brute.

Nor do I name of men the common rout,

That wand'ring loose about,

Grow up and perish as the summer fly,

Heads without name, no more remembered;
But such as thou hast solemnly elected,

With gifts and graces eminently adorn 'd,
To some great work, thy glory,

And people's safety, which in part they effect:
Yet toward these, thus dignified, thou oft
Amidst their heighth of noon

Changest thy countenance and thy hand, with no regard

Of highest favors past

From thee on them, or them to thee of service.
Nor only dost degrade them, or remit

To life obscur'd, which were a fair dismission,
But throw'st them lower than thou didst exalt them

high;

Unseemly falls in human eye,

Too grievous for the trespass or omission!

Oft leav'st them to the hostile sword

Of heathen and profane, their carcases

To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captiv'd;
Or to th' unjust tribunals under change of times,
And condemnation of th' ungrateful multitude.
If these they scape, perhaps in poverty,

With sickness and disease thou bow'st them down,
Painful diseases and deform'd,

Though not disordinate, yet causeless suff'ring
The punishment of dissolute days.