philosophy, who disturbed with innovations the quiet of the schools." Is there not a visible want of candor in shewing so wildly a wish to impute a very inoffensive and meritorious work of science to a malevolent motive?

Ramus was a man, whose writing and memory were justly regarded by Milton; for he resembled our great countryman in temperance, in fortitude, in passion for study, and, above all, in a brave and inflexible opposition to ignorance, tyranny, and superstition; his life was a continued struggle with these merciless enemies, and he perished at last with circumstances of peculiar barbarity, in the atrocious massacre of St. Bartholomew.

A desire of rendering justice to the talents and virtues of such a sufferer in the cause of learning might surely be ascribed to Milton, as a more probable and becoming motive on this occasion, than dark intentions of hostility against the universities. It is but a sorry compliment to those universities to insinuate, that he engaged in

warfare against them, who republished a simple and seasonable treatise on the management of human reason. Milton with great judgment augmented the logic of Ramus, and added to his system an abridgment of the Latin life, which Fregius had written, of its unfortunate author.

The long literary career of Milton was now drawing towards its termination, and it closed as it began, with a fervent regard to the interest of religion.—Alarmed by that encroachment, which the Romish superstition was making under the connivance of Charles the Second, and with the aid of his apostate brother, Milton published "A Treatise of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, and the best Means to prevent the Growth of Popery." The patriotic scope of this work was to unite and consolidate the jarring sects of the protestants, by persuading them to reciprocal indulgence, and to guard them against those impending dangers from Rome, which, in a short period, burst upon this island, and very happily terminated in our signal deliverance from many

of those religious and political evils, which the spirit of Milton had, through a long life, most resolutely and conscientiously opposed.

His Treatise against the Growth of Popery, which was published in 1673, was the last considerable performance that he gave to the world; but publication in some shape seems to have contributed to his amusement as long as he existed. In the same year he reprinted his smaller poems, with the Tractate on Education; and in the year following, the last of his laborious life, he published his Familiar Letters, and a Declaration of the Poles in praise of their heroic sovereign, John Sobieski, translated from the Latin original. A brief History of Moscovia, which he appears to have compiled, in the early parts of his life, from various travellers who had visited that country, was published a few years after his death, and two of his compositions (both perhaps intended for the press) have probably perished; the first, a System of Theology in Latin, that seems to have been

entrusted to his friend Cyriac Skinner; the second, an Answer to a scurrilous libel upon himself which his nephew supposes him to have suppressed from just contempt of his reviler.

Soon after his marriage in 1661, he had removed from Jewin-street, to a house in the artillery walk, leading to Bunhill-fields, a spot that to his enthusiastic admirers may appear consecrated by his genius : here he resided in that period of his days, when he was peculiarly entitled to veneration; here he probably finished no less than three of his admirable works; and here with a dissolution so easy, that it was unperceived by the persons in his chamber, he closed a life, clouded indeed by uncommon and various calamities, yet ennobled by the constant exercise of such rare endowments as render his name perhaps, the very first in that radiant and comprehensive list, of which England, the most fertile of countries in the produce of mental power, has reason to be proud.

For some years he had suffered much from the gout, and in July, 1674, he found

his constitution so broken by that distemper, that he was willing to prepare for his departure from the world. With this view he informed his brother Christopher, who was then a bencher in the Inner Temple, of the disposition he wished to make of his property. "Brother (said the invalide) the portion due to me from Mr. Powel, my first wife's father, I leave to the unkind children I had by her; but I have received no part of it; and my will and meaning is, they shall have no other benefit of my estate than the said portion, and what I have besides done for them, they having been very undutiful to me; and all the residue of my estate I leave to the disposal of Elizabeth, my loving wife." Such is the brief testament, which Milton dictated to his brother, about the 20th of July, but which Christopher does not appear to have committed to paper, till a few days after the decease of the testator, who expired on Sunday night, the 8th. of November, 1674. "All his learned and great friends in London, (says Toland) not