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self as a match for any antagonist, however superior to him in muscular force; his countenance (he says) was so far from being bloodless, that when turned of forty, he was generally allowed to have the appearance of being ten years younger; even his eyes (he adds) though utterly deprived of sight, did not betray their imperfection, but on the contrary appeared as speckless and as lucid. as if his powers of vision had been peculiarly acute" In this article alone" says Milton" and much against my will, I am a hypocrite."

Such is the interesting portrait, which this great writer has left us of himself. Those who had the happiness of knowing him personally, speak in the highest terms even of his personal endowments, and seem to have regarded him as a model of manly grace and dignity in his figure and deportment.

"His harmonical and ingenious soul": says Aubrey" dwelt in a beautiful and well proportioned body."

"In toto nusquam corpore menda fuit."

His hair was a light brown, his eyes dark

grey, and his complexion so fair, that at college, according to his own expression, he was styled "The Lady," an appellation which he could not relish; but he consoled himself under absurd raillery on the delicacy of his person, by recollecting that similar raillery had been lavished on those manly and eminent characters of the ancient world, Demosthenes and Hortensius. His general appearance approached not in any degree to effeminacy. "His deportment" says Anthony Wood, "was affable, and his gait erect and manly, bespeaking courage and undauntedness." Richardson, who laboured with affectionate enthusiasm to acquire and communicate all possible information concerning the person and manners of Milton, has left the two following sketches of his figure at an advanced period of life.

"An ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire (Dr. Wright) found John Milton in a small chamber hung with rusty green, sitting in an elbow chair, and dressed neatly in black, pale but not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty and with chalk stones.

"He used also to sit, in a grey coarse cloth coat, at the door of his house near Bunhill-fields, in warm sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air, and so, as well as in his room, received the visits of people of distinguished parts as well as quality." It is probable, that Milton, in his youth, was, in some measure, indebted to the engaging graces of his person for that early introduction into the politest society, both in England and abroad, which improved the natural sweetness of his character (so visible in all his genuine portraits) and led him to unite with profound erudition, and with the sublimest talents, an endearing and cheerful delicacy of manners, very rarely at tained by men, whose application to study is continual and intense.

The enemies of Milton, indeed, (and his late biographer, I must reluctantly include under that description) have laboured to fix upon him a fictitious and most unamiable character of austerity and harshness. "What we know" says Johnson

"of Milton's character in domestic relations is, that he was severe and arbitrary His family consisted of women, and there appears in his books something like a Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferior beings; that his own daughters might not break the ranks, he suffered them to be depressed by a mean and penurious education. He thought woman made only for obedience, and man for rebellion." This is assuredly the intemperate language of hatred, and very far from being consonant to truth.

As it was thought a sufficient defence of Sophocles, when he was barbarously accused of mental imbecility by his unnatural children, to read a portion of his recent dramatic works, so, I am confident, the citation of a few verses from our English bard may be enough to clear him from a charge equally groundless, and almost as ungenerous.

No impartial reader of genuine sensibility will deem it possible, that the poet

could have entertained a Turkish contempt of females, who has thus delineated woman:

All higher knowledge in her presence falls
Degraded; wisdom, in discourse with her,
Loses discountenanc'd, and like folly shews;
Authority and reason on her wait,

As one intended first, not after made
Occasionally; and to consummate all,

Greatness of mind and nobleness their seat
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe
About her, as a guard angelic plac❜d.

A description so complete could arise only from such exquisite feelings in the poet, as insured to every deserving female his tenderest regard. This argument might be still more enforced by a passage in the speech of Raphael; but the preceeding verses are, I trust, sufficient to counteract the uncandid attempt of the acrimonious biographer to prejudice the fairest part of the creation against a poet, who has surpassed his peers in delineating their charms, whose poetry, a more enchanting mirror than the lake that he describes in Paradise, represents their mental united to their personal graces, and exhi

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