bits in perfection all the loveliness of wo man. As to Milton's depressing his daughters by a mean and penurious education, it is a calumny resting only on a report, that he would not allow them the advantage of learning to write. This is evidently false, since Aubrey, who was personally acquainted with the poet, and who had probably consulted his widow in regard to many particulars of his life, expressly affirms, that his youngest daughter was his amanuensis; a circumstance of which my friend Romney has happily availed himself to decorate the folio edition of this life with a production of his pencil. The youngest daughter of Milton had the most frequent opportunities of knowing his temper, and she happens to be the only one of his children who has delivered a deliberate account of it; but her account, instead of confirming Johnson's idea of her father's domestic severity, will appear to the candid reader to refute it completely. "She' spoke of him," says Richardson," with great tenderness; she said he was delightful . company, the life of the conversation, and that on account of a flow of subject, and an unaffected cheerfulness and civility." It was this daughter, who related the extraordinary circumstance that she and one of her sisters read to their father several languages, which they did not understand; it is remarkable, that she did not speak of it as a hardship; nor could it be thought an intolerable grievance by an affectionate child, who thus assisted a blind parent in labouring for the maintenance of his family. Such an employment, however, must have been irksome; and the considerate father, in finding that it was so, "sent out his children (according to the expression of his nephew) to learn some curious and ingenious sorts of manufacture, particularly embroideries in gold, or silver." That he was no penurious parent is strongly proved by an expression that he made use of in speaking of his will, when he declared, that "he had made provision for his children in his life time, and had spent the greatest part of his estate in providing for them." It is the more barbarous to ar raign the poet for domestic cruelty, because he appears to have suffered from the singular tenderness and generosity of his nature. He had reason to lament that excess of indulgence, with which he forgave and received again his disobedient and long-alienated wife, since their re-union not only disquieted his days, but gave birth to daughters, who seem to have inherited the perversity of their mother: The wisest and best men full oft beguil'd Are drawn to wear out miserable days, These pathetic lines in a speech of his Samson Agonistes, strike me as a forcible allusion to his own connubial infelicity. If in his first marriage he was eminently unhappy, his success in the two last turned the balance of fortune in his favor. That his second wife deserved, possessed, and retained his affection is evident from his sonnet occasioned by her death; of the care and kindness which he had long experienced, from the partner of his declining life, he spoke with tender gratitude to his brother, in explaining his testamentary intention; and we are probably indebted to the care and kindness which the aged poet experienced from this affectionate guardian, for the happy ac complishment of his inestimable works. A blind and desolate father must be utterly unequal to the management of disobedient daughters conspiring against him, the anguish he endured from their filial ingratitude, and the base deceptions, with which they continually tormented him, must have rendered even the strongest mind very unfit for poetical application. which he concluded by the aid of his friend Dr. Paget, seems to have been his only resource against a most exasperating and calamitous species of domestic disquietude; it appears therefore, not unreasonable to regard those immortal poems, which recovered tranquillity enabled him to produce, as the fruits of that marriage. As matrimony has, perhaps, annihilated many a literary design, let it be remembered to its The marriage, advice and the honor, that it probably gave birth to the brightest offspring of literature. The two eldest daughters of Milton appear to me utterly unworthy of their father; but those, who adopt the dark prejudices of Johnson, and believe with him, that the great poet was an austere domestic tyrant, will find, in their idea of the father, an apology for his children, whose destiny in the world I shall immediately mention, that I may have occasion to speak of them no more. Anne, the eldest, who with a deformed person had a pleasing face, married an architect, and died, with her first infant in child bed. Mary, the second, and apparently the most deficient in affection to her father, died unmarried. Deborah, who was the favorite of Milton, and who, long after his decease, discovered, on a casual sight of his genuine portrait, very affecting emotions of filial tenderness and enthusiasm, even Deborah deserted him without his knowledge, not in consequence of his paternal severity, of which she was very far from complaining, but, as Richardson inti |