the anger of God, nor believe that I am exposed to it, but, on the contrary, that I have experienced in the most momentous events of my life, and am still sensible of his mercy and paternal kindness.”

Equally unascertained with that of his blindness is the precise date of his second marriage, which took place, as we are informed, about two years after his entire loss of sight. The lady, whom he chose on this occasion, was Catherine the daughter of a captain Woodcock of Hackney. She seems to have been the object of her husband's fondest affection; and dying, like her predecessor, in childbed, within a year after her marriage, she was lamented by him in a pleasing and pathetic sonnet. The daughter, whom she bore to him, soon followed her to the tomb. As I shall insert the sonnet, which will be felt by every sensitive bosom, it may not be irrelevant to remark that the thought, in its concluding line, which, on a cursory view, may be branded as a conceit, is strictly correct and just. In his dreams a blind man may expatiate in the full blaze of the sun, and the morning, in which he awakes, unquestionably restores him to his darkness. The fault is in the expression alone.

"I waked-she fled: and I replunged in night,"

would perhaps be sufficiently unexcep

tionable.

ON HIS DECEASED WIFE.

Methought I saw my late espoused saint,

Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave,

Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave,
Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint:
Mine, as whom, wash'd from spot of childbed taint,
Purification in the old law did save,

And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in heaven without restraint;
Came, vested all in white, pure as her mind:

Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shined
So clear, as in no face with more delight.

But O! as to embrace me she inclined,

I waked; she fled, and day brought back my night.

During this period of his domestic history the powers of Milton were vigorously and efficaciously employed in the hostilities of controversy. In 1652, the "Regii Sanguinis Clamor," &c. ("The Cry of Royal Blood to Heaven against the English Parricides,") a work replete with the most virulent abuse against the English, and with the most atro-, cious invectives and calumnies against Milton, was published, as we have before noticed, at the Hague. Fearful of avowing a production, which might expose him, at that juncture, to more than literary peril, Du Moulin, who afterwards professed himself to

be the writer of the violent work, sent his manuscript to Salmasius, by whom it was consigned, for the purpose of publication, to Alexander More, or, as he is usually called, Morus.

Of Scotch parentage, but settled in France and now principal of the protestant college of Castres in Languedoc, Morus possessed talents and learning, and his celebrity as a preacher, resulting, however, less from his composition than from his manner and elocution, was not exceeded, if it were equalled by that of any of his competitors in the pulpit. With his natural presumption and selfconfidence increased by this evidence of his powers, and perhaps not aware of the full extent of the danger which he was incurring, he did not for an instant decline the invidious office, assigned to him by Salmasius; but, withholding his own name on the occasion, and writing, under that of Adrian Ulac the printer, a dedication to the exiled king, he committed the offensive manuscript to the press.

of

On this new provocation, the powers Milton were again commanded into exertion

Now in the Department of Du Tarn, of which it is the chief town.

by the government of his country; and, in 1654, he produced the most interesting, if not the most striking of all his prose compositions, "A second Defence of the People of England." To repel that flood of slanders, with which his barbarian adversary had attempted to overwhelm him, it became necessary for the author to insist on many parts of his own history, and to disclose the springs within his bosom which had uniformly actuated his conduct. In the execution of this delicate task, he speaks with so much of the unfaltering dignity of truth, and, respecting facts, so immediately under the correction of numbers who must have been acquainted with them, that it is impossible for us to refuse him our assent. This production has copiously supplied his biographers with materials of peculiar value, as they cannot be obtained in any other place, and their authenticity cannot be doubted. The defensive part, therefore, of this work constitutes at present, its principal interest, but, at the time of its publication, its active hostility was

The proper and full title of the work is "Johannis Miltoni Angli, pro Populo Anglicano Defensio secunda contra infamem libellum Anonymum cui titulus" "Regii sanguinis clamor ad cœlum adversus parricidas Anglicanos." London. I wish that this work of Milton's were translated.

the immediate and chief cause of its celebrity and effect. The moral character of Morus was unhappily not proof against attack. With a quarrelsome and overbearing temper, he has been represented, by some of his contemporaries, as the cause of war, like another Helen, wherever he came, or, like an Ishmael, with his hand lifted against every body while every body's hand was lifted against him; and his uncontrolled attachment to women was productive of adventures not calculated to reflect honour upon a minister of the Gospel.

Enabled to possess himself of the most correct information and with talents to improve it into the means of the most wounding offence, Milton pursues his adversary through the opprobrious privacies of his immorality; and exacts a severe revenge for those savage insults, in the guilt of which, if Morus were not their author, he was, beyond any question, by being their publisher, a party and accomplice. Among other licentious amours of which Morus stood accused, his connexion with a servant girl of Salmasius, whom he was said to have corrupted with a promise of marriage and afterwards, in her pregnancy, to have deserted, had been made the subject of a legal prosecution by Madame de Saumaise, and had