its truth; "All is vanity which is not honest, and there is no solid wisdom but in true piety." He lies buried at Wootton in Surrey, a beautiful spot, which had long been the seat of his ancestors. In allusion to the "hyssop," it is proper to mention that Evelyn condescended to a 'Discourse on Salads,' after his great works Sylva, Pomona, and the Kalendarium. The most cursory record of Evelyn's worth ought to include a brief notice of Mrs. Evelyn, one of the most admirable of women, "the queen of marriage, a most perfect wife." Throughout the fearful social and domestic trials of public anarchy, bloody revolution, general pestilence, and the prevalent fatality of smallpox in her own family circle, she was never seen otherwise than courageous, resigned, pious, high-minded, and gentle: and such being the qualities of her mind, the accidents of her earthly state included beauty, wit, wealth, rank, and learning. How fair a crown to the honours of a husband, who "sat among the elders of the land:" how rich "a treasure above rubies," to him who could truly "call her blessed." O LIGHT, denied to him, that thou art mine! To praise the Love,-alas so lost on me,How gladly should I pour the hymn divine: Yet all unlike this glorious blind old man Mine inward eyes with no such radiance shine; How seldom in that better sun I bask How fainly would I, yet how faintly can: Great Giver, might I unpresumptuous ask Into my heart thy love its light to pour, Take all instead thy righteous mercy wilt; Not so, for Thou art God: give this, give more, The richest glory to the poorest guilt, So with thy Milton shall my soul adore. There is little need to inform the reader of the calamity under which Milton laboured; a calamity to which, by way of vicarious retribution, the world owes so deep a debt of poetry. But dreadful as blindness may be, and however" dear be the light that visits" the glad eyes, it must be accounted no slender compensation, and worth at least one of the twain, to have been the author of that splendid invocation to light and those touching allusions to blindness, which open the third book of Paradise Lost. At least, if Scaliger in an ecstacy of admiration for two odes of Horace, (the 'Donec gratus eram tibi,' and the Quem tu Melpomene, semel,') declares he would rather have written them, than have been a mighty monarch,-" vel totius Tarraconensis rex," the enthusiasm of Britons for their Milton may be well excused. Our immortal poet, who divides the homage of the world with few compeers, and perhaps in sublimity of imagination and general vigour of mind is second to no man, developed the resources of his genius in very early youth. His classical reading and universal knowledge are everywhere apparent, and many of those Latin poems, which were his tasks at school, deserve to take rank beside the elegiacs of Ovid or Tibullus. The "Comus," and the "Lycidas," were, however, the first great triumphs of Milton's poetry, and these with his minor works would have been enough for fame: at least, Gray occupies a niche in the temple of immortality on claims much less beautiful and voluminous; at twenty-five, and fiftyfive respectively, each had to show to the world a cabinet of gems, few indeed, but of the first water. But Milton was destined for so much more, that, in comparison, nothing was then achieved; he had but just seen the outer court of that house of praise which men were to build to his memory. For years, vext by political intrigue, domestic discords, and the ungrateful labours of the school-room, his poetical powers seemed to be dormant, or the great light within him was evidenced only by casual scintillations. But the finger of misfortune then came on him for good; to broken health, disappointed hopes, and shattered spirits, was added at a stroke the calamity of blindness: and thus forced into necessary retirement and contemplation, his mind began to imagine and create new worlds to repay itself for that which his outward eye had lost. So, in the sear autumn of his life, the most wonderful work ever composed by man rose unpremeditated to the dictating tongue of Milton, even as his own descriptions of supernal and infernal architecture, which framed itself complete in sublime and dreamy grandeur. Unlike other poets, whose excellence is often attributable to the "nine years' laying by," and the continual labour of the file, Milton, in more than a seeming inspiration, would recite for many hours together to those three fair amanuenses, whose filial care has so obliged mankind. At a heat, a panoplied Minerva from the head of Jove, the Paradise Lost sprung in wondrous labour from his brain; and it stands, with nothing to add, and nothing to take away, a miracle of thought, knowledge, and invention. Respect alone for a character so illustrious, and not a mean desire to conceal the fact, nor yet the wholesome dread of a gigantic opponent,-induces us to draw a veil over some of the principles of even so great and good a man as Milton. That he has abetted regicides, strengthened the hands of evil, and caused the enemies of order to blaspheme, for these, fearlessly, we praise him not; and if an uncandid and misnamed liberality, refusing to others its own boasted privilege of private judgment, generously think fit to ridicule our weak and puny censure, all we shall have to regret is our feeble advocacy of so strong a cause. |