were to exceed 1500. Within two years after the appearance of the first edition, Milton became entitled to the second sum of £5, which implies a rapid and extensive sale highly creditable to the small reading class of those times, especially when the hostility of the prevailing party to the author is considered. The second edition was published in 1674, the year of the poet's death, the third in 1678, and in 1680 Milton's widow, to whom the copy-right then belonged, sold it to Symons for £8. These sums now appear exceedingly paltry; but it must be remembered that Milton's Paradise Lost was then under review, though it be now in popular estimation above it. While Milton resided in Jewin Street, Dr Paget introduced to him young Ellwood, a quaker, who considered himself abundantly repaid for the labour of reading to Milton by the comments which he had thus the opportunity of hearing on difficult passages and subjects. In 1665 this youth was tutor in the family of a wealthy quaker near Chalfort, in Buckinghamshire; and Milton was induced to remove from London, where the plague was raging, to a cottage which Ellwood took for him in the same neighbourhood. Here the young quaker, on handing back to Milton after perusal the complete manuscript of Paradise Lost, observed, "Thou hast said a great deal upon Paradise Lost, what hast thou to say upon Paradise Found?" and this was what suggested to Milton the idea of " Paradise Regained," which, as also "Samson Agonistes," a tragedy in imitation of the ancients, was printed in 1671. Milton's zeal as an author did not abate with the advance of life. In 1672 he published a treatise on Logic, according to the method of Peter Ramus, in the year following a treatise on True Religion and the best means of preventing the growth of Popery, as also a reprint of his juvenile poems, and in 1674, the year of his death, a series of familiar epistles in Latin, to which he added some academical exercises. On returning from Chalfort to London, he had taken up his residence in Bunhill Fields, and here he died on or about the 10th November. Though very temperate and regular in his mode of living, he had for several years been a victim to gout, and was so enfeebled by his sufferings that he expired without a groan, and almost unobserved. His body was interred in the chancel of St Giles Church, Cripplegate in 1737 a monument was erected to him in Westminster Abbey; but his memory is embalmed in his writings, and will endure till the English language, and even the fame of it, shall have passed away. By the whole story of Milton's life, respect rather than affection is inspired; it is a constant development of strength; he does not so much buffet with the ills of life as simply override them; and we can feel little sympathy with a man who, though exposed to ordinary human calamities, betrays no sign of ordinary human weakness. The same exuberance of intellectual power, with the same absence of passion, and consequently the same powerlessness to excite human sympathy, is characteristic of Milton's writings. Rarely have learning so extensive and genius so exalted been united in one man; nor could genius and learning be employed in the maintenance of a nobler cause, or the celebration of a grander theme than those selected by Milton; yet, from the want of geniality, the perusal of his works, whether prose or poetry, is to most men an intellectual discipline, rather than an intellectual treat. Had Milton written no poetry, he would still have been among the first of English controversalists; but the laurels with which posterity have crowned him are those of the poet, not of the combatant; and Paradise Lost is held to be the chief cornerstone in his self-erected monument, though he himself would not allow Paradise Regained to be of inferior execution. Many other poems excite a more powerful sympathy in the reader than Paradise Lost; but none make so great demands by sublimity of conception on his astonishment, and by dignity of style on his admiration. Exception has been taken to various parts of it; but these, as Addison observes, are like spots on the face of the sun. 416 |