land had done it before him, whofe remarks would hardly have been feconded. in the new narrative, if the author had not had fome fellow-feeling of the reproach of Milton's adverfaries; a circunftance that gave us fome efpecial wonder that the Doctor fhould be fo much afhamed of the whipping ftory rctailed from Aubrey.

Concerning this part of Milton's Life, Mr. John Philips muft, out of all comparison, be the most authentic hiftorian: He was Milton's pupil from the beginning; and they who attend to the feries of facts in his account will perceive how much Dr. Johnson's fpeculations on va grant inattention, fluggish indifference, and abfurd mifapprehenfion, introduced by way

of confuting thofe facts, might have been

fpared.

"We are told," says the new narrative, "that in the art of education he per"formed wonders; and a formidable lift

is given of the authors Greek and "Latin that were read in Alderfgate"street by youth between ten and fifteen "or fixteen years of age." And then follows the wife obfervation, that "no"body can be taught fafter than he can "learn *."

But who were these youth? Even his fifter's two fons, (perhaps only one of them, the younger); as appears by what Philips fays after he had fpecified the formidable lift.

* New Narrative, p. 27.

" Now

cr

"Now perfons," says he, " so far ma"nuducted into the highest paths of lite"rature, both divine and human, had

66

they received his documents with the "fame acuteness of wit and apprehen"fion, the fame induftry, alacrity, and "thirst after knowledge, as the inftruc"tor was indued with, what prodigies "of wit and learning might they have "proved! the scholars might, in fome

degree, have come near to the equal

"ling the mafter, or at least have in "fome fort made good what he feems to

predict in the close of an elegy he made

"in the feventeenth year of his age, 66 upon the death of one of his fifter's

"children (a daughter) who died in her E 3 66 in

infancy." The last couplet of which elegy is,

This if thou do, he will an offspring

give

That to the world's laft end shall make thy name to live *.

Hence it is clear that the perfons so manuduced were only, at the moft, the two Philipfes, the offspring of Milton's fifter, whose name would be little connected with the proficiency of a promifcuous number of boys in a boardingfchool.

In the next place, Mr. Philips is before-hand with Dr. Johnfon in affigning the caufes of the little comparative

* Philips, p. xix.

pro

proficiency made by the perfons fo manuducd; where common good-manners would restrain him from taxing the hebetude, the idlencfs, the indolence, and indifference, of any ftudents, except of himself or his brother. And indeed it plainly appears, that the addition of "some scholars *” was pofterior to the courfe of reading Milton went through with his nephews, and was one of thofe feveral occafions of increasing his family, apparently after he had written the tracts above-mentioned.

If Toland, and Milton's Biographiers, fubfequent to Philips, made more of this matter than Philips's hiftory authorized, we do not commend them. But it was

* Philips, p. xi.

E 4

furely