ment, Defence of Smectymnus, and

others.

Dr. Johnson will hardly deny that thefe patriotic pieces vapoured beyond the environs of Milton's boarding-school, even perhaps to the warmeft fcene of action, the Commons' Houfe of Parliament: nor can we think he will (except in a fit of merriment) call them small performances, with refpect to their effects; as he himself must know by experience the fervice that political pamphlets do to the faction their authors adhere to, when feasonably published. The merit of the faction, or of the author, is out of the queftion. We believe it will not be difputed, that Milton was as valuable a writer to the party he

efpoufed,

efpoufed, as Dr. Johnfon is to the present administration, though not (at the time referred to) bought with a price.

The Doctor fays, "This is a part of "his life from which all his biographers seem inclined to fhrink. They are un

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"willing that Milton fhould be degrad"ed to a school-mafter; but fince it can"not be denied that he taught boys, one "finds out that he taught for nothing; "and another, that his motive was only "zeal for the propagation of learning; "and all tell what they do not know to "be true, only to excufe an act which no "wife man will confider as in itself dif"graceful. His father was alive, his "allowance was not ample, and he fup

plied its deficiences by an honest and "ufeful employment."

This is faid with more confidence than the Doctor's careleffnefs in confulting Milton's Biographers will justify. Philips is not one and another; and he is the only original from whom those who have apologised for Milton's employment in teaching youth have copied.

Whether Toland knew the particulars of Milton's motives, must be left to God and his own confcience; but to say that "Milton had no fordid or mercenary

'purposes" will not imply that he taught for nothing.

Milton's friends are obliged to Dr. Johnson for doing credit to his fuppofed occupation of a schoolmafter; but To

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 circumftance that gave us fomie especial wonder that the Doctor fhould be fo much afhamed of the whipping story retailed 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. Johnfon'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," fays 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