"of laying down their authority for lack of new "business, or not drawing it out to any length of "time, though upon the ruin of a whole nation.” In the year 1666, when he wrote to his friend Heimbach the last of his familiar letters, the retrospect of the republican period, and of its disastrous troubles, and the want of public virtue in the Government, left impressions on his mind not favourable to the cause in which he had been engaged, or to his country. Pure as his own views were, and captivated as he had been with the fair visions of liberty and patriotism (or pietas in patriam, as he preferred to call it), too many of his compatriots had sought any thing but the good of their country. His friend having ascribed to him more virtues than he could gravely admit, Milton says: "one of them (pietas in patriam) has made me an ill return for my devotion to her; for after enchanting me with her fair name, she has. almost, if I may so express myself, deprived me of a country: ea me, pulchro nomine delinitum, prope, ut ita dicam, expatriavit." Disgraced as the name of patriotism had been by its pretended votaries, he could almost disown, or forget, that he had a country. But he consoled himself with the reflection, that the other virtues enumerated by his friend concurred in showing, that a man's true country is there, where he can live honestly and virtuously. Reliquarum tamen chorus clare concinit: patria est, ubicunque est bene. So the passage should be pointed*. Such integrity and virtuous patriotism were incompatible with the duplicity of publicly professing, ad extremum vitæ spiritum, a faith which he believed to be contrary to Scripture, and false, and was, at the same time, privately labouring to prove it so. * In the printed text it is thus: Reliquarum tamen chorus clare concinit. Patria est, ubicunque est bene. which has misled Dr. Symmons in his translation of the words: "The rest, indeed, harmonize more perfectly together. Our country is wherever we can live as we ought." (Life of Milton, p. 456, ed. 1806.) Hayley has given the right sense : "Other virtues, however, join their voices to assure me, that wherever we prosper in rectitude, there is our country.' " Milton desires his friend to excuse any errors of writing or punctuation in the letter, and to impute them to the ignorance of the boy who wrote it from his dictation; to whom, he says, he was under the miserable necessity of dictating, letter by letter. If Milton had such difficulty in dictating a Latin letter, what must we think of the practicability of dictating, in his blindness, a Latin treatise of seven hundred pages. The whole letter is, on many accounts, connected with the subject of these pages, and too interesting to be omitted. Ornatissimo Viro PETRO HEIMBACHIO, Electoris Si inter tot funera popularium meorum, anno tam gravi ac pestilenti, abreptum me quoque, ut scribis, ex rumore præsertim aliquo credidisti, mirum non est; atque ille rumor apud vestros, ut videtur, homines, si ex eo quod de salute mea soliciti essent, increbuit, non displicet; indicium enim suæ erga me benevo lentiæ fuisse existimo. Sed Dei benignitate, qui tutum mihi receptum in agris paraverat, et vivo adhuc et valeo; utinam ne inutilis, quicquid muneris in hac vita restat mihi peragendum. Tibi vero tam longo intervallo venisse in mentem mei, pergratum est; quanquam, prout rem verbis exornas, præbere aliquam suspicionem videris, oblitum mei te potius esse, qui tot virtutum diversarum conjugium in me, ut scribis, admirere. Ego certe ex tot conjugiis numerosam nimis prolem expavescerem, nisi constaret in re arcta, rebusque duris, virtutes ali maxime et vigere: tametsi earum una non ita belle charitatem hospitii mihi reddidit: quam enim politicam tu vocas, ego pietatem in patriam dictam abs te mallem, ea me pulchro nomine delinitum prope, ut ita dicam, expatriavit. Reliquarum tamen chorus clare concinit. Patria est, ubicunque est bene. Finem faciam, si hoc prius abs te impetravero, ut, si quid mendose descriptum aut non interpunctum repereris, id puero, qui hæc excepit, Latine prorsus nescienti velis imputare; cui singulas plane literulas annumerare non sine miseria dictans cogebar. Tua interim viri merita, quem ego adolescentem spei eximiæ cognovi, ad tam honestum in principis gratia provexisse te locum, gaudeo, cæteraque fausta omnia et cupio tibi, et spero. Vale. Londini, Aug. 15, 1666. POSTSCRIPT. The three authorities which I have prefixed to this Preface, would alone be decisive of the orthodoxy of Milton's printed works, published by himself. I have, however, in the Preface, exemplified his religious principles from his printed works, and his unimpeachable sincerity from his conduct. A posthumous work, therefore, of heterodox doctrines, though bearing the name of Milton, cannot be admitted to be authentic without the most indisputable evidence. If the work De Doctrina Christiana had been in Milton's own hand-writing, that would have been an indisputable proof of its authenticity; but he had been blind two years before the supposed commencement of the Latin work. If it had been in the hand-writing of his daughter Deborah, its authenticity could not have been doubted; but, in the year 1655, when this work is supposed to have been commenced, she was not more than three years old. The hand-writing of Edward Philipps would have been good evidence of its authenticity; but there is, I believe, no autograph of Philipps extant to compare with the Latin work. Whether any indisputable proofs may yet be alleged, we shall soon learn from Mr. Todd's new Life of Milton, containing many valuable and interesting papers respecting Milton, discovered by Mr. Lemon, in His Majesty's State Paper Office. Salisbury, Sept. 4, 1826. I have read Mr. Todd's recently-published Life of Milton with attention and pleasure. But I find in The his account of the Treatise De Doctrina Christiana nothing of that indisputable evidence which is, I think, indispensably necessary to justify the ascription of it to Milton. On the contrary, there is a considerable diminution of the external probabilities which at first appeared almost to supersede inquiry. For in the first report of the MS. it was thought probable, that the first part of the MS. was written by Mary Milton, and the latter part by Edward Philipps, with interlineations and corrections by Mary and Deborah Milton from the dictation of their Father. It has since been discovered by Mr. Lemon, that the first part was not written by Mary Milton, but by a Daniel Skinner, who was a junior Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, "a wild young man," who had absented himself from College without leave, and refused to return on pain of expulsion. It is now conjectured that the second part was not written by Edward Philipps, but by Deborah Milton. conjecture is founded on the resemblance which it bears to the hand-writing of the Sonnet on the death of Milton's second wife, which has been supposed to be written by Deborah Milton. But for this supposition there is nothing but the most vague tradition. That she had any share in the writing of the present MS. is in the highest degree improbable. If the work was commenced in 1655, as was conjectured by the learned Editor and Translator on the authority of A. Wood, Deborah Milton was at that time an infant of three years old. If it was " completed in his latest years," as Mr. Todd thinks (p. 311), it could not be written by her; for she had left her Father three or four years before his death, having gone to Ireland, as a companion to a Lady, before which time she had been released, probably, for a year or two, from her literary employment with her Father, that she might learn embroidery and other works suited to her sex. Besides these deductions from the external evidence, the title of the work in the MS. affords strong grounds |