deficiency, than that of obligation, he has freely availed himself of assistance from whatever quarter it could be obtained; and if his circumstantial or imperfect detail should neither fatigue attention, nor disappoint curiosity, his end will be accomplished, and his wishes, of course, completely satisfied. His anxiety has been solely to display truth; and, not professing himself to be exempt from those prejudices, which cling to every human being, he has been studious to prevent them from disturbing the rectitude of his line, or from throwing their false tints upon his canvass. The lineage and ancestry of a great man are apt to engage enquiry; as we are desirous of knowing whether the virtue or the intellect, which we are contemplating, be a spring, gushing immediately from the bosom of the earth, or a reservoir, (if the allusion may be permitted,) formed and supported by a long continued stream. Of the family of Milton nothing more is known than that it was respectable and antient; long resident at spects, his merit as the biographer of our great Poet is certainly considerable, and entitles him to an honourable station among the asserters of historic truth. The admirers of Milton are under great obligations to him. Milton, in Oxfordshire; and possessed of property, which it lost in the wars between the rival houses of York and Lancaster. The fortune alone of a female, who had married into it, preserved it at this crisis from indigence. The first individual of the family, of whom any thing is mentioned, is John Milton, the grandfather of our author; and of him we are told nothing more than that he was under-ranger of the forest of Shotover, in Oxfordshire; that he was a zealous catholic, and that he disinherited his son, whose name was also John, our author's father, for becoming a convert to the protestant faith. To whom the family property was bequeathed from the right heir, we are not informed; but we know that the son, on this disappointment of fortune, left his station at Christ Church in Oxford, where he was prosecuting his studies, and sought the means of subsistence in London, from the profession of a scrivener; a profession which, in those days, united the two businesses of the law, and the money-agent. That he was not an ordinary man is evident from many circumstances. circumstances. Under the constant pressure of an occupation, peculi d Near Halton and Thame. arly unfavourable to the cultivation of liberal knowledge or the elegant arts, his classi cal acquirements seem to have been con siderable, and such was his proficiency in the science of music, that it entitled him to honourable rank among the composers of his age. We are not informed of the precise time of his marriage; and there has even been a question respecting the maiden name and family of his wife. His grandson, Philips, who seems on this occasion to be the preferable authority, affirms that she was a Caston, of a family originally from Wales. We are assured that she was an exemplary 'woman; and was particularly distinguished by her numerous charities. From this union sprang John (our author), Christopher and Anne. Of the two latter, Christopher, applying himself to the study of the law, became a bencher of the Inner Temple, and, at a very advanced period of his life, was knighted, and raised by James the second, first to be a baron of the Exchequer, and, subsequently, one of the judges of the Common Pleas, During the с Burney's Hist. of Music, vol. iii. p. 134. f Londini sum natus, genere honesto, patre viro integerrimo, matre probatissimâ et eleemosynis per viciniam potissimum nota, Def. Sec, P. W. vol. v. p. 230. 1 civil war, he followed the royal standard; JOHN MILTON, the illustrious subject of our immediate notice, was born at his father's of the Aubrey, who is usually distinguished by the title of the Antiquarian, is the author of "Monumenta Britannica," and of a MS. Life of Milton, preserved in the Mus. Ash. Oxon. He was personally acquainted with our poet, and from him, Wood professes to derive the materials of his account of Milton. It is but fair to state, that I owe my acquaintance with Aubrey principally to Mr. Warton, who speaks of the "Monumenta Britannica," as a very solid and rational work, and vindicates Aubrey from the charge of fantastical, except on the subjects of chemistry and ghosts. 1 |