fence of the People of England," as well as direct assurances from many of his illustrious contemporaries. In the former, he speaks of his 66 of which, he adds noble task," "All Europe rings from side to side." Proudly conscious that his voice commanded the admiring attention of listening nations, he thus commences the latter : "Much as I may be surpassed in the powers of eloquence and copiousness of diction by the illustrious orators of antiquity, yet the subject of which I treat was never surpassed, in any age, in dignity or in interest. It has excited such general and such ardent expectation, that I imagine myself not in the forum or on the rostra, surrounded only by the people of Athens or of Rome, but about to address in this, as I did in my former 'Defence,' the whole collective body of people,-cities, states, and councils of the wise and eminent through the wide expanse of anxious and listening Europe. I seem to survey, as from a towering height, the farextended tracts of sea and land, and innumerable crowds of spectators, betraying in their looks the liveliest interest, and sensations the most congenial with my own. Here I behold the stout and manly prowess of the German, disdaining servitude; there the generous and lively impetuosity of the French ;-on this side the calm and stately valour of the Spaniard; on that the composed and wary magnanimity of the Italian. Of all the lovers of liberty and virtue, the magnanimous and the wise, in whatever quarter they may be found, some secretly favour, others openly approve; some greet me with congratulations and applause; others, who had long been proof against conviction, at last yield themselves captive to the force of truth. Surrounded by congregated multitudes, I now imagine that, from the Columns of Hercules to the Indian Ocean, I behold the nations of the earth recovering that liberty which they so long had lost; and that the people of this island are transporting to other countries a plant of more beneficial qualities, and more noble growth, than that which Triptolemus is reported to have carried from region to region; that they are disseminating the blessings of civilization and freedom among cities, kingdoms, and nations. Nor shall I approach unknown, nor perhaps unloved, if it be told that I am he who engaged, in single combat, that fierce advocate of despotism, till then reputed invincible in the opinion of many, and in his own conceit, who insolently challenged us and our armies to the battle; but whom, while I repelled his insolence, I silenced with his own weapons; and over whom, if I may trust to the opinions of impartial judges, I gained a complete and glorious victory *." Of the greatest of Milton's prose works, and of the reception which it had secured in spite of evil men and evil times, down to the period in which he wrote, the earliest and the best of his biographers thus speaks : "And now we come to his masterpiece,-his chief and favourite work in prose, for argument the noblest, as being the defence of a whole free nation, the people of England; for style and composition the most eloquent and elaborate, equalling the old Romans in the purity of their own language, and their highest notions of liberty, as universally spread over the learned world as any of their compositions, and certain to endure while oratory, politics, or history have any esteem among men." The bright visions of glory, however, which this noble champion of his country's rights and freedom so fondly indulged were soon destined How much this passage loses in the translation, will be felt by those who have perused the original, to vanish from his sight. That champion and that country were stricken down together;-despotism crushed them both at the same moment. The latter has long since recovered from the stunning blow; and as she ascends in the scale of political and moral greatness, her glorious defender follows in her train, and we doubt not will, ere long, become, as heretofore, her oracle and guide. With the Restoration, an event which Godwin describes as one of unmitigated calamity, disappeared, like the extinction of a luminary, the independence, the strong thinking and generosity of the British people. The most resplendent period of the English nation was that at which the first of the Stuarts came to sway his pedant sceptre over these realms; the darkest and the worst was that in which his profligate grandson returned from exile to take possession of his legitimate throne. The plagues of Egypt, concentrated and inflicted at one and the same moment, could not have been a greater curse to England than the Restoration,—not because monarchy and the ancient forms of government were re-established by it, but because the most odious tyranny took shelter under them, and exercised its remorseless cruelties with their ostensible sanction. The people deserved not to be free; and retributive Heaven suffered them to become among slaves the most abject and despicable. The only greatness England could then boast was that which shone forth to the last in the conduct of her martyred patriots-the mighty spirits of the Commonwealth, whom their ungrateful country abandoned to the fate of rebels and regicides. Among this illustrious band Milton was distinguished, not by the martyr's death, but by that which implies a loftier heroism—the martyr's life. In this view, he presents to the imagination one of the most sublime and affecting moral spectacles ever exhibited in human nature. "My mind," says Coleridge, "is not capable of forming a more august conception than arises from the contemplation of this great man in his latter days,-poor, sick, old, blind, slandered, persecuted, 'Darkness before, and danger's voice behind,' in an age in which he was as little understood by the party for whom as by that against whom he had contended, and among men before whom he strode so far as to dwarf himself by the distance; yet, still listening to the music of his own thoughts, or if additionally cheered, yet cheered only by the prophetic faith of two or three individuals, he did, nevertheless, 6 Argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot From others only do we derive our knowledge that Milton, in his latter day, had his scorners and detractors; and even in his day of youth and hope, that he had enemies would have been unknown to us, had they not been likewise the enemies of his country." But was it to be expected that those who trampled on the altar of truth and freedom would reverence its high priest? The licentiousness of the monarch, unparalleled in the annals even of royal profligacy,the baseness of the court, subservient to his every caprice of profaneness and obscenity, the mean compliances of a parliament unworthy to represent a free people, and fit only to barter them as slaves,-and, above all, a clergy paying homage, not to Heaven, but to him whom they impiously styled Heaven's vicegerent, the image of the Divinity upon earth, completed the degradation of the nation, which could at length be pleased with the ribaldry of Butler, though directed against the very work which alone had given them a name and a place in the world of letters and in the annals of patriotism. The various treatises of Milton, published separately, and on the spur of the occasion, soon disappeared among worn-out faces and forgotten things. The stigma that attached to "the old Commonwealth man" was more especially affixed to his political and his polemical writings; and when, as a poet, his enemies could no longer withhold from him the tribute of universal admiration, they artfully insinuated, and caused it to be generally believed, "that his merits lay there only, and that his genius deserted him in the cooler regions of prose;" and such is the impression among multitudes to this day. But the very attempt thus to impose so gross a fiction upon the public mind when he was in the full blaze of his poetical glories, is a proof how completely they who hated the man, and dreaded his principles, had succeeded in their diabolical efforts against those of his productions in which both appear to the greatest advantage. They had been, with the liberties of the nation, consigned to an oblivion from which it was vainly hoped they would never rise. A favoured few, however, to whom their country, and freedom, and intellectual glory were still dear, collected the scattered leaves of the sybil into three folio volumes, which were printed (shame to the press of England!) at Amsterdam, and this, too, several years after the Revolution of 1688. But these folios were to be found only in the possession of the learned and the opulent. The pigmies placed the intellectual giant on their shelves, and satisfied themselves with an occasional prostration at his shrine; and though, so lately as the year 1806, a new and complete edition, in six volumes octavo, was published in London, together with an elegant and generously-written life of the author, by Dr. Symmons, descanting at large, and fearlessly, on the merits of these, the noblest efforts of his genius, yet the prose works of Milton are not among our classics; and one circumstance, to which Mr. Fletcher* has directed our attention, we cannot help referring to, as illustrating the truth of our assertion: "In the inaugural discourse delivered by Henry Brougham, Esq., on being installed Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, is it not remarkable, that, when upon the very topic of eloquence, and that the eloquence of the English masters, and when urgently advising his young auditory to meditate on their beauties, there is not the slightest allusion to John Milton by name? Addison,' says Brougham, (this cannot be an enumeration of all the favourites?) may have been pure and elegant; Dryden, airy and nervous; Taylor, witty and fanciful (!!); Hooker, weighty and various ;' but the young disciple hears not once mentioned the name of John Milton, whose writings are most deeply imbued with the spirit of that literature, to promote the study of which was the main object of this very discourse." We are not disposed, on this occasion, to accuse the Lord Rector of literary injustice; we conclude it was sheer ignorance, though we scarcely know how to imagine that such a work as the Areopagitica " could have escaped the keen and searching spirit of Lord Brougham, or have failed to command his unfeigned admiration. *The Prose Works of John Milton; with an Introductory Review. By Robert Fletcher, 1 vol. royal 8vo. 1833. That works of so high an order as those of Milton, when once run down by the influential powers of a community, determined, if possible, to quench their hallowed light, should long remain in obscurity, ought not to surprise us, when we consider the inflexible character of political and ecclesiastical institutions, which are formed for the very purpose of giving permanence to whatever is established, and the slow progress of the popular mind to admit as truths the fundamental principles of a wise and enlightened philosophy. How beautifully has Milton represented this in that fine allusion which is disclosed in the following exquisite passage from the "Areopagitica," addressed to the Lords and Commons of England! "Truth came once into the world with her Divine Master, and was a perfect shape, most glorious to look upon; but when he ascended, and his apostles after him were laid asleep, there straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down, gathering up limb by limb, still as they could find them. We have not found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master's second coming. He shall bring together every joint and member, and shall mould them into an immortal feature of loveliness and perfection. Suffer not these prohibitions to stand at every place of opportunity, forbidding and disturbing those that continue seeking -that continue to do our obsequies to the torn body of our martyred saint. We boast our light; but if we look not wisely on the sun itself, it smites us into darkness. Who can discern those planets that are oft combust, and those stars of brightest magnitude, that rise and set with the sun, until the opposite motion of these orbs bring them to such a place in the firmament where they may be seen evening or morning? The light which we have gained was given us, not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover inward things more remote from our knowledge." The doctrine here promulgated is that against which the full force of human authority has always been levelled. Erroneous opinion, the result of ignorance and prejudice, and sanctioned by custom, has ever been mighty for evil, and, in the ages that are past, has exercised and maintained an almost omnipotent dominion. Against this usurpation of her throne, Truth has modestly ventured to assert her claims; but her voice has been drowned in the loud clamour of popular indignation, and those who, with superhuman courage, have dared to espouse her cause, have been vicariously immolated to appease the demon invested with her awful and high prerogative. Many a victim has perished in the gloom of a dungeon, and expired on the scaffold and at the stake. The very weapons of truth, as well as her advocates, have been violently wrested from her defence. It has been deemed high treason against established authority to seek her in the exile to which she has been driven, or to make an appeal in her behalf through the various mediums of public and accredited instruction. The pulpit, the press, and the intercourse of social life have been placed under the severe interdiction of uttering an expression or a thought that would seem to favour the most trivial of her interests. The world has never been her friend, nor the world's law; whatever she has acquired have been the laurels of dearlypurchased victories achieved by the prowess and sufferings of her champions and martyrs. Like her glorious prototype, it has been her lot to be despised and rejected of men: still, however, in the darkest periods, and amidst the insolent triumphs of her adversaries, a few there have been who have sought her sorrowing, who have paid her the homage of their tears, and who have dared, though their lives and estates were the instant forfeiture, to proclaim her the sovereign mistress of their destiny. Chivalrous and brave, they have loved persecution for her sake; and her smile, the smile of immortality,-has irradiated with glory the disgrace which settled upon their tomb. But let it not be imagined that their conflicts and their woes have been wasted in vain attempts to raise a fallen greatness. Not an effort, not a pang has been lost. Error has trembled on her throne, and her prophetic soul even now writhes in dread forebodings of her fate. That throne she must abandon ;-the rightful majesty, so long expelled, returns with a crown of insufferable brightness, too dazzling for "the misty eyeballs" of falsehood and her impious train to look upon. The mightiest names are enrolled in her list of worthies. Law she has emancipated from the trammels of feudal barbarism; science from the restrictions of the schools; and religion from the manacles of superstition. Self-evident truths, as they were once deemed, are now denounced as exploded puerilities; and men whose names were synonymous with infamy are beginning to be heard with admiration and reverence. The minds even of the common vulgar are no longer confined within the narrow prejudices which once seemed to be their sad and perpetual inheritance. Bold and singular opinions walk abroad with fearless independence, challenging investigation; the press is comparatively free, and nothing but licentiousness, treason, and blasphemy are prohibited or restrained. The present age, thanks to the achievements of the wise and good, may be considered as ushering in the millennium of truth. Ancient and forgotten doctrines, which were uttered in unheeding ears, or which were heard only to be reprobated, possessing still the vigour of immortality, which obscurity and neglect could never impair, because they were homogeneous parts of that truth, every particle of which must live for ever, now venture forth, favoured by the spirit of the time, to plead for themselves; and though their progress is confessedly slow, yet every day enlarges the sphere of their influence, and increases the weight of their authority. But Milton, in breaking the cerements of ignorance, prejudice, and corruption, which sealed him up as in a living sepulchre, had not to contend with these alone,—a host of active and powerful agents were ever and anon heaping some new obloquy upon him, and, as they felt the surface stir beneath their feet, they fortified it with new accumulations which they hoped would for ever impede his resurrection. Attached to the theory of that simple form of government which philosophers and legislators had rendered venerable by their wisdom, and which the deeds of patriots and heroes had crowned with immortal glory, and with which it was natural for a mind like his to associate all that was beautiful in art and sublime in poetry, Milton has been reproached as a stern Republican, a Leveller, and a Fifth-Monarchy man: with what injustice let his various treatises bearing on all these subjects attest. The passage we are about to quote, we think, will clearly show that, |