of Mr. Secretary Peel: to whom, and to Mr. Under-Secretary Hobhouse, I acknowledge the greatest obligations, as well as to Mr. Lemon; and to whose friendly and condescending instrumentality the publick is indebted for what is now told of the poet, of his family, and of some of his works, which never was before in print. What has been thus liberally supplied, might indeed by others have been arranged with elegance, and illustrated with taste ; but not with greater fidelity than the following pages exhibit. This with other anecdotes relating to the history of Milton's friends, of his works, and of his times, will plead for attention to an unadorned narration. A fac-simile of the poet's handwriting is also given from one of the documents in the State-Paper Office; and to the biography I have now added, as Hayley did to his Life of Milton, an Inquiry into the Origin of Paradise Lost. SETTRINGTON, May 1, 1826. ་ CONTENTS. Of Compositions left by Milton in Manuscript, and parti- cularly of his Treatise of Theology lately discovered.... 291 SOME ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MILTON. SECTION I. From the Birth of Milton to the time of his Marriage. a JOHN MILTON, son of John and Sarah Milton, was born on the 9th of December 1608, at the house of his father, who was then an eminent scrivener in London, and lived at the sign of the Spread Eagle (which was the armorial ensign of the family) in Bread-street. The ancestry of the poet was highly respectable. His father was educated as a gentleman, and became a member of Christ-Church, Oxford; in which society, as it may be presumed, he imbibed his attachment to the doctrines of the Reformation, and abjured the errours of Popery; in consequence of which, his father, who was a bigotted papist, dis "The xxth daye of December 1608 was baptized John, the sonne of John Mylton, scrivenor." Extract from the Register of Allhallows, Bread-street. inherited him. The student therefore chose, for his support, the profession already mentioned; in the practice of which he became so successful as to be enabled to give his children the advantages of a polite education, and at length to retire with comfort into the country. The grandfather of the poet was under-ranger or keeper of the forest of Shotover, near Halton, in Oxfordshire; and probably resided at the village of Milton in that neighbourhood, where the family of Milton, in remoter times, were distinguished for their opulence; till, one of them having taken the unfortunate side in the civil wars of York and Lancaster, the estate was sequestered; and the proprietor was left with nothing but what he held by his wife. There is a tradition that the poet had once resided in this village, while he was Secretary to the Council of State. d с In the Registers of Milton, as I have been obligingly informed by letter from the Rev. Mr. Jones, there are however no entries of the name of Milton. Phillips, Milton's nephew, says that the family resided at Milton near Abingdon in Oxfordshire, as appeared by the monuments then to be seen in Milton church. But that Milton is in Berkshire; and Dr. Newton searched in vain for the monuments said to exist in that church. The information of Wood is most probably correct, that they lived at Milton near Halton and Thame. I find in R. Willeii Poematum Liber, 1573, among the Winchester scholars therein named of that period, a John Milton; probably one of this family. C Phillips's Life of Milton, 1694, p. iv. Communicated to me by letter from Milton. |