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CHAPTER XI.

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CHAPTER I.

SCANTINESS OF THE MATERIAL OFFERED BY MEN LIKE MILTON TO THE MERE BIOGRAPHER-GREAT MEN PRODUCED IN AGES OF TRANSITIONGENERAL FEATURES OF THE AGE IN WHICH MILTON LIVED-EFFECTS OF THE REFORMATION-RETENTION OF THE ESSENCE OF POPERYALLIANCE OF THE CHURCH WITH THE STATE.

It is a condition, at which it is futile to repine, belonging to those who in all ages have been born to guide a country amidst the stormy vicissitudes of a revolution, that they can be but little known as individuals to succeeding generations. Such men can scarcely be said to have, during their active years, a personal and private life. Scarcely any of those who are either desirous or capable of transmitting to posterity the portraiture of the MAN, have close and frequent access to the leaders, whether military or civil, of national transition. And as little, too, have those heroes such close and leisurely access to themselves, as admits of their giving to mankind that most valuable of biographies which can be best, if not solely, recorded by the individual, and which would exhibit the development of those inner principles which, ultimately embodied in their public acts, have influenced or decided the destinies of their country. The biography of such men is, for the most part, little else than a fragment of the history of their times.

To those who can appreciate the loftiest intellectual powers, sustained by vast learning, and enriched with the

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rarest treasures of fancy; and moral majesty, relieved of its sternness by the tenderest affections of the heart, it must ever be matter of regret that John Milton is one of those whose intimacy they cannot enjoy through the familiar introduction of biography. We are, indeed, ushered by history near enough to his presence to pay our homage; but we can never be presented with that audience of his conversation, and those charming glimpses of his privacy, which have perpetuated the domestic life of so many inferior men, and which, especially in the case of the most eminent, but most unjust of his biographers, has brought us as well acquainted with Dr. Johnson as with our daily associates.

The life of Milton may be divided into three epochs, the occupations of each of which were unfavourable to the interest of a pure biography. The first was spent in amassing those stores of learning which were to his vast intellect what machinery is to motive power. The second, after a brief but romantic interval of travel, was occupied with political and polemical controversy, and with public and official affairs; and the third was spent in a retirement rendered sacred alike by genius and sorrow, in which, from the aggregate resources of his knowledge, and the chastened, yet undiminished, powers of his fancy, he produced the great epic of the English language. Such a life can only be graduated by mental and literary landmarks. Its historical events were few; and, had they been ever so numerous, or ever so prominent, they would have been lost in the splendour of his intellectual career. In such a life, the dates of works as lasting as language, take the place which, in other lives, is occupied by waning victories and dubious and perishable honours.

The main purpose of these pages, however, is to circumscribe the biography of Milton within a still narrower compass. In reproducing to the public the incidents of his life, our chief design will be to develop, and that mainly, in his own stately and impressive language, the principles

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