To this account of Milton it may be proper to add fomething concerning his family. We faid before, that he had a younger brother and a fifter. His brother, Christopher Milton, was a man of totally oppofite principles; was a ftrong Royalist, and after the Civil war made his composition through his brother's intereft; had been entered young a student in the Inner Temple, of which house he lived to be an ancient bencher; and being a profeffed Papift, was, in the reign of James II. made a judge and knighted; but foon obtained his quietus by reason of his age and infirmities, and retired to Ipswich, where he lived all the latter part of his life. His fifter, Anne Milton, had a confiderable fortune given her by her father in marriage with Mr. Edward Philips, (fon of Mr. Edward Philips of Shrewsbury) who coming young to London, was bred up in the Crown-office in Chancery, and at length became fecondary of the office under Mr. Bembo. By him fhe had, befides other children who died infants, two fons, Edward and John. Among our Author's juvenile poems there is a copy of verfes on the Death of a fair Infant dying of a cough; and this being written in his 17th year, as it is faid in the title, it may be naturally inferred that Mrs. Philips was elder than either of her brothers. She had likewife two daughters, Mary, who died very young, and Anne, who was living in 1694, by a second

husband, Mr. Thomas Agar, who fucceeded his intimate friend Mr. Philips in his place in the Crownoffice, which he enjoyed many years, and left to Mr. Thomas Milton, fon of Sir Chriftopher before mentioned.

Our Author, by his first wife, had four children; a fon, who died an infant, and three daughters, who furvived him. By his second wife he had only one daughter, who died foon after her mother, who died in childbed; and by his laft wife he had no children at all. His daughters were not fent to fchool, but were instructed by a mistress kept at home for that purpose; and he himself, excusing the eldest on account of an impediment in her speech, taught the two others to read and pronounce Greek and Latin, and several other languages, without understanding any but English, for he used to say that one tongue was enough for a woman; but this employment was very irksome to them, and this, together with the sharpness and severity of their mother-in-law, made them very uneafy at home; and therefore they were all sent abroad to learn things more proper for them, and particularly embroidery in gold and filver. As Milton, at his death, left his affairs very much in the power of his widow, tho' fhe acknowledged that he died worth one thoufand five hundred pounds, yet she allowed but one hundred pounds to each of his three daughters. Anne, the eldeft, was decrepit and deformed, but had a ve

ry handsome face; the married a master-builder, and died in childbed of her first child, who died with her. Mary, the second, lived and died single. Deborah, the youngest, in her father's life-time, went over to Ireland with a lady, and afterwards was married to Mr. Abraham Clarke, a weaver in Spitalfields, and died in August 1727, in the 76th year of her age. She is faid to have been a woman of good understanding and genteel behaviour, though in low circumstances. As fhe had been often called upon to read Homer and Ovid's Metamorphofes to her father, fhe could have repeated a confiderable number of verfes from the beginning of both these poets, as Mr. Ward, Profeffor of Rhetoric in Gresham College, relates upon his own knowledge; and another gentleman has informed me, that he has heard her repeat feveral verfes likewife out of Euripides. Mr. Addison, and the other gentlemen who had opportunities of feeing her, knew her immediately to be Milton's daughter by the fimilitude of her countenance to her father's picture; and Mr. Addison made her a handsome present of a purse of guineas, with a promise of procuring for her fome annual provision for her life, but his death happening foon after, she lost the benefit of his generous defign. She received prefents, likewife, from feveral other gentlemen, and Queen Caroline fent her fifty pounds by the hands of Dr. Freind the physician. She had ten children, feven fons and three daughters;

but none of them had any children, except one of her fons, named Caleb, and one of her daughters, named Elizabeth. Caleb went to Fort St. George in the Eaft Indies, where he married, and had two fons, Abraham and Ifaac; the elder of whom came to England with the late Governor Harrison, but returned upon advice of his father's death, and whether he or his brother be now living is uncertain. Elizabeth, the youngest child of Mrs. Clarke, was married to Mr. Thomas Fofter, a weaver in Spitalfields, and had seven children, who are all dead; and fhe herself is aged about fixty, and weak and infirm. She feemeth to be a good plain fenfible woman, and has confirmed feveral particulars related above.

To what has been faid in the Life, of our Author's having no monument, it may not be improper to add, that on inquiry at St. Giles's church, the fexton fhewed a fmall monument, which he said was supposed to be Milton's; but the inscription had never been legible fince he was employed in that office, which he has poffeffed about forty years. This, fure, could never have happened in so short a space of time, unless the Epitaph had been induftrously erased; and that fup pofition carries with it so much inhumanity, that we ought to believe it was not erected to his memory.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE works of inferior geniuses have their infancy, and often receive additions of strength and beauty in the feveral impreffions they undergo whilft their authors live but the following Poem came into the world, like the persons whom it celebrates, in a state of maturity. However, though in the first edition it was difpofed into Ten Books only, Milton thought proper, in the second, to make a new divifion of it into Twelve: not, I fuppofe, with respect to the Æneis, (for he was, in both senses of the phrase, above imitation) but more probably, because the length of the Seventh and Tenth required a paufe in the narration, he divided them each into two; on which diftribution, to the beginning of those Books which are now the Eighth and Twelfth, he added the following ver fes, which were necessary to make a connexion.

Book VIII. ver. 1.

The angel ended, and in Adam's ear

So charming left his voice, that he a while

Thought him still speaking, still stood fix'd to lear

Then as new wak'd thus gratefully reply'd.

The latter half of the verfe was taken from this in the first edition,

To whom thus Adam gratefully reply'd

Volume I.