to avow.

The same reason constrained Mr. Trenchard about the same time to resort to this precaution in printing his excellent History of Standing Armies: as did the Printers of Montesquieu's works in France till the Constituent Assembly met in 1789. Just as the late Mr. Wilkes, when early in this reign he presented the Public from his private Printing Press with a translation of Boulanger's Theologico-political Research into the Origin and Progress of Despotism, deemed it prudent to screen himself behind the same subterfuge.

So dark was the cloud of prejudice which eclipsed the lustre of MILTON's name; and that too after the Revolution of 1688. Happily it has passed away. We begin to make some retribution for slight and neglect: his Prose has at length forced itself so far into notice that it is read, and sometimes quoted.

Suum cuique decus Posteritas rependet. The gradually accumulating suffrages of succeeding ages are an unerring indication of transcendent merit: as a monument reared by the public voice after the lapse of a century would be a surer testimony of departed

excellence than any erection to commemorate the eminent dead immediately following upon their decease. But there have been few, very few, who after their names had been decried like MILTON's; nay, few whose names had only been in abeyance, as it were, for so long a term of probation who could establish by general consent a claim to posthumous honours.

It is gratifying to find that amid the obloquy and detraction, in which through the turn of times MILTON spent his declining years, he consoled himself with a sure and certain hope of ultimate renown. For reasons sufficiently obvious, Bacon when looking forward to "a life beyond life" in the minds of future generations, bequeathed his fame to foreign nations. MILTON had only to appeal from the temper of the day:

"At ultimi nepotes,

"Et cordatior ætas,

"Judicia rebus æquiora forsitan

"Adhibebit, integro sinu.

"Tum, livore sepulto,

"Si quid meremur sana posteritas sciet."

A prophetic anticipation*.
anticipation*. Perhaps his

* "Such honourable visions bring,

"As sooth❜d great MILTON's injur'd age,

fortitude drew additional vigour from the depression he then experienced. He could not but know, that a hasty reputation, springing from contemporaneous praise was often a forced and sickly product: in not a few instances, little better than an artificial flower, and of as short and fleeting a date. While he must have been equally sensible that Fame when of tardier growth and wellripened reserves itself in store for a late posterity.

"Our monarch Oak, the patriarch of Trees,
"Shoots rising up and spreads by slow degrees:"

whereas tropical vegetation, under the rays of a vertical sun, is as transitory as it is rapid.

The inclination which has started up, and is visibly gaining ground among us, to cultivate a general acquaintance with the elder Authours of our own Nation is highly creditable to the reigning pursuits in Literature. We should vainly search the Continent in quest of Writings more deserving a diligent

"When in prophetic dreams he saw
"The race unborn with pious awe

"Imbibe each Virtue from his heavenly page."

Akenside.

perusal than some we have to boast as dignifying our Island toward the close of the sixteenth and through the next century.

In confirmation of this opinion, I might exhibit a long scroll of no vulgar names: I will enumerate no more than Raleigh, Bacon, Selden, and MILTON. Where can we receive fuller lessons on the grand examples and lights which History holds forth for the conduct of Nations than are to be found in the volume of Raleigh and his learned Assistants? And Bacon, who deposed the Stagyrite after his prescriptive sway over the Schools, now has his eminent services toward the advancement of true Philosophy acknowleged at home and abroad by the warmest votaries to the Writers of classical Antiquity. While Selden, for scholarship only not universal, and for his indefatigable researches into the original constitutions of the State, must be consulted and venerated as a Sage, to whom Learning and the Liberties of England are alike and largely indebted. Neither will MILTON, in scope and reach of Thought, nor in wide extent of Knowlege, and least of all in a devoted attachment to the supreme interests of the

human race, be found second to any who could be named, though he be estimated without regard to the deathless offspring of his Muse. Beside that several of his pieces are on the cardinal principles of our national policy in Church and State, and written at an epocha the most momentous of any in the annals of Britain, the energies of his unwearied intellect, his vast and various acquisitions, his disinterested and fearless search after Truth; -all combine with his elevation of sentiment, and uniform rectitude of intention, to give a deep and lively interest to every disquisition to which he applied himself. So that it is inexcusable in an English Gentleman, who feels it to be due to his station to attain a competent proficiency in the History and in the Literature of his native Country, to allow any portion of so great a Writer's works to be unknown to him: "Quæ etiam si Orator non "sis, et sis ingenuus Civis Romanus, tamen ne"cessaria est."

No circumstance can contribute to make this path to liberal and useful information more attractive and consequently more frequented than to clear away those obstruc