When this essay was almost finished, the splendid edition of Paradise Lost, so long promised by the reverenda Dr. Newton, fell into my hands; of which I had, however, so little use, thatb as it would be injustice to censure, it would be flattery to commend it: and I should have totally forborn the mention of a bookc that I have not read, had not one passage, at the conclusion of the life of Milton, excited in me too much pity and indignation to be suppressed in silence.

“Deborah, Milton’s youngest daughter,” says the editor, “was married to Mr. Abraham Clarke, a weaverd in Spittle-fields, and died in August 1727, in the 76th year of her age. She had ten children. Elizabeth, the youngest, was married to Mr. Thomas Foster, a weaver in Spittle-fields, and had seven children, who are all dead; and she herself is aged about sixty, and weak and infirm. She seemeth to be a good plain sensible woman, and has confirmed several particulars related above, and informed me of some others, which she had often heard from her mother.” These the doctor enumerates, and then adds; “in all probabilitye Milton’s whole family will be extinct with her, and he can live only in his writings. And such is the caprice of fortune, this grand-daughter of a man, who will be an everlasting glory to the nation, has now for some years, with her husband, kept a little chandler’s orfgrocer’s shop,gfor their subsistence, lately at the lower Holloway, in the road between High-gate and London, and at present in Cock Lane, not far from Shoreditch Church.”

That this relation is true, cannot be questioned:—but, surely, the honour of letters, the dignity of sacred poetry, the spirit of the English nation, and the glory of human nature, require—that it should be true no longer. In an age, in which statues are erected to the honour of this great writer,2 in which his effigy has been diffused on medals, and his work propagated by translations, and illustrated by commentaries; in an age, which, amidst all its vices, and all its follies, has not become infamous for want of charity: it may be, surely, allowed to hope, that the living remains of Milton will be no longer suffered to languish in distress. It is yet in the power of a great people, to reward the poeth whose name they boast, and from their alliance to whose genius,i they claim some kind of superiority to every other nation of the earth; that poet, whose works may possibly be readj when every other monument of British greatness shall be obliterated; to reward him—not with pictures, or with medals, which, if he sees, he sees with contempt, but—with tokens of gratitude, which he, perhaps, may even now consider as not unworthy the regard of an immortal spirit. And, surely, to those, who refuse their names to no other scheme of expence, it will not be unwelcome, that a subscription is proposed, for relieving, in the languor of age, the pains of disease, and the contempt of poverty, the grand-daughter of the author of Paradise Lost. Nor can it be questioned, that, if I, who have been marked out as the Zoilus of Milton,3 think this regard due to his posterity, the design will be warmly seconded by those, whose lives have been employed, in discovering his excellencies, and extending his reputation.