for her in 1750 by Dr. Birch, Johnson, and others; and she died at Islington in 1754, having had seven children, none of whom survived, or at least left descendants. Thus disappeared all the direct posterity of the poet. It remains to be added, that his brother Christopher, having adhered steadily to his royalist politics, was knighted by James II. in 1686, and became one of that king's servile judges, but was set aside at the Revolution, and died at Ipswich in 1692; that the two Phillipses, the poet's nephews, had some reputation as hack-writers in the reigns of James and his successor; and, finally, that their mother, the poet's only sister, had other children by her second marriage, whose descendants are still to be traced.

THE

GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF MILTON.

BY LORD MACAULAY.

It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and it is of his poetry that we wish first to speak. (By the general suffrage of the civilized world, his place has been assigned among the greatest masters of the art. His detractors, however, though out-voted, have not been silenced. There are many critics, and some of great name, who contrive, in the same breath, to extol the poems and to decry the poet. The works, they acknowledge, considered in themselves, may be classed among the noblest productions of the human mind. But they

will not allow the author to rank with those great men who, born in the infancy of civilization, supplied, by their own powers, the want of instruction, and, though destitute of models themselves, bequeathed to posterity models which defy imitation. Milton, it is said, inherited what his predecessors created; he lived in an enlightened age; he received a finished education; and we must, therefore, if we would form a just estimate of his powers, make large deductions for these advantages.

We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more unfavorable circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not been born "an age too late." For this notion Johnson has thought fit to make him. the butt of his clumsy ridicule. The poet, we believe, understood the nature

of his art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilization which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired: and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions.

We think that, as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception.

Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause.

The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the experimental sciences to that of the imitative arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits it, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl, who has read Mrs. Marcet's