Milton were probably as insignificant in his view as they have hitherto appeared in the literary history of their own age. OF Milton himself, it was impossible to make any discoveries. But the real object of this publication it may not be difficult to detect. Our author is a zealous professor of many opinions which Milton assiduously defended. Milton rejoiced to see them prevailing over the laws and the religion of his country, but he lived to witness the happiness of his country re-established in the restoration of those laws and of that religion. The same opinions revived by the school of philosophy to which this writer is attached, and applied to the same purposes, on a more extended scale, have recently occasioned yet wider misery. But the wheel has again revolved, and the professors of such doctrines are passing into infamy, from which this publication will not avail to rescue them. The name of Milton, never pronounced without the reverence due to superior talents employed to vindicate the ways of God to man, is here obtruded on us, for the sole purpose of reconciling us to regicide, and of traducing our national constitutson. More than twenty years have elapsed since Mr. Godwin was first distinguished among the writers of this country who conspired to undermine the foundations of all establishments, both civil and religious, and to substitute the jargon of licentious philosophy and the follies of an imaginary equality, for the rules of social government and the doctrines of revelation. To such of our readers as may be tempted by the title of this volume, into which the name of our great national poet is three times introduced, it may be useful to be reminded that the editor, William Godwin, in the year 1792, when the Jacobins were triumphant in France, and militant throughout Europe, published a work which he called an Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and therein developed, with most insidious art and crafty accommodation, those destructive principles which tend to subvert all political institutions. He seemed to surpass all the other writers who were eminent at that awful period for the doctrines of revolution, in his eulogium of democratic institutions, and in his bold calumny of whatever had hitherto been held in veneration, and had been applied to combine the elements of society. Two years afterwards he appeared as the author of a romance entitled, Things as they are, or the Adventures of Caleb Williams. In this work, of extravagant fiction, he proceeded farther than merely to assail the social institutions. It seemed to be his object to defame all the principles of jurisprudence, to represent the rules of law for which government is embodied as oppressive and pernicious, and to infer that our ordinary conceptions of truth and honour, which supply the defect of law where its application fails, and enforce its provisions by gentler means than those of rigorous penalty, are founded in prejudice and mistake, and that they are compatible with the greatest crimes. The audacious moralist attempted to corrupt the sources of opinion, and to make us mistrustful of all the outward appearances of goodness and humanity. He traduced the love of fame, which sages commend as the ally and the reward of virtue, and combined it with the worst violations of duty and a temper the most flagitious. He formed a monstrous character, amiable and dignified to the eye, but internally cruel, vindictive, selfish, and inhuman. In 1797 he published his Enquiry, or Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature. In this work he continued to censure all subsisting practice and opinion, and to recommend innovation in every department and every habit of mankind. He traduced our English system of education, he censured all discipline in the instruction of youth, he required that the pupil should enjoy perfect liberty, and govern his preceptor, and that the preceptor's duty should be limited to follow and to inform, but not to controul his pupil. The relation between the master and the domestic servant calculated to inspire benevolent affections among the opulent towards those who contribute to their comforts, and supply their wants, and to unite the opposite classes in mutual dependance and reciprocal obligation; he censured" as the revival of the barbarity of Mezentius, the linking a living body and a dead one together." He represented the rich man as naturally selfish and oppressive, and the poor man as base, false, and groveling. His tradesman is fraudulent and mendacious, his lawyer dishonest, his physi cian unfeeling and rapacious, and his clergymen hypocritical. "His soldier has no duty but that of murder, and this duty he is careful amply to discharge. This he regards as the means of his subsistence, as the path that leads to an illustrious name; upon every supposition he must learn ferocity. He is totally ignorant of the principles of human nature; he is a man whose business it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the innocent martyrs of other men's iniquities. It is impossible that a soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural being." Having levelled a deadly blow at almost every class esteemed honourable among men, he attacked the foundation of all that is truly honourable, and directed his malignant censure against the doctrines and the benign principles of Christianity itself. In the following year he appeared as the biographer of Mary Wolstonecraft, a woman to whom he had recently united himself without marrying her, and who died in childbirth of the first offspring, which she had by our philosopher. The offen $ 2 sive sive matter of this story is a practical illustration of the gross immorality which had been before scientifically methodized by the same pen, and a particular vindication of suicide, the impure intercourse of the sexes, and religious infidelity, which are, indeed, her leading characteristics, but which he pourtrayed as circumstances in her life, that in the judgment of honour and reason, could not brand her with disgrace." That mysterious law by which " "Relations dear and all the charities Of father, son and brother first were known, This profane writer, in this Christian country, dared to stigmatize with his impure aspersion. "It is difficult," said he, "to recommend any thing to indiscriminate adoption, contrary to the established rules and prejudices of mankind; but certainly nothing can be so ridiculous upon the face of it, or so contrary to the general march of sentiment, as to require the overflowing of the soul to wait upon a ceremony, and that which, wherever delicacy and imagination exist, is of all things most sacredly private, to blow a trumpet before it, and to record the moment when it has arrived at its climax." Another trait of this abandoned woman, amiable in the estimation of Mr. Godwin, was her living without the fear of God, and her neglect of Christian worship. He tells us that "She had received few lessons of religion in her youth, and her religion was almost entirely of her own creation, she could not recollect the time, when she had believed the doctrine of future punishments, She expected a future state, but she would not allow her ideas of that future state to be modified by the notions of judgment and retribution. As far down as the year 1787, she regularly frequented public worship. After that period her attendance became less constant, and in no long time was wholly discontinued. I believe," says Godwin, "it may be admitted as a maxim, that no person of a well-furnished mind, that has shaken off the implicit subjection of youth, and is not the zealous partizan of a sect, can bring himself to conform to the public and regular routine of sermons and prayers." The readers of the British Critic are probably of too much delicacy of sentiment, and of imagination too pure, to be well versed in the writings of such men as Mr. Godwin. It is desirable that they should remain so, for their purity of taste would at least be impaired, and the sturdiness of their virtuous judgment might suffer from the perusal of such obscene and nauseous publications. We thought it necessary to present to them this succinct account of some of his former productions, that they might duly appreciate the motive which has occasioned that before us. The name of Mr. Godwin was passing into obscurity. The venom of sedition and impiety which he helped to infuse into the public mind, has had all its operation; the good sense of mankind found and applied the appropriate remedy, and the world may again be tranquil. Benevolent minds might have hoped that Mr. Godwin himself was convalescent, and that he repented his former activity in the cause of public commotion. Though he might want courage to renounce his errors, and to offer some atonement for them, yet he might secretly exult in the recent triumph of correct principles, commanded by the vigour of his own country, and the overthrow of her enemies. This account of the lives of Edward and John Philips, connected with the learning and opinions of their uncle and preceptor, enables us to judge how far the woeful experience of twenty-five years of public calamity has shaken his attachment to the principles from which all that calamity proceeded. That portion of the work which corresponds to its principal title, and treats of the adventures and of the works of John and Edward Philips is almost without interest, and affords little useful information. Both of them were writers by profession, and wrote books for the profits of authorship. It appears that in that profession they laboured assiduously, and frequently prepared something new to employ the attention of the reading part of mankind, but rather when urged by necessity than from the impulse of genius. They might have enjoyed ephemeral reputation, but their posthumous celebrity was so low that Dr. Samuel Johnson, an extensive, if not a diligent enquirer, believed that they had given to the world only one genuine production. Edward was of an affectionate disposition, and notwithstanding differences of opinion from his uncle, on points of politics and religion, at that crisis very important, he regarded him almost with filial piety. John was less tolerant towards his uncle's errors. Neither of them permitted his authority or his example ultimately to outweigh their considerations of allegiance towards the king, or of fidelity to his laws. It is conjectured, on good grounds, that the influence of Edward contributed to the safety of Milton after the Restoration, and prevented his exclusion from the act of oblivion. If, indeed, it be so, we must ever regard the memory of Edward with peculiar gratitude, for to the leisure afterwards enjoyed by Milton we owe that immortal poem which is the rock of his great fame. The name of Milton is sacred in the history of English poetry. His distinguished part in the rude proceedings of the great great Rebellion, are not always associated in recollection with that transcendent merit by which he raised and established the superior dignity of his native language, and presented to after ages the sublimest effort of human genius The Paradise Lost will endure for ever, a standard of excellence in the noblest walk of poetry. It is with reluctance that we can mingle with such contemplations the remembrance that he voluntarily quitted the service of the Muses, and profaned his genius by worldly views and fierce controversy. But Mr. Godwin compels us again to unite these things in recollection. "There is nothing else," he says, " of so capacious dimensions in the compass of our literature, if, indeed, there is in the literary productions of our spécies, that can compare with the Paradise Lost." But the divine song of Milton does not engross his admiration. "For he his also our patriot." He thinks that "no man of just discernment can read his political writings without being penetrated with the holy flame that animated him, and if the world shall ever attain that stature of mind as for courts to find no place in it, he will be the patriot of the world." Does Mr. Godwin forget that Milton saw the liberties of his country subdued by a military despot, and that he, the patriot, bowed the knee at that despot's court. Beyond all comparison the most interesting and only pleasing part of the History of Milton's Life is that which precedes the commencement of the civil wars in England, and yet it is there only that Mr. Godwin opens his narrative. Milton was then more than thirty years of age. He had flourished in the patronage of the nobility of his own country, and was beloved by all men of taste and literature both at home and abroad. He had attained the highest celebrity by the Masque of Comus, which, for the poetical imagination which it displays, for the rich variety and sweetness of its versification, and its pure morality remains the brightest ornament of our dramatic poetry. He had published his Lycidas and the Arcades, and was esteemed not only for those unrivalled performances with which he enriched our language, but for the bright promise afforded by them of varied and higher excellence. He was known to be a complete master of ancient learning, and to be familiar with the Italian school. In the pursuit of knowledge and the cultivation of his taste he had visited France and Italy, and enjoyed the honours which the learned of that splendid age willingly bestowed on persons of whatever religion and whatever country who were conspicuous for superior attainments. He was already compared with the greatest poets of antiquity. "Græci Mæonidem, jactet sibi Roma Maronem, Unhappily |