sion of this book pass undisputed, and Johnson's is still most malignant life of Milton."

The bitter injustice of Johnson against our divine bard has been recently, and copiously displayed, and condemned with great energy of sentiment and expression, by a respectable veteran of literature. Mr. Percival Stockdale in his Lectures on the truly eminent English Poets has vindicated the honour of Milton, and as a contrast to a savage remark of the hostile biographer on his blindness, has happily expressed that tenderness of veneration, so justly due to his genius, his virtues, and his calamity, by a graceful application of a passage in his Samson Agonistes to the person of its author.

"Who that now hears me (says Mr. Stockdale) would not have been proud to have given his attention: I may venture to add his attendance to this venerable old man, sitting in his little apartment! Who of us would not have adopted for his own language, and have applied to Him the beautiful lines, in which his Manoah expresses his affection for his Samson.

"It shall be my delight to tend his eyes,
And view him sitting in the house, ennobled
With all those high exploits by him achieved."

Samson Agonistes, v. 1490.

Lectures on the truly eminent English Poets, by Percival Stockdale, 8vo, 1807, vol. 1. p. 224.

NOTE 13. Elegy IV. To his Tutor Thomas Young.

This worthy man had such purity, and elevation of mind, and so much merit in forming the mental character of Milton, that he is entitled to notice and regard from all the admirers of the poet. I shall extract the particulars of his personal history from the Note of Mr. Warton and add to them such passages from the familiar letters of Milton, as forcibly express the excellence of the preceptor, and the grateful affection of his disciple.

"Thomas Young, now pastor of the church of English merchants at Hamburgh (says Mr. Warton) was Milton's private preceptor before he was sent to St. Paul's school.

"The first and fourth of Milton's familiar Epistles, both very respectful and affectionate, are to this Thomas Young. In the first dated at London inter urbana di. verticula March 26, 1725, he says, he had resolved to send Young an epistle in verse, but thought proper at the same time to send one in prose. The Elegy now before us is the epistle in verse."

The prose and verse were not sent at the same time, but in different years. In closing the first, Milton promises to his preceptor a more elaborate epistle on his first return to the seat of the Muses. "Hæc scripsi Londini inter urbana diverticula; non libris, ut soleo, circumseptus: si quid igitur in hac Epistolâ minus arriserit, tuamque frustrabitur expectationem, pensabitur aliâ magis elaboratâ, ubi primum ad Musarum spatia rediero." Hence I imagine, that he wrote this Elegy in

the following year, 1626, during his next residence in Cambridge, and this supposition agrees with the intimation in the title of the poem, that it was composed, when the author was in his eighteenth year.

It is very remarkable, that Milton has not a single allusion to the scenery around him, when he wrote the Elegy; which might arise from a double motive, first, a little resentment towards Cambridge for the affront he received in his college, to which he alludes in the fol lowing lines of his first Elegy:

"Tis time, that I a pedant's threats disdain,

And fly from wrongs, my soul will neʼer sustain."

and secondly, a dislike to the face of the country expressed in another couplet of the same poem :

"Nor aught of pleasure in those fields have I,
That to the musing bard all shade deny."

But to return to the history of his domestic tutor : "This Thomas Young (says Mr. Warton) who appears to have returned to England in or before the year 1628, was Doctor Thomas Young, a member of the assembly of Divines, where he was a constant attendant, and one of the authors of the book called Smectymnus, defended by Milton; and who, from a London Preachership in Duke's-place, was preferred by the Parliament to the Mastership of Jesus College in Cambridge.Clarke a Calvinistic biographer attests, that he was a man of great learning, and of much prudence, and piety,

and of great ability and fidelity in the work of the ministry." Lives folio, p. 194.

Mr. Warton proceeds to say, that he possessed a Fast Sermon by Young, preached before the House of Commons, and printed by order of the House, 4to, 1644. He mentions also a Latin work of Young, entitled, Dies Dominica, on the observation of Sunday in the Bodleian Library, with a Latin note by Bishop Barlow mentioning the name of the author.

Mr. Warton closes his account of this memorable man by saying, "I learn the following particulars from a manuscript History of Jesus College. He was a

native of Scotland: he was admitted Master of the College by the Earl of Manchester in person, April 12, 1644. He was ejected from the Mastership for refusing the Engagement, He died, and was buried at Stowmarket in Suffolk, where he had been Vicar thirty years."

It was probably from this learned and conscientious man (as I have observed in a Life of Milton) that he caught not only his passion for literature, but that steadiness and unconquerable integrity of character, by which he was distinguished through all the vicissitudes of a tempestuous life, His reverential gratitude and affection towards his preceptor are recorded with equal energy in the Latin Epistle, and the Latin Elegy addressed to him they suggest a most favorable idea of the poet's native disposition, and furnish an effectual antidote to the poison of that most injurious assertion,

that he hated all, whom he was required to obey." Could untractable pride be the characteristic of a mind, which has expressed its regard for a disciplinarian sufficiently rigid with a tenderness so conspicuous in the Fourth Elegy? Both the poetical and the affectionate spirit of this interesting poem are admirably preserved in the version of Cowper.

The first of Milton's familiar epistles to Young declares his sense of obligation to this beloved instructor to be so great, that he thought all the powers of rhetorick hardly equal to an adequate description of the tutor's merit, and the disciple's gratitude.

"Incredibilis enim illa, et singularis animi mei gratitudo, quam tua ex debito vendicant in me merita, non constricto illo et certis pedibus ac syllabis angustato dicendi genere exprimenda fuit, sed oratione liberâ, immo potius, si fieri posset, Asiaticâ verborum exuberantiâ, Quamvis quidem satis exprimere quantum tibi debeam, opus sit meis viribus longe majus, etiamsi omnes quoscunque Aristoteles, quoscunque Parisiensis ille dialecti cus congessit argumentorum rores exinanirem, etiamsi omnes elocutionis fonticulos exhaurirem."

The second familiar epistle to Young has a passage that exhibits his character in another very pleasing point of view: it struck Dr. Symmons so forcibly, that he has introduced it into his Life of Milton, and I will close this note by transcribing the Doctor's elegant version of the Latin words to which I alluded.

"Availing myself (Malton writes to his late tutor)