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greatly increased thro' the connivance of the King, and the more open encouragement of the Duke of York; and the fame year his poems, which had been printed in 1645, were reprinted with the addition of feveral others. His familiar epiftles and fome academical exercifes, Epiftolarum familiarium Lib. I. et Prolufiones quædam Oratoriæ in Collegio Christi habitæ, were printed in 1674; as was alfo his tranflation out of Latin into English of the Pole's Declaration concerning the election of their king John III, fetting forth the virtues and merits of that prince. He wrote alfo a brief History of Muf covy, collected from the relations of feveral travelers; but it was not printed till after his death in 1682. He had likewife his ftate-letters transcribed at the requeft of the Danish refident, but neither were they printed till after his death in 1675, and were tranflated into English in 1694; and to that tranflation a life of Milton was prefixed by his nephew Mr. Edward Philips, and at the end of that life his excellent fonnets to Fairfax, Cromwell, Sir Henry Vane, and Cyriac Skinner on his blindness were first printed. Befides thefe works which were published, he wrote a fyftem of divinity, which Mr. Toland fays was in the hands of his friend Cyriac Skinner, but where at prefent is uncertain. And Mr. Philips fays, that he had prepared for the prefs an answer to fome little fcribbling quack in London, who had written a fcurrilous libel against him; but whether by the diffuafion of friends, as thinking him a fellow not worth his notice, or for what other cause Mr. Philips knoweth not, this anfwer was never published. And indeed the beft vindicator

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vindicator of him and his writings hath been Time. Pofterity hath univerfally paid that honor to his merits, which was denied him by great part of his contemporaries.

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After a life thus spent in study and labors for the public he died of the gout at his houfe in Bunhill Row on or about the 10th of November 1674, when he had within a month completed the fixty fixth year of his age. It is not known when he was firft attacked by the gout, but he was grievously afflicted with it feveral of the last years of his life, and was weakened to fuch a degree, that he died without a groan, and those in the room perceived not when he expired. His body was decently interred near that of his father (who had died very aged about the year 1647) in the chancel of the Church of St. Giles's Cripplegate; and all his great and learned friends in London, not without a friendly concourfe of the common people, paid their laft refpects in attending it to the grave. Mr. Fenton in his fhort but elegant account of the life of Milton, fpeaking of our author's having no monument, fays that "he defired a friend to inquire at St. Giles's "Church; where the fexton fhowed him a small

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monument, which he faid was supposed to be "Milton's; but the infcription had never been legible fince he was employed in that office, "which he has poffeffed about forty years. This "fure could never have happened in fo fhort a fpace of time, unless the epitaph had been induftrioufly erafed: and that fuppofition, fays "Mr. Fenton, carries with it fo much inhumanity, "that I think we ought to believe it was not erected

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to his memory." It is evident that it was not erected to his memory, and that the fexton was miftaken. For Mr. Toland in his account of the life of Milton fays, that he was buried in the chancel of St. Giles's Church," where the piety of his "admirers will fhortly erect a monument becoming his worth and the encouragement of letters in "King William's reign." This plainly implies that no monument was erected to him at that time, and this was written in 1698: and Mr. Fenton's account was first published, I think, in 1725; fo that not above twenty feven years intervened from the one account to the other; and confequently the fexton, who it is faid had been poffeffed of his office about forty years, must have been mistaken, and the monument must have been defigned for fome other perfon, and not for Milton. A monument indeed has been erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey by Auditor Benfon in the year 1737; but the best monument of him is his writings.

In his youth he was efteemed extremely handfome, fo that while he was a ftudent at Cambridge, he was called the Lady of Chrift's College. He had a very fine skin and fresh complexion; his hair was of a light brown, and parted on the foretop hung down in curls waving upon his fhoulders; his features were exact and regular; his voice agreeable and mufical; his habit clean and neat; his deportment erect and manly. He was middle-fized and well proportioned, neither tall nor fhort, neither too lean nor too corpulent, ftrong and active in his younger years, and though afflicted with frequent head-akes, blindness, and gout, was yet a comely

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and well-looking man to the last. His eyes were of a light blue color, and from the first are said to have been none of the brightest; but after he loft the fight of them, (which happened about the 43d year of his age) they ftill appeared without fpot or blemish, and at firft view and at a little distance it was not eafy to know that he was blind. Mr. Richardfon had an account of him from an ancient clergyman in Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, who found him in a small house, which had (he thinks) but one room on a floor; in that, up one pair of ftairs, which was hung with a rufty green, he faw John Milton fitting in an elbow chair, with black clothes, and neat enough, pale but not cadaverous, his hands and fingers gouty, and with chalk ftones; among other difcourfe he expreffed himself to this purpose, that was he free from the pain of the gout, his blindnefs would be tolerable, But there is the lefs need to be particular in the defcription of his perfon, as the idea of his face and countenance is pretty well known from the numerous prints, pictures, bufts, medals, and other reprefentations which have been made of him. There are two pictures of greater value than the reft, as they are undoubted originals, and were in the poffeffion of Milton's widow: the firft was drawn when he was about twenty one, and is at prefent in the collection of the Right Honorable Arthur Onflow Efq; Speaker of the Houfe of Commons; the other in crayons was drawn when he was about fixty two, and was in the collection of Mr. Richardfon, but has fince been purchased by Mr. Tonfon. Several prints have been made from both these pictures; and there is a

print done, when he was about fixty two or fixty three, after the life by Faithorn, which tho' not fo handsome, may yet perhaps be as true a refemblance, as any of them. It is prefixed to fome of our author's pieces, and to the folio edition of his profe works in three volumes printed in 1698.

In his way of living he was an example of fobriety and temperance. He was very fparing in the ufe of wine or ftrong liquors of any kind. Let meaner poets make ufe of fuch expedients to raife their fancy and kindle their imagination. He wanted not any artificial fpirits; he had a natural fire, and poetic warmth enough of his own. He was likewife very abftemious in his diet, not faftidiously nice or delicate in the choice of his dishes, but content with any thing that was moft in feafon, or eafieft to be procured, eating and drinking, (according to the diftinction of the philofopher) that he might live, and not living that he might eat and drink. So that probably his gout defcended by inheritance from one or other of his parents; or if it was of his own acquiring, it must have been owing to his ftudious and fedentary life. And yet he delighted fometimes in walking and ufing exercise, but we hear nothing of his riding or hunting; and having early learned to fence, he was fuch a master of his sword, that he was not afraid of refenting an affront from any man; and before he loft his fight, his principal recreation was the exercife of his arms; but after he was confined by age and blindness, he had a machine to fwing in for the prefervation of his health. In his youth he was accustomed to fit up late at his ftudies, and feldom went to bed before midnight;

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