ire;
Yet softer claims the melting heart engage,
Her youth laborious, and her blameless age:
Hers the mild merits of domestic life,
The patient suff'rer, and the faithful wife.
Thus grac'd with humble virtue's native charms
Her grandsire leaves her in Britannia's arms,
Secure with peace, with competence, to dwell,
While tutelary nations guard her cell.
Yours is the charge, ye fair, ye wife, ye brave!
'Tis yours to crown desert--beyond the grave!

In the year 1670 our author published at London in 4to. his History of
Britain, that part, especially, now called England, from the first
traditional Beginning, continued to the Norman Conquest, collected out
of the ancientest and best authors thereof. It is reprinted in the
first volume of Dr. Kennet's compleat History of England. Mr. Toland
in his Life of Milton, page 43, observes, that we have not this
history as it came out of his hands, for the licensers, those sworn
officers to destroy learning, liberty, and good sense, expunged
several passages of it, wherein he exposed the superstition, pride,
and cunning of the Popish monks in the Saxon times, but applied by the
sagacious licensers to Charles IId's bishops. In 1681 a considerable
passage which had been suppressed in the publication of this history,
was printed at London in 4to under this title. Mr. John Milton's
character of the Long Parliament and Assembly of Divines in 1651,
omitted in his other works, and never before printed. It is reported,
and from the foregoing character it appears probable, that Mr. Milton
had lent most of his personal estate upon the public faith, which when
he somewhat earnestly pressed to have restored, after a long, and
chargeable attendance, met with very sharp rebbukes; upon which, at
last despairing of any success in this affair, he was forced to return
from them poor and friendless, having spent all his money, and wearied
all those who espoused his cause, and he had not, probably, mended his
circumstances in those days, but by performing such service for them,
as afterwards he did, for which scarce any thing would appear too
great. In 1671 he published at London in 8vo. Paradise Regained, a
Poem in four Books, to which is added Sampson Agonistes: there is not
a stronger proof of human weakness, than Milton's preferring this Poem
of Paradise Regained, to Paradise Lost, and it is a natural and just
observation, that the Messiah in Paradise Regained, with all his
me