t produced
in Milton so great an aversion to Charles I. One is, that when Milton
stood candidate for a professorship at Cambridge with his much
esteemed friend Mr. King, their interest and qualifications were
equal, upon which his Majesty was required by his nomination to fix
the professor; his answer was, let the best-natured man have it; to
which they who heard him, immediately replied; 'then we are certain it
cannot be Milton's, who was ever remarkable for a stern ungovernable
man.'--Whether this conjecture is absolutely true, we cannot
determine; but as it is not without probability, it has a right to be
believed, till a more satisfactory one can be given.

In whatever light Milton may be placed as a statesman, yet as a poet
he stands in one point of view without a rival; the sublimity of his
conceptions, the elevation of his stile, the fertility of his
imagination, and the conduct of his design in Paradise Lost is
inimitable, and cannot be enough admired.

Milton's character as a poet was never better pourtray'd than in the
epigram under his picture written by Mr. Dryden.

Three poets in three distant ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England, did adorn.
The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd;
The next in majesty; in both the last:
The force of nature could no further go,
To make a third, she join'd the former two.--

This great man died at his house at Bunhill, Nov. 15, 1674, and was
interred near the body of his father, in the chancel of the church of
St. Giles, Cripplegate. By his first wife he had four children, a son
and three daughters. The daughters survived their father. Anne married
a master-builder, and died in child-bed of her first child, which died
with her; Mary lived single; Deborah left her father when she was
young, and went over to Ireland with a lady, and came to England again
during the troubles of Ireland under King James II. She married Mr.
Abraham Clark, a weaver in Spittal-fields, and died Aug. 24, 1727, in
the 76th year of age. She had ten children, viz. seven sons, and three
daughters, but none of them had any children except one of her sons
named Caleb, and the youngest daughter, whose name is Elizabeth. Caleb
went over to Fort St. George in the East-Indies, where he married and
had two sons, Abraham and Isaac; of these Abraham the elder came to
England with governor Harrison, but returned again upon advice of his
father's death, and whether he or his brother be now liv