e my search to the collateral relations, which it might be
supposed to have contracted, in its progress to maturity: and having, at
least, persuaded my own judgment that the search has not been entirely
ineffectual, I now lay the result of my labours before the publick; with
full conviction that, in questions of this kind, the world cannot be
mistaken, at least, cannot long continue in errour.

I cannot avoid acknowledging the candour of the author of that excellent
monthly book, the Gentleman's Magazine, in giving admission to the
specimens in favour of this argument; and his impartiality in as freely
inserting the several answers. I shall here subjoin some extracts from
the seventeenth volume of this work, which I think suitable to my
purpose. To which I have added, in order to obviate every pretence for
cavil, a list of the authors quoted in the following essay, with their
respective dates, in comparison with the date of Paradise Lost.

POSTSCRIPT.

When this Essay was almost finished, the splendid edition of Paradise
Lost, so long promised by the reverend Dr. Newton, fell into my hands;
of which I had, however, so little use, that, as it would be injustice
to censure, it would be flattery to commend it: and I should have
totally forborne the mention of a book that I have not read, had not one
passage at the conclusion of the life of Milton, excited in me too much
pity and indignation to be suppressed in silence.

"Deborah, Milton's youngest daughter," says the editor, "was married to
Mr. Abraham Clarke, a weaver, in Spitalfields, and died in August, 1727,
in the 76th year of her age. She had ten children. Elizabeth, the
youngest, was married to Mr. Thomas Foster, a weaver, in Spitalfields,
and had seven children, who are all dead; and she, herself, is aged
about sixty, and weak and infirm. She seemeth to be a good, plain,
sensible woman, and has confirmed several particulars related above, and
informed me of some others, which she had often heard from her mother."
These the doctor enumerates, and then adds, "In all probability,
Milton's whole family will be extinct with her, and he can live only in
his writings. And such is the caprice of fortune, this granddaughter of
a man, who will be an everlasting glory to the nation, has now for some
years, with her husband, kept a little chandler's or grocer's shop, for
their subsistence, lately at the lower Holloway, in the road between
Highgate and London, and, at pres