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 meekness, unaffected dignity, and clear reasoning, makes not so great a figure, as when in the Paradise Lost he appears cloathed in the Terrors of Almighty vengeance, wielding the thunder of Heaven, and riding along the sky in the chariot of power, drawn, as Milton greatly expresses it, ’with Four Cherubic Shapes; when he comes drest in awful Majesty, and hurls the apostate spirits headlong into the fiery gulph of bottomless perdition, there to dwell in adamantine chains and penal fire, who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms.’

Dr. Newton has dissented from the general opinion of mankind, concerning Paradise Regained:  ’Certainly, says he, it is very worthy of the author, and contrary to what Mr. Toland relates, Milton may be seen in Paradise Regained as well as Paradise Lost; if it is inferior in poetry, I know not whether it is inferior in sentiment; if it is less descriptive, it is more argumentative; if it does not sometimes rise so high, neither doth it ever sink below; and it has not met