There have been various conjectures concerning the cause that 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 living is uncertain.  Elizabeth, the youngest child of Deborah, married Mr. Thomas Foster, a weaver, and lives now in Hog-lane, Shoreditch, for whom Comus, as we have already observed, was performed at Drury-Lane, and produced her a great benefit.  She has had seven children, three sons and four daughters, who are all now dead.  This Mrs. Foster is a plain decent looking Woman.  Mr. John Ward, fellow of