The circumstances of our author were never very mean, nor very affluent; he lived above want, and was content with competency.  His father supported him during his travels.  When he was appointed Latin secretary, his sallary amounted to 200 l. per ann. and tho’ he was of the victorious party, yet he was far from sharing the spoils of his country.  On the contrary, as we learn from his Second Defence, he sustained great losses during the civil war, and was not at all favoured in the imposition of taxes, but sometimes paid beyond his due proportion; and upon a turn of affairs, he was not only deprived of his place, but also lost 2000 l. which he had for security, put into the Excise office.

In the fire of London, his house in Bread-street was burnt, before which accident foreigners have gone out of devotion, says Wood, to see the house and chamber where he was born.  Some time before he died, he sold the greatest part of his library, as his heirs were not qualified to make a proper use of it, and as he thought he could dispose of it to greater advantage, than they could after his death.  He died (says Dr. Newton) by one means or other worth 1500 l. besides his houshold goods, which was no incompetent subsistence for him, who was as great a philosopher as a poet.

Milton seems not to have been very happy in his marriages.  His first wife offended him by her elopement; the second, whose love, sweetness, and delicacy he celebrates, lived not a twelvemonth with him; and his third was said to be a woman of a most violent spirit, and a severe step-mother to his children.

’She died, says Dr. Newton, very old, about twenty years ago, at Nantwich in Cheshire, and from the accounts of those who had seen her, I have learned that she confirmed several things related before; and particularly that her husband used to compose his poetry chiefly in the winter, and on his waking on a morning would make her write down sometimes twenty or thirty verses:  Being asked whether he did not often read Homer and Virgil, she understood it as an imputation upon him for stealing from these authors, and answered with eagerness, that he stole from no body but the muse that inspired him; and being asked by a lady present who the muse was, she answered, it was God’s grace and holy spirit, that visited him nightly.  She was likewise asked, whom he approved most of our English poets, and answered, Spenser, Shakespear, and Cowley; and being asked what he thought of Dryden, she said Dryden used sometimes to visit him, but he thought him no poet, but a good rhimist.’

The reader will be pleased to observe, that this censure of Milton’s was before Dryden had made any great appearance in poetry, or composed those immortal works of genius, which have raised eternal monuments to him, and carried his name to every country where poetry and taste are known.  Some have thought that Dryden’s genius was even superior to Milton’s:  That the latter chiefly shines in but one kind of poetry; his thoughts are sublime, and his language noble; but in what kind of writing has not Dryden been distinguished?  He is in every thing excellent, says Congreve, and he has attempted nothing in which he has not so succeeded as to be entitled to the first reputation from it.