The following s an accurate list of his prose pieces: 1. Familiar Epistles. 2. Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England. 3. Of Prelatical Episcopacy. 4. The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty. 5. Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectynaus. 6. An Apology for Smectymnuus. 7. Of Education; to Master Samuel Hartlib. 8. Areopagitica; a Speech for the Liberty of unlicenced Printing, to the Parlia ment of England. 9. The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. 10. The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce. 11. Tetrachordon; an Exposition of the Scriptural Doctrine of Marriage. 12. Colasterion; a Defence of the former Tracts 13. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. 14. Observations on the Articles of Peace between the Earl of Ormond and Charles I. with the Irish Catholics. 15. Eikonoclastes: in Answer to Eikon Basilike. 16. A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes. 17. Considerations touching the likeliest means of removing Hirelings out of the Church. 18. A Letter to a Friend concerning the ruptures of the Commonwealth. 19. The present means and brief delineation of a Free Commonwealth. In a Letter to General Monk. 20. The ready and easy way to establish a Free Commonwealth. 21. Brief Notes on a loyal Sermon by Dr. Griffith. 22. Accedence commenced Grammar, or Rules to attain the Latin Tongue. 23. The History of Britain to the Norman Conquest. 24. Of True Religion, Heresy, Schism, Toleration, &c. 25. A brief History of Muscovia. 26. Numerous State Papers, when Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth, and Protector, in Latin and English. A Character of the Long Parliament, a tract on the Question of Militia, and "Tyrannical Government Anatomized, 1642," have been ascribed to Milton; the two latter on doubtful authority. He is also supposed to have assisted in various other publications, political and literary. OPERA LATINA. 27. Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, contra Claudii Salmasii Defensionem Regiam. 28. Defensio Secunda contra Alexandrum Morum Ecclesiasten. 29. Defensio pro se, &c. 30. Artis Logicæ Institutio ad Petri Rami methodum concinnata. Adjecta est Prais Analytica et Petri Rami vita, &c. 31. De Doctrina Christiana. For detailed biographies of Milton, the reader is referred to the numerous early lives and memorials by Wood, in the Athens Oxoniensis, by Aubrey, Ellwood, Toland, Richardson, and Fenton; and the modern memoirs of the Poet in the Biographical Dictionaries by Birch and Chalmers, and the late very elegant and impartial biographies by Hayley and Dr. Symmons. The well-known criticisms of Hume, Addison, Bentley, Meadowcourt, the Richard sons, Peck, Newton, Dr. Johnson, Pearce, Capel Loft, Neve, Aikin, Cowper, Hayley, Gilbert Wakefield, and their collected labors in the invaluable edition of Milton's Poetical Works by Mr. Todd, have exhausted materials of commentary and criticism. The text of the present edition has been selected with great care from the most correct of the previous editions: the sheets have been diligently revised and collated in all points of uncertain or different readings, and compared with a most excellent edition of the poems, printed in Dublin in 1757, edited by John Hawkey. The volume now given to the world forms the most complete edition of he poetical works yet published, containing not only an entire colection of all the minor poems, but translations of the Latin and Italian, chiefly selected from Cowper; and also a reprint of all the notices originally prefixed to the several editions in the lifetime of the immortal author. No notes encumber the text to divide the attention of the reader, or to "point out the beauties" of MILTON, which indeed best display themselves in their own chaste attire, without the meretricious introduction of the critic. To apply the language of an early poetNothing can cover his high fame but Heaven. May, 1826. No pyramids set off his memory But the eternal substance of his greatness, L P. THE LIFE OF MILTON, BY HIS NEPHEW EDWARD PHILIPS. Or all the several parts of history, that which sets forth the lives, and commemorates the most remarkable actions, sayings, or writings of famous and illustrious persons, whether in war or peace-whether many together, or any one in particular, as it is not the least useful in itself, so it is in highest vogue and esteem among the studious and reading part of mankind. The most eminent in this way of history were among the ancients, Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius of the Greeks. The first wrote the Lives, for the most part, of the most renowned heroes and warriors of the Greeks and Romans; the other the Lives of the ancient Greek philosophers; and Cornelius Nepos (or, as some will have it, Acmilius Probus) of the Latins, who wrote the Lives of the most illustrious Greek and Roman generals. Among the moderns, Machiavel, a noble Florentine, who elegantly wrote the Life of Castrucio Castracano, Lord of Luca; and of our nation, Sir Fulk Grevil, who wrote the Life of his most intimate friend, Sir Philip Sidney: Mr. Thomas Stanly, of Cumberlo-Green, who made a most elaborate improvement to the foresaid Laertius, by adding to what he found in him, what by diligent search and inquiry he collected from other authors of best authority: Isaac Walton, who wrote the Lives of Sir Henry Wotton, Dr. Donne: and for his divine poems, the admired Mr. George Herbert. Lastly, not to mention several other biographers of considerable note, the great Gassendus of France, the worthy celebrator of two no less worthy subjects of his impartial pen; viz., the noble philosopher, Epicurus, and the most politely learned virtuoso of his age, his countryman, Monsieur Periesk. And pity it is the person whose memory we have here undertaken to perpetuate, by re counting the most memorable transactions of his life (though his works sufficiently recommend him to the world), finds not a wellinformed pen able to set him forth, equal with the best of those here mentioned; for doubtless had his fame been as much spread through Europe in Thuanus's time as now it is, and hath been for several years, he had justly merited from that great historian an eulogy not inferior to the highest, by him given to all the learned and ingenious that lived within the compass of his histo y. For we may safely and justly affirm, that take him in all respects-for acumen of wit, quickness of apprehension, sagacity of judgment, depth of argument, and elegancy of style, as well in Latin as English, as well in verse as prose-he is scarce to be paralleled by any of the best of writers our nation hath in any age brought forth. He was born in London, in a house in Bread-street, the lease whereof, as I take it but for certain it was a house in Bread-street-became in time part of his estate, in the year of our Lord 1606. His father, John Milton, an honest, worthy, and substantial citizen of London, by profession a scrivener, to which profession he voluntarily betook himself, by the advice and assistance of an intimate friend of his, eminent in that calling, upon his being cast out by his father, a bigoted Roman Catholic, for embracing, when young, the Protestant faith and abjuring the Popish tenets; for he is said to have been descended of an ancient family of the Miltons, of Milton, near Abington in Oxfordshire, where they had been a long time seated, as appears by the monuments still to be seen in Milton church, till one of the family, having taken the wrong side in the contests between the houses of York and Lancaster, was sequestered of all his estate but what he held by his wife. However, certain it is, that this vocation he followed for many years, at his said house in Breadstreet, with success suitable to his industry and prudent conduct of his affairs; yet did he not so far quit his own generous and ingenious inclinations as to make himself wholly a slave to the world: for he sometimes found vacant hours to the study (which he made his recreation) of the noble science of music, in which he advanced to that perfection that, as I have been told, and as I take it, by our author himself, he composed an Il Nomine of forty parts, for which he was rewarded with a gold medal and chain by a Polish prince, to whom he presented it. However, this is a truth not to be denied, that for several songs of his composition, after the way of these times, three or four of which are still to be seen in Old Wilby's set of airs, besides some compositions of his in Ravenscroft's Psalms he gained the reputation of a considerable master in this most charming of all the liberal sciences; yet all this while he managed |