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Milton , though / strange to tell , it contains no particulars of her character , excepting a general declaration of her benevolence and piety . Tradition , I have been told , still speaks well of her , especially that she always extolled her husband , and out of respect to his memory sent his golden-headed cane
to the British Museum . The Rev . Isaac Kimber soon left his charge for imputed heterodoxy , being , it appears , of the sentiments of the great Poet , though the congregation attempted to bind him down by the iron chains of a metaphysical creed , which he burst asunder with a divine
freedom ! It is a curious circumstance that this said church , both minister and members , have recently relinquished their former sentiments * proclaimed themselves Unitarian General
Baptists , and united themselves to the General Assembly meeting annually at Worship Street . Slagna est veritas et prevalebit . " The domestic situation of Milton
was now such / ' says Dr . Symmons , " as almost to compel him to seek for the aid and protection of a wife . His infirmities were of a nature not to admit of substantial relief from any but a domestic friend , and for
alleviation from the kindness of filial piety they unhappily solicited in vain . From the conduct of his daughters he experienced nothing but mortification and aggravated distress . " This charge is thus substantiated by his biographer beyond dispute : " His
nuncupative will / ' jsays Dr . Symmons , i ( which has lately been discovered in the Prerogative Registry , and was published by Mr . Warton , opens a glimpse into the interior of Milton ' s house , and shews him to have been
amiable , and injured in that private scene in which alone he has generally been considered as liable to censure , or rather , perhaps , as not entitled to affection . In this will , and in the papers connected with it , we find the venerable father complaining of his unkind children , as he calls them , for
leaving and neglecting him because lie was blind , and we see him compelled , as it were , by their injurious conduct to appeal against them even to his servants . We are assured also , y the deposition on oath of one of these servants , that his complaints were not extorted by slight wrongs
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or pttered by capricious passion on trivial provocations ; that his children , with thfc exception of Deborah , who , at the time immediately in question , was not more than nine years old ,
would occasionally sell his books to the dunghill women , as the witness called them ; that these daughters were capable of combining with the maid-servant , and of advising her to cheat her master and their father in
her marketings ; and that one of them , Mary , on being told that her father was to be married , replied , that " that was no news ; but if she could hear of his death , that were something !" And Mrs . Hannah More , with her accustomed good sense , remarks in
her Strictures on Female Education , " that among the faults with which it has been too much the fashion of recent times to load the memory of the incomparable Milton , one of the charges brought against his private character has been , that he was so
severe a father as to have compelled his daughters , after he was blind , to read aloud to him , for his sole pleasure , Greek and Latin authors , of which they did not understand a word * But thia is in fact nothing more than an instance of the strict domestic
regulations of the age in which Milton lived , and should not be brought forward as a , proof of the severity of his individual temper . Nor , indeed , in any case should it ever be considered
as a hardship for an affectionate child to amuse an afflicted parent , even though it should be attended with a heavier sacrifice of her own pleasure than in the present instance . " Grievous it is to have to record such
dereliction of filial piety . It may not be improper here to remark , that there appears to be an entire extinction of the family . Of Milton ' s three daughters , Anne , the eldest , who , with a handsome face , was deformed , married a master builder , and died in her first child-birth . Mary , who had the least affection for her
father , died single ; and Deborah , the youngest , was married to Abraham Clarke , a weaver in Spitalfield . s . Many years after his death she spoke of her father with great tenderness , and on
being shewn a portrait , she exclaimed with transport , " 'Tis my father , 'tis my dear father ! " Of her sevea sous and three daughters , two only left off-
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Dome&tic Character of Milton * 659
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1826, page 659, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2554/page/23/
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