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; % German divine © f the l ? th century , Mid the oracle of ^ is own church , Ithe British Critic , who has no doubt of its authenticity , to settle the mat-Iter amicably among themselves .
" It is well known , * ' says the Briitish Critic , " that when Milton reitired from public life he meditated several literary designs , each of them nearly sufficient to occupy the life even of a more than ordinary man , viz . liis
Immortal Epic 9 a continuation of his History of England , a Latin Tliesaurus , and , according to some of his biographers , a Body of Divinity . He had then been for three years totally blind . He was tormented with the
gout . His circumstances were narrow . His domestic condition comfortless . There are few things perhaps in the history of literature more astonishing than the energy which enabled him to grapple with such vast enterprises , whilst compassed round with infirmity and affliction .
His great predecessor Homer , indeed ,
was blind , but Homer is , after all , a sort of dim and visionary personage . We know very little more about him than we do about Enoch or Seth , or any other of the worthies before the flood . We are apt to look upon the
Iliad as a mysterious thing , delivered down to us out of the clouds and darkness of antiquity . Its author is to us a being almost too shadowy , too nearly fabulous for human sympathy , and therefore we are unable fully to enter into his sorrows or his difficulties . In modern times , Euler was perhaps one of the most astonishing instances of the power of mind over
physical impediments . For nearly the last eighteen years of his life he was totally blind , and yet , during that period it was that he completed such gigantic labours as would have sufficed to immortalize a whole club
of philosophers $ and , moreover , out of his mere superfluity he furnished the Academy of Petersburg with memoirs enough to servo them for twenty years after his death . But then it must be remembered , that Euler was as happy in his domestic circumstances as he was in the admiration of the scientific world . His blindness was alleviated bv the
devoted attentions of his family , and he died in peace , surrounded by his grandchildren . These blessings were
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denied to Milton . It appears that his daughters were not merely unwilling assistants to his intellectual labours—they were positively undu , tiful and unkind ; they inhumanly neglected him in his blindness ; they entered into vil
even e conspiracies with the servants to defraud him and one of them is known to have expressed a wish for his death ! He was thus driven , in his old age , to seek protection from his own children in a third marriage . His other
misfortunes may have helped to awaken and stir the nobility of his character and genius , for it is the property of mighty minds to derive a sort of inspiration from adversity itself . But these were sordid and low-born miseries , the harpies of the
soul , which not only interrupt the intellectual banquet , but make it distasteful . Had not Milton ' s contemplation been of a celestial order , like his own * Cherub that guides the fiery-wheeled throne , ' such wretched cares must have soiled and rent its
pinions and have fixed his spirit hopelessly on earth 1 " The Reviewer here pertinently alludes to the very peculiar circumstances in which both the Paradise Lost and the Treatise on the
Christian Doctrine were penned , and without the recollection of which they cannot be duly appreciated . These circumstances have been touched upon in almost all the journals of the
day . The eulogists of Milton have dwelt upon them both in prose and in poetry . Indeed it is these adverse incidents ,, which would have crushed ordinary mortals to the dust , that raised and sublimated his mind . — -
See where the British Homer leads The epic choir of modern days ; Blind as the Grecian bard he speeds To realms unknown to pagan lays . He sings no mortal war , his strains
Describe no Hero ' s amorous pains—¦ He chaunts the birth-day of the world , The conflict of angelic powers , The joys of Kden ' s blissful bowers , When fled th' infernal host , thro' thundering chaos hurl'd .
Yet as this deathless song he brcath'd , He bath ' tl it with afHiction ' s tear , And to posterity bequeath '*! The cherishM hope to nature dear . No grateful praise his labour cliccr'd , No beam beneficent appear \ i
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, 726 Estimate of Milton s Theological Wark ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1826, page 726, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2555/page/26/
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