Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Edinburgh, and is also Secretary at War, which gives him a seat in the cabinet. He is in the prime of life, and we may indulge the hope that the literature of his language may be enriched by further contributions from his pen. Living in another hemisphere, we should regret to see his great powers of varied attainments wholly absorbed in politics-in employments which many others, probably, can discharge as well, and which occupy his time and thoughts to the exclusion of those literary pursuits, in some departments of which no one can dispute the palm with him.

Boston, May, 1840.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

MACAULAY'S MISCELLANIES.

*

Milton."

[Edinburgh Review.]

TOWARDS the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, Deputy Keeper of the State Papers, in the course of his researches among the presses of his office, met with a large Latin manuscript. With it were found corrected copies of the foreign despatches written by Milton, while he filled the office of Secretary, and several papers relating to the Popish Trials and the Rye-house Plot. The whole was wrapped up in an envelope, superscribed "To Mr. Skinner, Merchant." On examination, the large manuscript proved to be the long lost Essay on the Doctrines of Christianity, which, according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished after the Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is well known, held the same political opinions with his illustrious friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that he may have fallen under the suspicions of the government during that persecution of the Whigs which followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and that, in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, this work may have been brought to the office in which it had been found. But

* Joannis Miltoni, Angli, de Doctrina Christiana libri duo posthumi. A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone. By JOHN MILTON. Translated from the original by Charles R. Sumner, M. A., &c. &c. 1825.

whatever the adventures of the manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist, that it is a genuine relic of the great poet.

Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by his majesty to edit and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of this task in a manner honourable to his talents and to his character. His version is not indeed very easy or elegant; but it is entitled to the praise of clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with interesting quotations, and have the rare merit of really elucidating the text. The preface is evidently the work of a sensible and candid man, firm in his own religious opinions, and tolerant towards those of others.

The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. It is, like all his Latin works, well written-though not exactly in the style of the Prize Essays of Oxford and Cambridge. There is no elaborate imitation of classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity, none of the ceremonial cleanness which characterizes the diction of our academical Pharisees. He does not attempt to polish and brighten his composition into the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does not, in short, sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. ture of his subject compelled him to use many words

The na

"That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp."

But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were his mother tongue; and where he is least happy, his failure seems to arise from the carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance of a foreigner. What Denham with felicity says of Crowley, may be applied to him. He wears the garb, but not the clothes, of the ancients.

Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a powerful and independent mind, emancipated from the influence of authority, and devoted to the search of truth. He professes to form his system from the Bible alone; and his digest of Scriptural texts is certainly among the best that have appeared. But he is not always so happy in his inferences as in his citations.

Some of the heterodox opinions which he avows seem to have excited considerable amazement: particularly his Arianism, and his notions on the subject of polygamy. Yet we can scarcely conceive that any person could have read the

« AnteriorContinuar »