S. R. Gardiner.

The Puritan Revolution.

J. R. Green. History of the English People. Bk. VII. chs. i., v.-xii.

Thomas Carlyle. Cromwell.

E. Hale. The Fall of the Stuarts.

With the knowledge derived from this reading the student should then carefully go over the essay with special reference to paragraphs 49-87, and with the aid of the notes try to appreciate Macaulay's references, allusions, conclusions, and style.

The student should next read as much of Milton's Paradise Lost, Comus, Samson Agonistes, and Short Poems as his time will permit. He should then read the essay once more, or at least that part of it included between paragraphs 8-49. With this last reading he should have attained the object of the study of this essaya knowledge and appreciation of Macaulay and of his writing, and through him, of John Milton, the citizen, statesman, and poet.

IV. In the case of the essay on Addison, the student should read of Addison, his times and his contemporaries, from the following list of books:

J. W. Courthope. Life of Addison. (E. M. L.)

W. M. Thackeray. English Humorists. (Addison and Steele.)

J. R. Green. Essays of Addison.
John Dennis. Age of Pope.

J. R. Green. History of the English People. Vol. IV. Bk. VIII., chs. iii. iv.

W. E. H. Lecky. History of England in the Eighteenth Century. Vol. I.

The student should then carefully re-read the essay, paying careful attention to the notes. He should by all means read at least ten of the essays of the Spectator, which may well be chosen from those mentioned by Macaulay in his essay on Addison.

V.

G. O. Trevelyan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

BIOGRAPHICAL.

Life of Macaulay. 2 vols.
(E. M. L.)

J. C. Morrison. Life of Macaulay.

Dictionary of National Biography. Article on Macaulay.

CRITICAL.

Frederick Harrison. Early Victorian Literature, p. 64. Leslie Stephen. Hours in a Library. Vol. III., p. 343. Walter Bagehot. Literary Studies.

George Saintsbury. Corrected Impressions, p. 79, p. 88. John Morley. Miscellanies. Vol. I.

The best edition of Macaulay's Critical and Historical Essays is that published by Longmans, Green & Co., 3 vols. The best cheap edition is published in 2 vols. by the same firm.

MACAULAY'S ESSAYS.

MILTON.

Joannis Miltoni, Angli de Doctrinâ Christianâ 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., etc., etc., 1825.

1. 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 de- 5 spatches written by Milton, while he filled the office of Secretary, and several papers relating to the Popish Trials and the Rye-house Plot. whole was wrapped up in an envelope, superscribed To Mr. Skinner, Merchant. On exami- 10 nation, the large manuscript proved to be the long lost Essay on the Doctrines of Christianity,

1

The

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 5 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 conse10 quence of a general seizure of his papers, this work may have been brought to the office in which it has been found. But whatever the adventures of the manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it is a genuine relic of the 15 great poet.

2. Mr. Sumner, who was commanded by His Majesty to edit and translate the treatise, has acquitted himself of his task in a manner honorable to his talents and to his character. His version 20 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.

3. 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 5 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. The author does not attempt to 10 polish and brighten his composition into the Ciceronian gloss and brilliancy. He does not, in short, sacrifice sense and spirit to pedantic refinements. The nature of his subject compelled him to use many words

"That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp."

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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 20 a foreigner. We may apply to him what Denham with great felicity says of Cowley. He wears the garb, but not the clothes, of the ancients.