yard, and undertook the education of John and Edward Philips, his fifter's fons. Finding his rooms too little, he took a house and garden in Alderfgate-street, which was not then fo much out of the world as it is now; and chose his dwelling at the upper end of a paffage, that he might avoid the noise of the ftreet. Here he received more boys, to be boarded and instructed.

Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with fome degree of merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who haftens home, because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his patriotism in a private boarding-school. This is the period of his life from which all his biographers feem inclined to shrink. They are unwilling that Milton should be degraded to a school-master; but, fince it cannot be denied that he taught boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and another that his motive was only zeal for the propagation of learning and virtue; and all tell what they do not know to be true, only to excufe an act which no wife man will con

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fider as in itself disgraceful. His father was alive; his allowance was not ample; and he fupplied its deficiences by an honeft and useful employment.

It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a formidable lift is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read in Alderfgate-street, by youth between ten and fifteen or fixteen years of age. Those who tell or receive these ftories fhould confider that nobody can be taught faster than he can learn. The fpeed of the horfeman must be limited by the power of his horfe. Every man, that has ever undertaken to inftruct others, can tell what flow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to ftimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify abfurd misapprehenfion.

The purpose of Milton, as it feems, was to teach fomething more folid than the com- › mon literature of Schools, by reading those authors that treat of physical subjects; fuch as the Georgick, and astronomical treatises of the ancients. This was a fcheme of improve

ment which feems to have bufied many literary projectors of that age. Cowley, who (had more means than Milton of knowing what was wanting to the embellishments of life, formed the fame plan of education in his imaginary College.

But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and the fciences which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or converfation, whether we wish to be ufeful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be faid to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and Justice are virtues, and excellences, of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralifts, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is neceffary; our fpeculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leifure. Phyfiological learning is of fuch rare emergence, that one man may know ano

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ther half his life without being able to estimate his fkill in hydroftaticks or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears.

Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, moft principles of moral truth, and most materials for converfation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and hiftorians.

Let me not be cenfured for this digreffion as pedantick or paradoxical; for if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my tide. It was his labour to turn philofophy from the study of nature to fpeculations upon life; but the innovatiors whom I oppofe are turning off attention from life to nature. They seem to think, that we are placed here to watch the growth of plants, or the motions of the ftars. Socrates was rather of opinion, that what we had to learn was, how to do good, and avoid evil.

Ότι το εν μεγάροισι κοκόντ' αγαθόνε τέτυκται.

Of inftitutions we may judge by their ef fects. From this wonder-working academy, I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent for knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a finall History of Poetry, written in Latin by his nephew Philips, of which perhaps none of my readers has ever heard.

That in his school, as in every thing elfe which he undertook, he laboured with great diligence, there is no reafon for doubting. One part of his method deserves general imitation. He was careful to inftruct his fcholars in religion. Every Sunday was spent upon theology, of which he dictated a short fyftem, gathered from the writers that were then fashionable in the Dutch univerfities.

He fet his pupils an example of hard study and spare diet; only now and then he allowed himself to pafs a day of festivity and indulgence with fome gay gentlemen of ¡Gray's Inn.

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