storm, and finally taking advantage of the Act of Oblivion, lived in comparative peace at a house in Artillery Place. There he devoted himself to the great work of his life; and he showed his M.S. to a Quaker friend, who having perused it, remarked: “Thou hast said a great deal about Paradise Lost, what hast thou to say about Paradise found?" This suggested the "Paradise Regained."

Before the work could be published, a license was necessary, which was granted; and on the 27th of April, 1667, the book was sold to Samuel Simmons for £5, with a stipulation to receive £5 more when thirteen hundred should be sold of the first edition; and again £5 after the sale of the same number of the second edition, and another after the third. "The first edition was in ten books, in small quarto. The titles were varied from year to year; and the arguments of the book were omitted in some copies and inserted in others. The sale gave him in two years a right to his second payment, for which the receipt was signed April 26th, 1669. The second edition was not given till 1674; it was printed in small octavo, and the number of books was increased to twelve, by the division of the seventh and twelfth, and some other small improvements were made. The third edition was published in 1678."

"Much has been said," Mr. Howitt remarks, "of the small sum received for the Paradise Lost, and the slow recognition which it received. But the only wonder is that it sold at all; for Milton was at the moment the most hated and dreaded man alive. It could not be soon forgotten that he had stimulated Cromwell and the republicans to the destruction of the monarchy; that he defended the death of the King in his famous Eiconoclastes, a reply to the Eikon Basilike, supposed to be Charles' own work, and in his Defensio Populi, in answer to Salmatius. But it is not a fact that Paradise Lost was coolly received. Long before Addison gave his laudatory critique in the Spectator, the glory of Milton's great poem had been attested by Barrow, Andrew Marvel, Lord Anglesea, who often visited the poet in Bunhill Fields, by the Duke of Buckingham, and by many other celebrated men. Sir

John Denham appeared in the House of Commons with a proof-sheet of Paradise Lost in his hand, wet from the press, and being asked what it was, replied: "Part of the noblest poem that was ever written in any language or age. Milton had to rise from under piled heaps of hatred and ignominy, on account of his politics and religion, for he had attacked the Church as formidably as the State, in his treatise on "The Best Mode of Removing Hirelings "out of it, as well as in his book against Prelacy; but he flung off all that load of prejudice, and rose to universal acknowledgment."

Of the minor productions of Milton's pen it is not necessary to speak in detail; his magnificent Sonnets, his exquisite Comus, his Samson Agonistes built on a Grecian model, are chief amongst them. As a prose writer he stands as the foremost man of his time; his works are marked by a depth of thought and eloquence of expression, certainly not surpassed by any writer in our language.

In his sixty-fifth year, the gout, with which Milton had been long afflicted, prevailed over his system. He gradually wore away, and quietly, silently died on the 10th of November, 1674. He was buried next to his father in the church of St. Giles, Cripplegate.

"Up-bearing pillars, on whose tops
The whole stars rest, like capitals,
Whence every living spark that drops
Kindles and blazes as it falls.
And if the foeman rise to pluck,

Or stoop to crush their beauty down,
A thousand other sparks are struck,
And Glory settles in her crown.

THE eminent men to whom we devote this chapter may be described as philosophical discoverers. They did not go forth like Columbus to seek a new world; they added nothing to imaginative literature; they won no new domains in the realms of fancy; sword in hand they led no band of warriors to victory: but they worked bravely with mathematical and optical instruments; extended their discoveries skyward-earthward; wrested her secrets

!

of nature, and rendered them subservient to the interests of mankind. Among these heroes of science we notice first of all a dim shadowy figure in a monk's garb, sitting alone in a stone cell, the light falling on his shaven head through a barred loophole high up in the wall. The poor monk has but little there to cheer his heart; even social converse is denied him; he can hear the voices of his brethren singing vespers in the chapel; but he must not join them, for there is against him a terrible chargea charge that will make short work of him with tar-barrel or hempen rope-a charge of wizarding! He has invented a machine in which all air can be withdrawn, and living things fall dead. He has made a singular tube which calls down, as it were, the stars from heaven; he has framed little glasses, oval in form, with rims of horn, which, joined together by a horny arch, may be easily arranged on the nose, so that the eyes look through the glasses-and, terrible to tell, see small things large! He has mixed a powder, too, which, when set on fire by a single spark, blazes like a volcano, roars like thunder, and makes the earth tremble as when shaken by an earthquake. Surely such a man must be a wizard, or, an experimental philospher!

This man is Roger Bacon, sometimes called the Admirable Doctor, on account of his great knowledge. He was born at Ilchester, in the county of Somerset, in 1214. He entered the order of Franciscans, and after having studied at Oxford and Paris, settled at Oxford, and applied himself to the acquisition of physical science. Bacon was not a borrowing, begging, plagiarist; he always sought the fountain head. When he wished to study Aristotle, he made himself master of the Greek, to read that author in the original. He declared that those who would know the truth must seek it by actual inquiry and experiment. In this he preceded his namesake, Francis, by three centuries and a half; but he was before his time, and therefore the benefit of his teaching was to a great degree lost. His principal work, the Opus Majus, contains the result of his researches. It is stated that a sum equal to £30,000 of our present money was expended by

E

him in the experiments and apparatus necessary for the preparation of this book. The money was subscribed by the generosity of his friends and patrons. In treating of optics, he gives his mode of making spectacles and microscopic lenses. In mechanics he speaks of propelling ships with a velocity not yet attained by steam, also of locomotive carriages; he suggests several ingenious modes of raising the heaviest weights, and hints that it will be a perfectly practicable thing to walk at the bottom of the sea. Gunpowder-without which Armstrong guns would be of no avail-he describes as admirably adapted for the speedy destruction of an enemy or city, and that a quantity "about the bigness of a man's thumb," makes" a horrible noise and a dreadful commotion." He had, there is no doubt, a strong idea that the trans-muting of metal-the turning of iron or lead or copper into gold, was a thing attainable, and that it was not altogether impossible that man's destiny might be written in the stars. A little faith in alchemy and astrology must be granted; but he abhorred the arts of the sorcerers, and denounces wizardry as lustily as the stoutest anti-spirit-rappers of this spirit rapping age.

His

But Bacon was one of the martyrs of science. ignorant brethren, jealous of his merit, and irritated because he had censured their dissolute morals, accused him of magic, and kept him close prisoner for many years. Clement IV., who examined his writings and recognised their merit, gave him his liberty; but on the death of that enlightened pontiff, Bacon was again immured in a dungeon, and left it only as a broken, crippled man to die. The great crime of this man was being too wise and too honest for his age and profession. He was a truth-seeker, and one who was not to be driven from his purpose by the fear of death: not animated by religious zeal or patriotism or military ardour, but by a passionate love of what was true in nature, a yearning desire to discover her wonders, learn her secrets, and to turn them to account. He died in 1292.

Another remarkable man who suffered for his eminence was Galileo.