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HIS

LIFE AND TIMES,

RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL OPINIONS:

WITH

AN APPENDIX,

CONTAINING

ANIMADVERSIONS UPON DR. JOHNSON'S LIFE OF MILTON, ETC., ETC.

BY JOSEPH IVIMEY,


AUTHOR OF THE "HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH BAPTISTS," &c. &c.

46

My veneration for our great countryman is equal to what I feel for the Grecian."-Cowper.

"In point of sublimity, Homer cannot be compared with Milton."-Robert Hall.

NEW YORK:

D. APPLETON & CO., 200, BROADWAY.

AND FOR SALE BY BOOKSELLERS GENERALLY THROUGHOUT THE
UNITED STATES.

M DCCC XXXIII.

SLEIGHT & VAN NORDEN, PRINT.

gift

6-25-28

PREFACE.

THE former biographers of MILTON have exhibited him principally in his character as a poet, but have obscured his features as a patriot, a protestant, and non-conformist. The writer has attempted to give an accurate and fulllength portrait, in all those respects, of this most eminent of our countrymen. For the purpose of accomplishing this design, he has made considerable extracts from the prose writings of MILTON, by which, in a good degree, he appears as his own biographer.

In reference to the character of those works, he takes the liberty of quoting the sentiments of the present Bishop of Chester, who says:—

"There is much reason for regretting, that the prose works of MILTON, where, in the midst of much that is coarse and intemperate, passages of such redeeming beauty occur, should be in the hands of so few readers,

considering the advantages which might be derived to our literature from the study of their original and nervous eloquence."*

The prejudice which has existed against MILTON'S prose works, on account of his republican and dissenting principles, fully accounts for their having been so little known; but it is hoped that such feelings are rapidly subsiding, if they are not as yet become quite extinct. On this subject, the highly respectable writer just quoted, says in the same preface:

"But in happier times, when it is less difficult to make allowance for the effervescence caused by the heat of conflicting politics, and when the judgment is no longer influenced by the animosities of party, the taste of the age may be safely and profitably recalled to those treatises of MILTON, which were not written to serve a temporary purpose."

Correct as were these remarks eight years since, the writer considers them to be much more applicable to the present time, when the principles of civil and religious liberty which MILTON SO powerfully advocated, have been approved by a majority of our legislature, obtained the sanction of so large a portion of our united empire, and produced such an astonishing reform in our representa. tive body.

*Preface to Treatise of Christian Doctrine.

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