of fifteen hundred copies, and on the second and third respectively reaching a sale of thirteen hundred, he was to receive a farther sum of five pounds for each; making a total of fifteen pounds. The receipt for the second sum of five pounds is dated April 26, 1669.
In 1670 Milton published his History of Britain, from the fabulous period to the Norman conquest. And in the same year he published in one volume Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. The Paradise Regained, it has been currently asserted that Milton preferred to Paradise Lost. This is not true; but he may have been justly offended by the false principles on which some of his friends maintained a reasonable opinion. The Paradise Regained is inferior by the necessity of its subject and design. In the Paradise Lost Milton had a field properly adapted to a poet’s purposes: a few hints in Scripture were expanded. Nothing was altered, nothing absolutely added: but that, which was told in the Scriptures in sum, or in its last results, was developed into its whole succession of parts. Thus, for instance, “There was war in Heaven,” furnished the matter for a whole book. Now for the latter poem, which part of our Saviour’s life was it best to select as that in which Paradise was Regained? He might have taken the Crucifixion, and here he had a much wider field than in the Temptation; but then he was subject to this dilemma. If he modified, or in any way altered, the full details of the four Evangelists, he shocked the religious sense of all Christians; yet, the purposes of a poet would often require that he should so modify them. With a fine sense of this difficulty, he chose the narrow basis of the Temptation in the Wilderness, because there the whole had been wrapt up in Scripture in a few brief abstractions. Thus, “He showed him all the kingdoms of the earth,” is expanded, without offence to the nicest religious scruple, into that matchless succession of pictures, which bring before us the learned glories of Athens, Rome in her civil grandeur, and the barbaric splendour of Parthia. The actors being only two, the action of Paradise Regained is unavoidably limited. But in respect of composition, it is perhaps more elaborately finished than Paradise Lost.
In 1672 he published in Latin, a new scheme of Logic, on the method of Ramus, in which Dr. Johnson suspects him to have meditated the very eccentric crime of rebellion against the universities. Be that as it may, this little book is in one view not without interest: all scholastic systems of logic confound logic and metaphysics; and some of Milton’s metaphysical doctrines, as the present Bishop of Winchester has noticed, have a reference to the doctrines brought forward in his posthumous Theology. The history of the last-named work is remarkable. That such a treatise had existed, was well known, but it had disappeared, and was supposed to be irrecoverably lost. But in the year 1823, a Latin manuscript was discovered in the State-Paper Office, under circumstances which left little doubt of its being the identical work which Milton was known to have composed; and this belief was corroborated by internal evidence. By the King’s command, it was edited by Mr. Sumner, the present Bishop of Winchester, and separately published in a translation. The title is ‘De Doctrina Christiana, libri duo posthumi’—A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone. In elegance of style, and sublimity of occasional passages, it is decidedly inferior to other of his prose works. As a system of theology, probably no denomination of Christians would be inclined to bestow other than a very sparing praise upon it. Still it is well worth the notice of those students, who are qualified to weigh the opinions, and profit by the errors of such a writer, as being composed with Milton’s usual originality of thought and inquiry, and as being remarkable for the boldness with which he follows up his arguments to their legitimate conclusion, however startling those conclusions may be.
What he published after the scheme of logic, is not important enough to merit a separate notice. His end was now approaching. In the summer of 1674 he was still cheerful, and in the possession of his intellectual faculties. But the vigour of his bodily constitution had been silently giving way, through a long course of years, to the ravages of gout. It was at length thoroughly undermined: and about the tenth of November, 1674, he died with tranquillity so profound, that his attendants were unable to determine the exact moment of his decease. He was buried, with unusual marks of honour, in the chancel of St. Giles’ at Cripplegate.
The published lives of Milton are very numerous. Among the best and most copious are those prefixed to the editions of Milton’s works by Bishop Newton, Todd, and Symmons. An article of considerable length, founded upon the latter, will be found in Rees’s Cyclopædia. But the most remarkable is that written by Dr. Johnson in his ‘Lives of the British Poets;’ production grievously disfigured by prejudice, yet well deserving the student’s attentions for its intrinsic merits, as well as for the celebrity which it has attained.
Engraved by C. E. Wagstaff. JAMES WATT. From a Picture by Sir W. Beechey in the possession of J. Watt Esq. of Aston Hall. Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. London. Published by Charles Knight, Pall Mall East.
WATT
Those who by cultivating the arts of peace have risen from obscurity to fame and wealth, seldom leave to the biographer such ample memorials of their private lives as he could wish to work upon. The details of a life spent in the laboratory or in the workshop rarely present much variety; or possess much interest, except when treated scientifically for the benefit of the scientific reader. Such is the case with James Watt: the history of his long and prosperous life is little more than the history of his scientific pursuits; and this must plead our excuse if it chance that the reader should here find less personal information about him than he may desire. Fortunately his character has been sketched before it was too late, by the masterly hand of one who knew him well. Most of the accounts of him already published are said, by those best qualified to judge, to be inaccurate. The same authority is pledged to the general correctness of the article Watt, in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, and from that article the facts of this short memoir are taken.
Both the grandfather and uncle of James Watt were men of some repute in the West of Scotland, as mathematical teachers and surveyors. His father was a merchant at Greenock, where Watt was born, June 19, 1736, and where he received the rudiments of his education. Our knowledge of the first twenty years of his life may be comprised in a few short sentences. At an early age he manifested a partiality for the practical part of mechanics, which he retained through life, taking pleasure in the manual exercise of his early trade, even when hundreds of hands were ready to do his bidding. In his eighteenth year he went to London, to obtain instruction in the profession of a mathematical instrument-maker; but he remained there little more than a year, being compelled to return home by the precariousness of his health.
In 1757, shortly after his return home, he was appointed instrument-maker to the University of Glasgow, and accommodated with premises within the precincts of that learned body. Robert Simpson, Adam Smith, and Dr. Black, were then some of the professors; and from communication with such men, Watt could not fail to derive the most valuable mental discipline. With Dr. Black, and with John Robison, then a student, afterwards eminent as a mathematician and natural philosopher, he formed a friendship which was continued through life. In 1763 he removed into the town of Glasgow, intending to practise as a civil engineer, and in the following year was married to his cousin Miss Miller.
In the winter of 1763–4, his mind was directed to the earnest prosecution of those inventions which have made his name celebrated over the world, by having to repair a working model of a steam-engine on Newcomen’s construction, for the lectures of the Professor of Natural Philosophy. In treating this subject, we must presume that the reader possesses a competent acquaintance with the history and construction
