Cyriac Skinner, the name has obtained some celebrity in connection with Milton's great theologic work. From the passage of Aubrey, quoted above, it appears that such a work was known to exist; but no one had any idea of what had been its fate. At length, in the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, the Deputy Keeper of the State Papers, when making his researches in the Old State Paper Office, chanced to find in one of the presses a Latin manuscript with the title "Johannis Miltoni Angli de Doctrina Christiana, ex Sacris duntaxat Libris petita, Disquisitionum Libri duo posthumi." It was wrapped up in two or three sheets of printed paper, with a great many letters, informations, etc., relating to the Popish Plots of 1677 and 1678, and the Rye House Plot of 1683. The parcel also contained a complete and corrected copy of what are called Milton's State Letters; and the whole was enclosed in an envelope, addressed To Mr. Skinner, Merch'.

This then,—for no one that reads it can have a doubt of it,—was the celebrated treatise, erroneously termed by Aubrey, Idea Theologiæ. The question is, how it came to be in the State Paper Office. Mr. Lemon made at first various conjectures, such as a seizure of the papers of Cyriac Skinner when he was engaged in one of the many conspiracies of the time, etc.; but his further researches discovered the truth, to the following effect.

There was a person named Daniel Skinner, in all probability a nephew of Cyriac's, and who, it is likely, was also Aubrey's "merchant's son in Mark Lane." He was a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; and it was to him, and not to his uncle, that Milton had consigned the manuscript treatise, which he sent over to Holland, along with a transcript of the State Letters, in order to have them printed by Elzevir. His own account is: "The works of

Milton having been left behind him to me, which, out of pure indiscretion, not dreaming any prejudice might accrue to me, I had agreed with a printer at Amsterdam to have printed. As good fortune would have it, he has not printed one tittle of them. About a month ago, there creeps out into the world a little imperfect book of Milton's State Letters, procured to be printed by one Pitts, a bookseller in London, which he had bought of a poor fellow that had formerly got them surreptitiously from Milton." Perhaps this publication gave some uneasiness to the Government, and inquiries were made after other manuscripts of Milton's; for we find that on the 20th November, 1676, Dan. Elzevir wrote as follows to Sir Joseph Williamson, one of the Secretaries of State:

"That about a year before Mr. Skinner put into his hands this collection of Letters, and a Treatise on Theology, with directions to print them; but that on examining them he found many things in them which, in his opinion, had better be suppressed than divulged; that he declined printing them; and that Mr. Skinner had lately been at Amsterdam, had expressed himself to be highly gratified that he had not commenced the printing of those works, and then took away the manuscripts."

It being known now that the MSS. were in the possession of Skinner, and that he was in Paris, Dr. Isaac Barrow, the Master of his College, wrote to him the following February, ordering him to return under penalty of expulsion. "We do also warn you," he says, "that if you shall publish any writing mischievous to the Church or State, you will thence incur a forfeiture of your interest here. I hope God will give you the wisdom and grace to take warning." In the letter to a friend, to whom he enclosed this, he says: "I am sorry for the miscarriages of that

wild young man.' Dr. Barrow's letter was delivered to Skinner, before witness, in the following month, by a Mr. Perwich, who writes thus to the Secretary of Sir Joseph Williamson:-"I found him much surprised, and yet at the same time slighting any constraining orders of the Superior of his College, or any benefit he expected thence; but as to Milton's works [which] he intended to have printed, though he saith that part which he had in MSS. are no way to be objected to either with regard to royalty and [q" or] government, he hath desisted from causing them to be printed, having left them in Holland; and that he intends, notwithstanding the College summons, to go for Italy this summer.'

It is probable however that Skinner was induced to return to England, where he had an interview with Sir Joseph Williamson, who prevailed on him to surrender his manuscripts; and as Sir Joseph, instead of, as had been the custom, carrying away his papers when he went out of office, left them after him, Milton's treatise remained undiscovered and unknown till the time arrived when it could be published without injury to his fame.

I

NOTES.

NOTE A.

AUTHORITIES.

MILTON'S Own Latin poems supply a few incidents of his life; and in his Apology for Smectymnuus and his Defensio Secunda, he has furnished us with several interesting circumstances of his early life and his travels on the Continent. From his Latin letters also a few particulars may be gleaned.

John Aubrey, the celebrated antiquary, who was personally acquainted with Milton, left in manuscript several circumstances relating to the biography of the poet. These furnished materials to Wood for his account of Milton in the Athenæ Oxonienses, and they have been published in the present century.

Edward Phillips, the poet's youngest nephew, when publishing a translation of his uncle's Latin Epistles in 1694, prefixed to it an account of his life. This, though more brief than were to be desired, is extremely interesting, and is valuable as being the work of one so intimately connected with its subject. But we must recollect that it was probably written from memory only, more than twenty years after the death of the poet, and nearly half a century from the time that Phillips had been residing in his house. It may therefore not be free from error.

In 1698, four years after Phillips, John Toland, the well-known deistic writer, prefixed a Life to the folio edition of Milton's prose works. It is written in a grave and manly tone, and furnishes some additional particulars. His account of his materials is as follows:-" I heard some particulars from a person that had once been his amanuensis, which were confirmed to me by his daughter, now dwelling in London, and by a letter written to me, at my

desire, by his last wife, who is still alive. I perused the papers of one of his nephews, learned what I could in discourse with the other, and lastly consulted such of his acquaintance as, after the best inquiry, I was able to discover." It may surprise one after this to find the Life so meagre as it is; but the truth is, biography is an art, and those who do not possess it are unable to make a proper use of the materials which may be at their disposal.

In 1725 Elijah Fenton prefixed an elegant sketch of Milton's Life to an edition of his poems; but it contained nothing that was not previously known.

Jonathan Richardson, the painter, published in 1734-in conjunction with his son, who possessed the learning in which he was himself deficient-Notes on Milton, to which he prefixed a Life, containing a few particulars not to be found in those of Toland or Phillips, and which he had obtained from Pope, or from the poet's granddaughter.

The learned and laborious Dr. Thomas Birch, edited in 1738 a new edition of the prose works; and in the Life which he prefixed to it, his researches enabled him to add several interesting particulars. He was the first to direct attention to what is called the Cambridge Manuscript of Comus and some of the other poems.

Newton's edition of Milton's Paradise Lost appeared first in 1749. The Life is tamely but impartially written, and contains hardly any additional matter.

The Life of Milton has since been written by the vigorous but strongly prejudiced Johnson, the tame and super-elegant Hayley, the dry and ponderous Todd,* the impetuous and violent Symmons, the just, moderate, and elegant Mitford, and others; but of necessity they could add little to the previous stock. Thomas Warton had however, in the second edition of the Minor Poems, in 1791, brought to light from the archives of Doctors' Commons, Milton's Nuncupative Will and the Depositions connected with it, which furnish some very interesting particulars respecting the domestic life of the poet in his latter years. Early in the present century, Mr. Lemon discovered in the State Paper Office various documents relating to the Powell family, and also made extracts from the Orders of Council during the time of Milton's secretaryship, all of which appeared for the first time in 1809 in Todd's second

* We trust we shall be excused when we say that, in our opinion, Todd's Life of Milton is the very beau idéal of bad biography.