net which he addressed to him,-an allusion hitherto not understood by the commentators. The year of his birth is not known; but as his father died in 1627, it was probably some years before that date. He himself died in the last year of the seventeenth century.

Wood tells us that Cyriac Skinner was one of Milton's pupils. From a letter of Andrew Marvell's, it appears that in 1653, when Milton was living in Petty France, Skinner "had got near him;" but as he appears to have always dwelt in the parish of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, this is perhaps all that is meant. Wood also tells us that Skinner was, with Harrington, Wildman, and others, a member of the celebrated Rota Club, which used to hold its meetings at the Turk's Head, in New Palace-yard, Westminster, in which he occasionally took the chair. He calls him "a merchant's son of London, an ingenious young gentleman, and scholar to Jo. Milton." It is supposed that it is of him also that Aubrey speaks, when he says that the manuscript of Milton's Idea Theologia "is in the hands of Mr. Skinner, a merchant's son, in Mark Lane. Mem. There was one Mr. Skinner, of the Jerker's Office, up two pair of stairs, at the Custom House." It is evident from this that Aubrey knew little about Cyriac Skinner (and he was probably Wood's authority), if it is him he means; for he was a merchant himself, and, as we have seen, the son of a country gentleman. Warton says, "I find one Cyriac Skinner, I know not if the same, a member of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1640;" and it seems to us not at all unlikely that it was the same, and that Wood was mistaken in calling him a scholar (if by that he meant a pupil) of Milton's. Nothing further is known of Cyriac Skinner.

Exclusive however of the two sonnets addressed to

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."

sion.

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 expulWe 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." 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."

Dr. Barrow's letter was delivered to

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.

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