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at all; nor that the daughter, weary of the drudgery of pronouncing unideal founds, would voluntarily commit them to memory.

To this gentlewoman Addifon made a, prefent, and promifed fome eftablishment; but died foon after. Queen Ca roline fent her fifty guineas. She had feven fons and three daughters; but none of them had any children, except her fon Caleb and her daughter' Eliza beth. Caleb went to Fort St. George in the East Indies, and had two fons, of whom nothing is now known. Elizabeth married Thomas Fofter, a weaver in Spital-fields, and had feven children, who all died. She kept a petty grocer's or chandler's fhop, firft at Halloway,

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and afterwards in Cock-lane near Shoreditch Church. She knew little of her grandfather, and that little was not good. She told of his harshness to his daughters, and his refusal to have them taught to write; and, in oppofition to other accounts, reprefented him as delicate, though temperate, in his diet.

In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had fo little acquaintance with diverfion or gaiety, that fhe did not know what was intended when a benefit was offered her. The profits of the night were only one hundred and thirty pounds, though Dr. Newton brought a large contribution; and twenty pounds were given by Tonfon, a man who is to be praised as often

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as he is named. Of this fum one hundred pounds was placed in the stocks, after fome debate between her and her hufband in whofe name it fhould be entered, and the reft augmented their little ftock, with which they removed to Iflington. This was the greatest benefaction that Paradife Loft ever procured the author's defcendents; and to this he who has now attempted to relate his Life, had the honour of contributing a Prologue.

IN the examination of Milton's poetical works, I fhall pay fo much regard to time as to begin with his juvenile productions. For his early pieces he feems to have had a degree of fondness not very laudable: what he has once written he refolves to preferve, and gives to the publick an unfinished poem, which he broke off because he was nothing fatisfied with what he had done, fuppofing his readers lefs nice than himself. These preludes to his future labours are in Italian, Latin, and Englifh. Of the Italian I cannot pretend to speak as a critic; but I have heard

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them commended by a man well qualified to decide their merit. The Latin pieces are lusciously elegant; but the delight which they afford is rather by the exquifite imitation of the ancient writers, by the purity of the diction, and the harmony of the numbers, than by any power of invention, or vigour of fentiment. They are not all of equal value; the elegies excell the odes; and fome of the exercises on Gunpowder Treafon might have been spared.

The English poems, though they make no promifes of Paradife Loft, have this evidence of genius, that they have a caft original and unborrowed. But their peculiarity is not excellence: if they differ from the verfes of others, they

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