428 THE LIFE or MILTON. bad an intention of getting Mr. Pope to divide it into acts and fcenes, and of having it a&ed by the King's Scholars at Weftminfter ; but his commitment to the Tower put an end to that defign. It has lance been brought upon the. Rage in they form of an Oratorio ; and Mr. Handel's mufic is never employed to greater advantage, than when it is adapted to Milton's words. That great artitt has done equal juftice to our author's L'Allegro and Il Penferofo, as if the fame fpirit paired both matters, and as if the God of mufic and of verfe was Rill one and the fame. There are alfo fome other pieces of Milton, for he continued pub- lithing to the daft. In 167z he publifhed Artis Logics; plenior Infli- tutio ad Petri Rami methodum concinnata, an Inftitution of Logic after the method of Petrus Ramus ; and the year following, a treatife of true Religion, and the beft means to prevent the growth of popery, which had greatly increafed thro' the connivance of the King, and the more open encouragement of the Duke of York ; and the fame year his poems, which had been printed in 1645, were reprinted with the addition of feveral others. His familiar epittles, and fome academical exercifes, Epiftolarum familiar= Lib. I. et Prolufiones qumdam Oratorim in Collegio Chrifti habitx, were printed in 1674; as was alfo his tranflation out of Latin into Englifh of the Poles Declaration concerning the elation of their King John III, fetting forth the virtues and merits of that prince. He wrote alfo a brief Hiftory of Mufcovy, colle6ted from the relations of feveral travellers; but it was not printed till after his death in 168z. He had likewife his Rate-letters tranfcribed at the requeft of the Danith refident, but neither were they printed till after his death in 1676, and were tranflated into Englifh in 1694 ; and to that tranflation a life of Milton was prefixed by his nephew Mr. Edward Philips, and at the end of that life his excellent sonnets to Fairfax, Cromwell, Sir Henry Vane, and Cyriac Skinner, on his blindnefs were firft printed. Befides thefe works which were publifhed, he wrote his fyftem of divinity, which Mr. Toland lays was in the hands of his friend Cyriac Skinner, but where at prefent is uncertain. And Mr. Philips fays, that he had prepared for the prefs an anfwer to fome little
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