THE LIFE 0 P MILTON. 429 little fcribbling quad; in London, who had written a fcurrilous libel againft him ; but whether by the difruafion of friends, as thinking him a fellow not worth his notice, or for what other caufe Mr. Phi- lips knoweth not, this anfwer was never publifhed. And indeed the belt vindicator of him and his writings hath been Time. Pofterity bath univerfally paid that honor to his merits, which was denied him by great part of his contemporaries. After a life thus (pent in ftudy and labors for the public he died of the gout at his houfe in Bunhill Row on or about the loth of November 1674, when he had within a month completed the fixty- fixth year of his age. It is not known when he was firft attacked by the gout, but he was grievoufly afflieted with it feveral of the latt years of his life, and was weakened to fuch a degree, that he died without a groan, and thofe in the room perceived not when he ex- pired. His body was decently interred near that of his father (who had died very aged about the year 1647) in the chancel of the Church of St. Giles's eripplegate ; and all his great and learned friends in London, not without a friendly concourfe of the common people, paid their laft refpeCts in attending it to the grave. Mr. Fenton, in his fhort, but elegant account of the Life of Milton, (peaking of our author's having no monument, fays, that " he defined a friend to " inqu'ire at St. Giles's Church ; where the fexton fhowed him a " (mall monument, which he laid was fuppofed to be Milton's ; " but the infcription had never been legible fince he was employed " in that office, which he has poffeffed about forty years. This fure " could never have happened in fo fhort a (pace of time, unlefs the " epitaph had been induftrioully erafed : and that fuppofition, Pays " Mr. Fenton, carries with it fo much inhumanity, that I think we " ought to believe it was not ereaed to his memory." It is evident that it was not ere&ed to his memory, and that the fexton was miflaken. For Mr. Toland in his account of the life of Milton fays, that he was buried in the chancel of St. Giles's Church, " where the piety of his admirers will fhortly ereft a mo- " nument becoming his worth and the encouragement of letters in " King William's reign." This plainly implies that no monument u wa5,
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