7 440 THE LIFE or MILTON. 4', who both in prudence and elegance of fpirit would choofe a virgin 't of mean fortunes honeftly bred before the wealthieft widow." at yet he feemeth not to have been very happy in any of his mar. ri ges ; for his tirft wife had juftly offended him by her long abfence an feparation from him ; the fecond, whofe love, fweetnefs, and goo nefs he commends, lived not a twelvemonth with him ; and his third wife is faid to have been a woman of a mutt violent fpirit, and a hard mother in law to his children. She died very old, about twenty years ago, at Nantwich in Che. (hire' : and from the accounts of thofe who had feen her, I have learned, that the confirmed feveral things which have been related `before ; and particularly that her hufband ufed to compofe his poetry chiefly in the winter, and on his waking in a morning would make her write down fometimes twenty or thirty verfes : and being sliced whether he did not often read Homer and Virgil, the under- Rood it as an imputation upon him for ftealing from thofe authors, and anfwered with eagernefs he Role from no body but the Mule who infpired him ; and being Aced by a lady prefent who the mule was, plied it was God's grace, and the Holy Spirit that vifited him nightly. She was likewife afked whom he approved molt of our Engin poets, and anfwered Spenfer, Shakefpear, and Cowley : and being afked what he thought of Dryden, the faid Dryden ufed fometimes to vifit him, but he thought him no poet, but a good rimift : but this was before Dryden had compofed his belt poems, which made his name fo famous afterwards. She was wont moreover to fay, that her hufband was applied to by menage from the King, and invited to write for the Court, but his anfwer was, that fuch a behaviour would be very inconfiftent with his former condu61, for he had never yet employed his pen againft his confcience. By his firth wife he had four children, a fon who died an infant, and three daughters who furvived him; by his fecond wife he had only one daughter, who died loon after her mother, who died in child-bed ; and by his lalt wife he had no children at all. His daughters Annen111111
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