not from the mind of the witnefs-not from her expreffions. Here then is a difcovery of an error in the maid-servant's calculation, which, but for the evidence of that which does not exist, would, have flept with its fathers for want of a better understanding between the maid-fervant and the man-critic. All the world knew, upon clear grounds, the day of Milton's death. And what a champion of discoveries! what a knight-errant of dates in terrâ incognitá must this biographer of Dryden be, who discovers again what the fagacious Thomas Warton had published nine years before, and then, like Americus Vefpufius, makes the laurel fit no head but his own! A furprize. But, oh, gentle reader! what if I tell you there is, after all, no fuch account by the maid-fervant? Yet fuch is the fact. There is not one fyllable in her depofition which refers to the day on which her evidence was given, or to a month's reckoning of a death which had paft (any more than to that of a nine-month's reckoning of a birth to come); and the has never depofed that he died at a late hour of the night. The The laft of thefe particulars, and the most affecting, is pure imagination. It may be found under the article of Malone's Fairies. It founds tragically in the opinion of Oberon, and it finishes well.-Death and murder fhould be at midnight. As to "the month before he gave her evidence," whether it was taken from any other depofition, or from Dyer's Junius, in fome fragment of a number that never appeared, is of lefs confequence, than to fee with pleasure, that it gives occafion for doubt, which leads of course to difcuffion, which is, prodire tenùs, in the five hundred and fixty-ninth page and a quarter. Fact. The account of Elizabeth Fiber is in these words "This deponent was fervant under Mr. John Milton for about a year before his death, who died upon a Sunday the 15th of November last, at night!!! Hiatus. We are not informed by the hiftorian at fecond hand, who the maid-servant was, and where he was buried; at what hour, and whether at a late or an early one; how many legitimate productions of her own (or Dinah-Shandyifmata) he might have numbered; and whether the had ever mifreckoned as a matron. It It would have enlightened us to have been made familiar with her namefake and her fellow witnefs Maria Fisher. The ecclefiaftical proceedings only tell us that the lived in Brick Lane, in Old Street, ubi moram fecit per fpatium fex hebdomadarum anteà cum Guiddon Culcap infra locum vocat. Smock Alley; et anteà cum quodam, Rogers, &c. Even this might have been improved by "elucidations of the obfcure, and folutions of the intricate," as Johnson would have stated them. I anfwer to all these pedantries, and I anfwer for Malone, who is above answering for himself, in the words of Pope, and in a poem called the Dunciad. About it, Goddess and about it! PROBLEM II.* An unfolicited kindness of Lord Shaftesbury to one of Dryden's fons, induced him to add twelve complementary lines to the fecond edition of Abfalom and Achitophel. In the fecond edition of Biogr. Brit. Dr. Kippis gives an account which he had received of this tranfaction: it was thus-" this act of generofity had fuch an effect upon Dryden, that to teftify his gratitude, he added the four fol *This Problem is clear gain, and has no connection with Milton or his maid, but it is in the fame hand. lowing lines in celebration of the Earl's conduct as Lord Chancellor. "In Ifrael's Court, &c." Upon this paffage in the Hiftorian, Edmond, with infinite felf complacency at the conceit which he had engendered, and with books of arithmetic in his hand, fays, pag. 147, "It appears that the original relator was not half informed, for the lines inferted were not four but twelve." It is true that four and four are eight; and therefore Kippis must have given us two more lines before he had conquered half the way to the dozen. 6 6 12 On the other hand is it not an axiom in mathematics, that omne majus continet in fe minus? and if all the verfes are twelve, do they not include four? May it not also be remarked, that as the eight other lines are introductory to the four, which constitute the main idea; thus prepared, and compreffed, the four lines, would alone be counted by Dr. Kippis or his relator. In anfwer" defendit numerus," or in English, the number defends the account of it, and the |