any of the three professions, he left the college, greatly regretted by his acquaintance, but highly displeased with the usual method of training up youth there for thestudy of divinity; and being much out of humour with the public administration of ecclesiastical affairs, he grew dissatisfied with the established form of church government, and disliked the whole plan of education practised in the university. His parents, who now dwelt at Horton, near Colnbrook, in Buckinghamshire, received him with unabated affection, notwithstanding he had thwarted their views of providing for him in the church; and they amplyindulged him in his love of retirement, wherein he enriched his mind with the choicest stores of Grecian and Roman literature: and his poems of Comus, L'Allegro, I Penseroso, and Lycidas, all written at this time, would have been suflicient, had he never produced any thing more considerable, to have transmitted his fame to latest posterity. How ever, he was not so absorbed in his studies as not to make frequent excursions to London; neither did so much excellence pass unnoticed among his neighbours in the country, with the most distinguished of whom he sometimes chose to relax his mind, and improve his acquaintance with the world as well as with books. After five years spent in this manner, he obtained his father's permission to travel for farther improvement. At Paris he became acquainted with the celebrated Hugo Grotius: and from thence travelling into Italy, he was every where caressed by persons of the most eminent quality and learning.

Upon his return home, he set up a genteel academy in Aldersgate-street.-In 1641 he began to draw his pen in defence of the presbyterian party, and the next year he married the daughter of Richard Powell, Esq. of ForestHill in Oxfordshire. This lady, however, whether from a difference on account of party, her father being a zealous royalist, or some other cause, soon thought proper to return to her relations; which so incensed her husband, that he resolved never to take her again, and wrote and published several tracts in defence of the doctrine and discipline of divorce. He even made his addresses to another lady; but this incident proved the means of a reconciliation with Mrs. Milton.

In 1644 he wrote his Tract upon Education; and the restraint on the liberty of the press being continued by act of parliament, he wrote boldly and nobly against that restraint. In 1645 he published his juvenile poems; and about two years after, on the death of his father, he took a smaller house in High Holborn, the back of which opened into Lincoln'sInn Fields. Here he quietly prosecuted his studies, till the fatal catastrophe and death of Charles I.; on which occasion he published his Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in justification of the fact. He was now taken into the service of the commonwealth, and made Latin secretary to the council of state, who resolved neither to write to others abroad, nor to receive any answers, except in the Latin tongue,

which was cominon to them all. The famous Exy Bathing coming out about the same time, our author, by command, wrote and published his Iconoclastes the same year. It was also by order of his masters, backed by the reward of 1000/. that in 1651 he published his celebrated piece, entitled Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio." A Defence of the People of England, in answer to Salmatius's Defence of the King;" which performance spread his fame over all Europe. He now dwelt in a pleasant house, with a garden in Petty France, Westminster, opening iuto St. James's Park. 1652 he buried his wife, who died not long after the delivery of her fourth child; and about the same time he also lost his eye-sight, by a gutta serena, which had been growing upon him many years.

In

Cromwell took the reins of government into his own hands in the year 1653; but Milton still held his office. His leisure hours he employed in prosecuting his studies; wherein he was so far from being discouraged by the loss of his sight, that he even conceived hopes this misfortune would add new vigour to his genius; which, in fact, seems to have been the case. Thus animated, he again ventured upon matrimony: his second lady was the daughter of Captain Woodstock of Hackney; she died in child-bed about a year after. On the deposition of the protector, Richard Cromwell, and on the return of the long parliament, Milton being still continued secretary, he appeared again in print, pleading for a farther reformation of the laws relating to religion; and, during the anarchy that ensued, he drew up several schemes for re-establishing the commonwealth, exerting all his faculties to prevent the return of Charies II. England's destiny, however, and Charles's good fortune, prevailing, our author chose to consult his safety, and retired to a friend's house in Bartholomewclose. A particular prosecution was intended against him; but the just esteem to which his admirable genius and extraordinary accomplishments entitled him had raised him so many friends, even among those of the opposite party, that he was included in the general amnesty.

This storm over, he married a third wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. Minshall, a Cheshire gentleman; and not long after he took a house in the Artillery Walk leading to Bunhill-fields. This was his last stage: here he sat down for a longer continuance than he had been able to do any where; and though he had lost his fortune (for every thing belonging to him went to wreck at the Restoration), he did not lose his taste for literature, but continued his studies with almost as much ardour as ever; and applied himself particularly to the finishing his grand work, the Paradise Lost, one of the noblest poems that ever was produced by human genius. It was published in 1667, and his Paradise Regained came out in 1670.-This latter work fell short of the excellence of the former production; although, were it not for the transcendent merit of

Paradise Lost, the second composition would doubtless have stood foremost in the rank of English epic poems. After this he published many pieces in prose, for which we refer our readers to the edition of his Historical, Poetical, and Miscellaneous Works, printed by Millar, in 2 vois. 4to, in 1753.

In 1674 this great man paid the last debt to nature at his house in Bunhill-fields, in the 66th year of his age; and was interred on the 12th of November, in the chancel of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. A decent monument was erected to his memory, in 1737, in Westininster abbey, by Mr. Benson, one of the auditors of the imprest. His person was remarkably handsome, but his constitution was tender.

Memoirs of the life of Milton have been ably written by Mr. Hayley, Dr. Symonds, and others: but one of the most interesting sketches of this kind, both as it regards biography and criticism, is that by Dr. Johnson. It displays the great powers, and unfortunately at the same time the great prejudices, of that learned man; yet we wish we had room to select more than two or three of its characteristic passages.

Dryden remarks that Milton has some flats among his elevations. But says Johnson, "this is only to say, that all the parts are not equal. In every work, one part must be for the sake of others; a palace must have passages; a poem must have transitions. It is no more to be required that wit should be always blazing, than that the sun should always stand at noon. In a great work there is a vicissitude of luminous and opaque parts, as there is in the world a succession of day and night. Milton, when he has expatiated in the sky, may be allowed sometimes to revisit earth; for what other author ever soared so high, or sustained his flight so long!"

Once more," Milton was naturally a thinker for himself, confident of his own abilities, and disdainful of help or hindrance: he did not refuse admission to the thoughts or images of his predecessors, but he did not seek them. From his contemporaries he neither courted nor received support; there is in his writings nothing by which the pride of other authors might be gratified, or favour gained; no exchange of praise, nor solicitations of support. His great works were performed under discountenance, and in his blindness; but difficulties vanished at his touch: he was born for whatever is arduous; and Paradise Lost is not the greatest of heroic poems, only because it is not the first."

Again, “The characteristic quality of his poem is sublimity. He sometimes descends to the elegant, but his element is the great. He can occasionally invest himself with grace, but his natural part is gigantic loftiness. He can please when pleasure is required; but it is his peculiar power to astonish.

"He seems to have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon others, the power of dis

playing the vast, illuminating the splendid, exposing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful: he therefore chose a subject on which too much could not be said, on which he might tire his fancy without the censure of extravagance.

"The appearances of nature, and the occurrences of life, did not satiate his appetite for greatness. To paint things as they are requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy. Milton's delight was to sport in the wide regions of possibility; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He sent his faculties out upon discovery, into worlds where only imagination can travel, and delighted to form new modes of existence, and furnish sentiment and action to superior beings, to trace the counsels of hell, or accompany the choirs of heaven.”

46

Lastly, In Milton every line breathes sanctity of thought, and purity of manners, except when the train of the narration requires the introduction of the rebellious spirits; and even they are compelled to acknowledge their subjection to God, in such a manner as excites reverence, and confirais piety."

MIME. s. (.) A buffoon who practises gesticulations, either representative of some action, or merely contrived to raise mirth (B. Jonson).

To MIME. v. n. To play the mime (B. Jon.). MIMER. s. (from mime.) A mimic (Milt.). MIMICAL. a. (mimicus, Latin.) Imitative; befitting a mimic; acting the mimic (Dryden).

MIMÍC. a. (mimicus, Latin.) Imitative (Swift).

To MIMIC. v. c. (from the noun.) To imitate as a buffoon; to ridicule by a burlesque imitation (Granville).

MIMICALLY. ad. In imitation; in a mimical manner

MIMIC. s. (mimicus, Latin.) 1. A ludicrous imitator; a buffoon who copies another's act or manner (Prior). 2. A mean or servile imitator.

MIMICRY. s. (from mimic.) Burlesque imitation (Spectator).

MIMNERMUS, a Greek poet and musician of Colophon in the age of Solon. He chiefly excelled in elegiac poetry, whence some have attributed the invention of it to him. In the expression of love, Propertius prefers him to Homer, as this verse shews:

Plus in amore valet Mimnermi versus Homero. Lib. i. Eleg. 9. v. 11. And Horace bears testimony to his abilities, in describing that seducing passion : Si Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore jocisque Nil est jucundum, vivas in amore jocisque. Epist. vi. lib. i. v. 65.

If, as wise Mimnermus said, Life unblest with love and joy Ranks us with the senseless dead,1 Let these gifts each hour employ. Alluding to some much-admired lines of this C2

be taken not to give them too large pots. The first of these three may, when grown woody, be set in a common stove, among viburnums, and similar plants; but the other two must have a bark-stove in winter: nor should they be exposed to the open air in summer, at least till they are four or five years old. In winter, these are to have very little water; but in summer they require frequent refreshings.

The inga may be propagated by seeds, in the manner directed for the acacia, only that the plants being too tender to endure the open air of this country, must not be removed out of the stove, even in the warmest part of the year; but they are only preserved in curious gardens, for the sake of variety. The sensitive plant, or the mimosa, strictly so called, may be propagated by seeds in the same manner with the inga, and other natives of warm climates.

The sensitive plant is so denominated, from its remarkable property of receding from the touch, and giving signs, as it were, of animal life and sensation; this motion it performs by means of three distinct articulations, viz. of a single leaf with its pedicle, of the pedicle to its branch, and of the branch to the trunk, or main stem; the primary motion of all which is the closing of the two halves of the leaf on its rib; then the rib or pedicle itself closes; and if the motion with which the plant is moved be very strong, the very branches have the sensation propagated to them, and apply themselves to the main stem, as the simple leaves did before to their ribs, and these ribs to their branches; so that the whole plant, in this state, forms itself, from a very complexly branched figure, into a sort of straight, cylindrical one. MIMULUS. Monkey-flower. In botany, a genus of the class didynamia, order angiospermia. Calyx five-toothed, prismatic; the upper lip folded back at the sides; capsule twocelled; many sceded. Four species natives of North of South America, with blue or yellow flowers.

MIMUSOP. In botany, a genus of the class octandria, order digynia. Calyx five-leaved; corolless: capsule one-celled; three-valved; seeds a few. Three species: herbs of Spain.

MINA, or MANEH, a species of money, which properly signifies one part or ounce. It is observed that this word occurs only in the books of Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, and Ezekiel. This prophet (xlv. 12.) tells us, that the ninah or maneh was valued at 60 shekels, which in gold make of our English money about 542 pounds, and in silver almost seven pounds. Thus for the Hebrew manch. But the Greek or Attic mina, which is probably that mentioned in the books of the Maccabees and in the New Testament, is valued at 100 drachmæ, or about 21. 17s. sterling. There was also a lesser mina, which was valued at 75 drachmæ.

MINA'CIOUS. a. (minax. Lat.) Full of

threats.

MINA'CITY. s. (from minax, Lat.) Disposition to use threats.

MINAGNGHINIM, a pulsatile instrument of music, among the Hebrews, which was a square table of wood fitted with a handle; over this table was stretched an iron chain, or hempen cord, passing through balls of wood or brass, which struck against the table when the instrument was shook, and occasioned a clear sound, which might be heard at a great distance.

MINATORY. a. (minor, Latin.) Threatening (Bacon).

To MINCE. v. a. (from minish.) 1. To cut into small parts (South). 2. To mention any thing scrupulously, by a little at a time; to palliate (Woodward). 3. To speak with affected softness; to clip the words (Shakspeare).

To MINCE. v. n. 1. To walk nicely by short steps (Pope). 2. To speak small and imperfectly (Dryden).

MINCHA, in the Jewish customs, offerings of meal, cakes, or biscuits, made in the temple of the Lord. The Seventy have sometimes preserved this word in their translation; but instead of mincha they read manaa, which doubtless was the received pronunciation in their time.

MINCHING HAMPTON, a town of Gloucestershire, 20 miles from Bath and Bristol, and near 90 from London, with a market on Tuesdays, and two fairs. The parish is pretty large, being bounded on the north by the Stroud, and on the south by the brook Avening; and has 12 hamlets belonging to it, with a common called Amberley. Here is a good large rectory church, built in form of a cross, and worth 2001. a-year. Near it are very large camps, with deep trenches; and near Dunkirk in this parish are fulling-mills.

MI'NCINGLY. ud. (from mince.) In small parts; not fully (Hooker).

MINCIUS, a river of the Transpadana; running from, or rather transmitted through, the Lacus Benacus, from north to south, into the Padus; but originally rising in the Rhetian Alps. Now Mincio or Menzo, running through the duchy of Mantua into the Po.

MIND. s. (gemind, Saxon.) 1. The intelligent power (Shakspeare). 2. Intellectual capacity (Cowley). 3. Liking; choice; inclination; propension; affection (Hooker). 4. Thoughts; sentiments (Dryden). 5. Opinion (Granville). 6. Memory; remembrance.

To MIND. v. a. (from the noun.) 1. To mark; to attend (Roscommon). 2. To put in mind; to remind (Burnet).

To MIND. v. n. To incline; to be disposed (Spenser).

MINDANAO, the largest of the Philippine Islands, in Asia, except Manilla. It is almost the only one that is not subject to Spain; its length being about 200 miles, and its breadth 150. The inhabitants are of a very different description from those of the other Philippine Islands. Those of the inland country are supposed to be the ancient pagan inhabitants, whom the Mahometans, that possess the coasts, have driven up to the mountains.

The air of

Mindanao is not excessively hot, though it lies within six degrees of the equator, as it is refreshed by the sea-breezes on every side in the day-time. The middle of the country is woody and mountainous: but between the hills are rich valleys, and near the sea-coast the country is generally flat. It produces rice, and such fruits as grow between the tropics. They have also libby or sago trees; of the pith of which they make bread. Great quantities of it are exported, after it is dried and drained like seed. The plantain wood is beautiful here, and in great perfection. It is their principal food, and they also make their drink of it. In the reign of Philip II. king of Spain, Don Lewis de Velasco, viceroy of Mexico, sent Michael Lopez de la Gaspes, with a fleet and force sufficient to make a conquest of these islands, which he afterwards named the Philippines, in honour of the above monarch.

The city of Magindanao is situated on the south-east side of the island, has a river capable of admitting small vessels, and carries on a considerable trade with Manilla, Sooloo, Borneo, and the Moluccas. Their exports are rice, tobacco, bees-wax, and spices; in return for which they receive coarse cloths of Coromandel, China-ware, and opium. The village or town of Samboingan is situated on the banks of a small rivulet, which empties itself immediately into the sea, and is agreeably shaded by groves of cocoa trees. The number of its inhabitants are about 1000, among which are included the officers, soldiers, and their respective families. In its environs there are several small lookout houses, erected on posts of twelve feet high, in all of which a constant guard is kept; so that it appears as if the Spaniards were in a continual state of eninity with the natives, The houses are built of those simple materials which are of very general use in the eastern seas. They are erected on posts, and built of bamboo, covered with mats; the lower apartments serve for their hogs, cattle, and poultry, and the upper ones are occupied by the family. Lon. 125. 0 W. Lat. 6. Ο Ν.

MINDED. a. (from mind.) Disposed; inclined; affected (Tillotson).

MINDELHEIM, a town of Suabia, with a castle. It is the capital of a small territory between the rivers Iller and Lech, subject to the house of Bavaria. It was taken by the Austrians, after the battle of Blenheim, who erected it into a principality in favour of the duke of Marlborough; but it returned to the house of Bavaria, by the treaty of Rastadt. It is 30 miles S. E. of Ulm. Lon 10. 42 E. Lat. 48. 3. N.

MINDEN, a town of Westphalia, capital of a territory of the same name. Near this town prince Ferdinand of Brunswick defeated the French in 1759. It is subject to the king of Prussia, and is seated on the Weser; 27 miles E. by S. of Osnaburg, and 37 W. of Hanover. Lon. 9. 5 E. Lat. 52. 22 N.

MINDFUL. a. (mind and full.) Attentive; heedful; having memory (Hammond). MINDFULLY. ad. Attentively; heedfully. MINDFULNESS. s. Attention; regard." MINDLESS. a. (from mind.) 1. Inattentive; regardless (Prior). 2. Not endued with a mind; having no intellectual powers (Davies). 3. Stupid; unthinking (Shakspeare). MIND-STRICKEN. a. (mind and stricken). Moved; affected in his mind (Sidney).

MINDORO, one of the Philippine Islands, 50 miles in circumference, separated from Luconia by a narrow channel. It is full of mountains, which abound in palm-trees, and all sorts of fruit. The inhabitants are pagans, and pay tribute to the Spaniards.

MINE, in natural history, a deep pit under ground, from whence various kinds of minerals are dug out; but the term is more particularly applied to those which yield metals. Where stones only are procured, the appellation of quarries is universally bestowed upon the places from which they are dug out, however deep they may be.

As, therefore, the matter dug out of mines is various, the mines themselves acquire various denominations, as gold-mines, silver-mines, copper-mines, iron-mines, diamond-mines, salt-mines, mines of antimony, of alum, &c.

Mines, then, in general, are veins or cavities within the earth, whose sides receding from, or approaching nearer to each other, make them of unequal breadths in different places, sometimes forming larger spaces, which are called hules: they are filled with substances, which, whether metallic or of any other nature, are called the loads; when the substances forming these loads are reducible to metal, the loads are by the miners said to be alive; otherwise they are called dead loads. In Cornwall and Devon, the loads always hold their course from eastward to westward; though in other parts of England, they frequently run from north to south. The miners report, that the sides of the load never bear in a perpendicular, but constantly underlay, either to the north or to the south. The load is frequently intercepted by the crossing of a vein of earth, or stone, or some different metallic substance; in which case it generally happens that part of the load is moved a considerable distance to the one side. This transient load is by the miners called flooking: and the part of the load which is to be moved is said to be heaved. According to Dr. Nichols's observations upon mines, they seem to be, or to have been, the channels through which the water pass within the earth, and, like rivers, have their small branches opening into them, in all directions. Most mines have streams of water running through them; and when they are found dry, it seems to be owing to the waters having changed their course, as being obliged to it, either because the load has stopped up the ancient passages, or that some new and more easy ones are made. Mines, says Dr. Shaw, are liable to many cor tingencies; being sometimes poor, sometimes soon exhaustible, sometimes subject to be drowned, especially