the
Whigs which followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and that,
in consequence of a general seizure of his papers, this work may have
been brought to the office in which it has been found. But whatever the
adventures of the manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it
is a genuine relic of the great poet....

[Footnote 4: _Joannis Miltoni, Angli, de Doctrina Christiana libri duo
posthumi_. A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the Holy
Scriptures alone. By JOHN MILTON, translated from the Original by
Charles R. Sumner, M.A., etc., etc.: 1825. From the _Edinburgh Review_,
August, 1825; slightly abridged.]

The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton.... Were it far
more orthodox or far more heretical than it is, it would not much edify
or corrupt the present generation. The men of our time are not to be
converted or perverted by quartos. A few more days, and this essay will
follow the _Defensio Populi_ to the dust and silence of the upper shelf.
The name of its author, and the remarkable circumstances attending its
publication, will secure to it a certain degree of attention. For a
month or two it will occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room,
and a few columns in every magazine; and it will then, to borrow the
elegant language of the play-bills, be withdrawn, to make room for the
forthcoming novelties.

We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, transient as it
may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous Capuchins never
choose to preach on the life and miracles of a saint till they have
awakened the devotional feelings of their auditors by exhibiting some
relic of him--a thread of his garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of
his blood. On the same principle, we intend to take advantage of the
late interesting discovery, and, while this memorial of a great and good
man is still in the hands of all, to say something of his moral and
intellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the severest of our
readers blame us if, on an occasion like the present, we turn for a
short time from the topics of the day to commemorate, in all love and
reverence, the genius and virtues of John Milton, the poet, the
statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English literature, the
champion and the martyr of English liberty.

It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and it is of his poetry
that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage of the civilized