in domestic relations, is, that he was severe and arbitrary. His
family consisted of women; and there appears in his books something
like a Turkish contempt of females, as subordinate and inferior
beings. That his own daughters might not break the ranks, he
suffered them to be depressed by a mean and penurious education. He
thought woman made only for obedience, and man only for rebellion.

Of his family some account may be expected. His sister, first
married to Mr. Philips, afterwards married Mr. Agar, a friend of her
first husband, who succeeded him in the Crown office. She had, by
her first husband, Edward and John, the two nephews whom Milton
educated; and by her second, two daughters.

His brother, Sir Christopher, had two daughters, Mary and Catharine,
and a son, Thomas, who succeeded Agar in the Crown office, and left
a daughter living in 1749 in Grosvenor Street.

Milton had children only by his first wife: Anne, Mary, and
Deborah. Anne, though deformed, married a master-builder, and died
of her first child. Mary died single. Deborah married Abraham
Clark, a weaver in Spitalfields, and lived seventy-six years, to
August, 1727. This is the daughter of whom public mention has been
made. She could repeat the first lines of Homer, the
"Metamorphoses," and some of Euripides, by having often read them.
Yet here incredulity is ready to make a stand. Many repetitions are
necessary to fix in memory lines not understood; and why should
Milton wish or want to hear them so often? These lines were at the
beginning of the poems. Of a book written in a language not
understood, the beginning raises no more attention than the end; and
as those that understand it know commonly the beginning best, its