How can I live without thee? how forego Thy sweet converse and love so dearly joined, To live again in these wild woods forlorn? Should God create another Eve, and I Another rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart! After her death,--blind, disconsolate, and helpless--he was abandoned to petty wrongs and domestic discord; and suffered from the disobedience and unkindness of his two elder daughters, like another Lear.[148] His youngest daughter, Deborah, was the only one who acted as his amanuensis, and she always spoke of him with extreme affection:--on being suddenly shown his picture, twenty years after his death, she burst into tears.[149] These three daughters were grown up, and the youngest about fifteen, when Milton married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull. She was a gentle, kind-hearted woman,[150] without pretensions of any kind, who watched over his declining years with affectionate care. One biographer has not scrupled to assert, that to her,--or rather to her tender reverence for his studious habits, and to the peace and comfort she brought to his heart and home,--we owe the Paradise Lost: if true, what a debt immense of endless gratitude is due to the memory of this unobtrusive and amiable woman! FOOTNOTES: [137] What Dr. Johnson _wrote_ is known;--he was accustomed to _say_ that the admiration expressed for Milton was all _cant_. [138] I have before me the pamphlet, entitled "A Narrative of the disinterment of Milton's coffin, on Wednesday the 4th of August, 1790, and of the treatment of the Corpse during that and the following day." The circumstances are too revolting to be dwelt upon. [139] Si les Anges, (said Madame de Staël) n'ont pas été representés sous les traits de femme, c'est parceque l'union de la force avec la pureté, est plus belle et plus celeste encore que la modestie même la plus parfaite dans un être faible. [140] See his life by Dr. Symmons, Dr. Todd, Newton, Hayley, Aubrey, Richardson, Warton. "She (his daughter Deborah) spoke of him with great tenderness; she said he was delightful company, the life of the conversation, and that on account of a flow of subject, and an unaffected cheerfulness and civility," &c.--RICHARDSON. [141] She was Catherine Boyle, the daughter of the Great Earl of Cork, one of the most excellent and most distinguished women of that time.--_See Hayley's Life of Milton._ [142] Miss Letitia Hawkins. [143] Otherwise Amphiaraus: his story is told by Ovid. Met. B. 9. [144] As Milton felt when he wrote-- And ever against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs. [145] Milton alludes to his father's talent for music: