THEIR AUTHORS AND ORIGIN. 41
is made up of verses taken from his version of Psalms Ixxxii, Ixxxv, and Ixxxvi. His renderings of the Psalms, from which these verses are taken, are remarkable for their closeness to the original. They are thus headed, "Psalms done into metre; wherein all but what is in a different character, are the very words of the text, translated from the original." And in some verses there is not a word which is not found in the original. These Psalms were written in the year 1G48, Milton s fortieth year. He paraphrased nine of the Psalms thus, at one time, and eight at another.
"Let us with a gladsome mind." No. 229,
is a part of his version of Psalm cxxxvi, and was written in his fifteenth year. The complete poem consists of twenty-four verses. Those omitted here show the richness of his youthful imagination as those retained reveal its promise of future poetic power. The Avhole is worthy of study as the production of one, who, more than thirty years after, and not till then, wrote the "Paradise Lost."
RICHARD BAXTER. 16151691.
THE eminent author of the " Call to the Unconverted," and the " Saints Everlasting Rest," was born at Rowton, in Shropshire, where he lived with his maternal grandfather, till at ten years of age he was taken home to his parents at Eaton Constantine, in the same county. His father had but recently become a Chris tian, and chiefly through the reading of the Scriptures. Hence he especially enjoined this duty upon his son, for whose religious welfare he laboured and prayed. The petty persecutions his father was exposed to on account of his Christian profession, and the way he met them, opened the eyes of young Baxter to the true character of the Christian religion ; and at about the age of fifteen, several books that he read, including "Bunny s Resolu tions," and " Sibbs Bruised Reed," were of much spiritual
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