_Thirdly._ Because the skull in question is remarkably flat and small, and with the lowest of all possible foreheads; whereas the head of MILTON was large, and his brow conspicuously high. See his portrait so often engraved by the accurate _Vertue_, who was completely satisfied with the authenticity of his original. We are assured that the surgeon who attended at the second disinterment of the corpse only remarked, ‘that the little forehead there was, was prominent.’
_Fourthly._ Because the hands of MILTON were full of chalk stones. Now it chances that his substitute’s left hand had been undisturbed, and therefore was in a condition to be properly examined. No vestige, however, of cretaceous substances was visible in it, although they are of a lasting nature, and have been found on the fingers of a dead person almost coeval with MILTON.
_Fifthly._ Because there is reason to believe that the aforesaid remains are those of a young female (one of the three Miss _Smiths_); for the bones are delicate, the teeth small, slightly inserted in the jaw, and perfectly white, even, and sound. From the corroded state of the pelvis, nothing could, with certainty, be inferred; nor would the surgeon already mentioned pronounce _absolutely_ on the sex of the deceased. Admitting, however, that the body was a male one, its very situation points it out to be a male of the _Smith_ family; perhaps the favourite son _John_, whom _Richard Smith_, Esq., his father, so feelingly laments. (See Peck’s ‘_Desiderata Curiosa_,’ p. 536).[19] To this darling child a receptacle of lead might have been allotted, though many other relatives of the same house were left to putrefy in wood.
_Sixthly._ Because MILTON was not in affluence[20]--expired in an emaciated state, in a cold month, and was interred by direction of his widow. An expensive outward coffin of lead, therefore, was needless, and unlikely to have been provided by a rapacious woman who oppressed her husband’s children while he was living, and cheated them after he was dead.
_Seventhly._ Because it is improbable that the circumstance of MILTON’S having been deposited under the desk should, if true, have been so effectually concealed from the whole train of his biographers. It was, nevertheless, produced as an ancient and well-known tradition, as soon as the parishioners of Cripplegate were aware that such an incident was gaped for by antiquarian appetence, and would be swallowed by antiquarian credulity. How happened it that Bishop _Newton_, who urged similar inquiries concerning MILTON above forty years ago in the same parish, could obtain no such information?[21]