342 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 105. 



Cambrirlge is mentioned in the palinode to tbe 

 last of his elegies : 



" Donee Socraticos umbrosa acailemia rivos 

 Praibuit, admissuni dciiocuitquo jugiira. 

 Protinus extinctis ex illo tempore Hainmis, 

 Cincta rigent multo peetora nostra gelu." 



Plaving now cleared my way in as brief a manner 

 as possible, I must profess my utter disbelief in 

 tbe enormities of JMilton's life at Cambridge. He 

 was certainly Hogged, but then he was only 

 eighteen years old at the time, and we know that 

 flogging was permitted by the statutes of many 

 colleges, and was a favourite recreation amongst 

 the deans, tutors, and censors of the day. Brata- 

 hall's letter has indeed been a marvellous stum- 

 bling-block in my way, ever since the appearance 

 of the last edition of his works; but 1 do hope 

 that some of your learned correspondents will 

 dispel the clouds and shadows that surround me, 

 and prove that, at all events, Milton was not 

 worse than his neighbours. 



Ur. South and Cowley were never flogged at 

 college, but certainly they were often flogged at 

 school, or they could not speak so feelingly on the 

 subject : 



" Those 'ijlagosi Oibilii' (writes South), t!io=e exe- 

 cutioners, ratlier than instructors of youth ; persons 

 fitted to lay about them in a coach or cart, or to dis- 

 cipline boys before a Spartan altar, or rather upon it, 

 than to liave anything to do in a Christian school. 

 I would give these pedagogical Jehus, those furious 

 school-drivers, the same advice which the poet says 

 Phoebus gave his son Phaeton (just such another driver 

 as themselves), that he should parcere stimulis (the 

 stimulus in driving being of the same use formerly that 

 the lash is now). Stripes and blows are the last 

 and basest remedy, and scarce ever fit to be used but 

 upon such as carry their brains in their backs, and have 

 souls so dull and stupid as to serve for little else but to 

 keep their bodies from putrefaction." — Sermon u^)oii 

 Proverbs, xxii. 6. 



And Cowley, in describing the Betula (Angl. 

 birch-tree), how he does paint from nature ! 



" Mollis et alba cutim, formosam vertiee fundens 

 Caesariem, sed mens tetrica est, sed nulla nee arbor 

 Nee fera sylvaruin crudelior incolit umbras : 

 Nam simul atque tubes concessum intrare domosque 

 Plagosum Ofbilium sa>vumque imitata J)raconem 

 Ilia furit, non ulla viris delicta, nee ulhim 

 Indulgens ludum pueris ; inscribere membra 

 Discentum, teneroque rubescere sanguine gaudet." 



Flantarum, lib. vi. pag. 323. Londini, 1668. 

 That Milton's character was notorious or infa- 

 mous at Cantbridge has never, to my knowledge, 

 been proved; and there is in his favour tliis most 

 overwhelming testimony, that he never forfeited 

 tlij3 esteem and friendship of the great and good 

 Was Sir Henry ^^'otton writing to a man of 

 blighted and bhibted reputation when he sent the 

 kind and complimentary letter prefixed to Comus ? 



In that he not merely eulogises the "Dorique 

 delicacy" of Milton's songs and odes, but gives 

 him much kind and considerate advice upon the 

 course he was to pursue in his travels, as well as 

 some introductions to his own friends, and pro- 

 mises to keep u]) a regular correspondence with 

 him during his absence. Milton was very proud 

 of this letter, and speaks of it in his Defensio 

 Secunda. Again, Milton's associates at Cambridge 

 must have known all about the misdemeanour 



I (whatever it was) that caused his rustication, and 

 yet they permitted him to take a p.art in, and 

 perhaps to write the preface of, the ever memo- 

 rable volume which contained the first edition of 

 Lycidas. 



j The person commemorated wns Edward King, 

 a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge (Milton's 

 own college) ; and I need not adduce Milton's 

 affecting allusions to their close and intimate 

 fi-iendship. It was for another of the Fellows of 

 Christ's College that Milton at the age of nineteen 

 (the very year after his rustication) wrote the 

 academic exercise Nuiuram non pati Senium^ 

 found amongst his Latin poems. But I will omit 

 a great many arguments of a similar kind, and 

 'ask this question. Why has Milton's college career 

 escaped the lash of three of the most sarcastic of 

 writers, Cleveland, Butler, and South, who were 

 his contemporaries ? Cleveland must have known 

 him well, as he, as well as Milton, had contributed 

 some memorial verses to King, and party feeling 

 would perhaps have overcome collegiate associa- 

 tions. Nor could their mutual connexion with 

 Golden Grove have saved him from the aspersions 

 of Butler. After the Kestoration, Richard Lord 

 Yaughan, Earl of Carbery, appointed the author 

 o{ liudibrus lo the stewardship of Ludlow Castle; 

 and his second wife was the Lady Alice Egerton, 

 who, at the age of thirteen, had acted the Lady in 

 Milton's Conius. It was to her likewise that 

 Bishop Jeremy Taylor dedicated the third edition 

 of the third part of the Life of Christ, as he had 

 dedicated the first edition to Lord Carbery 's former 

 wife, whose funeral sermon be jjreached. I do not 

 remember that Cleveland or Butler have on any 

 occasion satirised Milton; but I do remember that 

 Dr. South has done so, and I cannot understand 

 his silence on the matter if Milton's jjrivate cha- 

 racter had been notorious. Of course I do not 

 believe the anonymous invective ascribed to a son 

 of Bishop Hall's. Dr. South was not the man to 

 " mince matters," and yet Milton's college life has 

 escaped his sarcasms. ^Vhat his opinion of Milton 

 was we may learn from his sermon preached before 

 King Charles II. upon Judges xix. 30. 



" The Latin advocate (Mr. Milton), who, l^ke a 

 blind adder, has spit so umch poysou upon the king's 

 person and cause," &c. 



" In pra^fat. ad defensionem pro populi) Anglicano (as 

 his Latin is)." — Vol. ii. pp. 201-2. Dublin, 1720. fol. 



