44 JOHN MILTON 
Milton’s father had retired from business and was 
living in plain rural comfort in the pretty village of 
Horton, within sight of the towers of Windsor Castle, 
and about two hours ride on horseback from London. 
It was near enough to allow going into the city to 
hear music or to spend an evening at the theatre. 
In Horton, the young poet lived at his father’s house 
for nearly six delightful years of study and meditation. 
He pushed on his studies in Hebrew, including Rab- 
binical literature as well as the Bible; and to all this 
he added a knowledge of Syriac. With Greek litera- 
ture his acquaintance was minute and thorough, and 
he seems to have written Greek fluently. But his 
mastery of Latin was such as has rarely been equalled. 
He not only wrote it, whether prose or verse, with the 
same facility as English, but his command of the lan- 
guage was such as few of the Roman authors them- 
selves had attained. His Latin style has not, indeed, 
the elegant perfection of Cicero and Virgil; it toler- 
ates, or rather rejoices, in phrases which those writers 
would have deemed barbarous; but this does not 
come from carelessness or lack of knowledge, it is 
done on purpose. Milton was so much at home in 
Latin that he would play with it just as James Russell 
Lowell delighted in playing with English. It was 
none of your dead-and-alive schoolmaster’s Latin, but 
a fresh and flowing diction, full of pith and pungency. 
During the quiet years at Horton, the chief studies 
of Milton were in the history and literature of Italy. 
Of English and French literature down to his own 
time, he had compassed pretty much all that was 
accessible and worth knowing,—a much easier 
achievement in those days than it would be now, 
