306 



MILTON. 



Milton, ted to the care of Thomas Young, a puritan clergy- 

 '-"-'" ' man, who was compelled, by the persecution raised 

 against the sectaries, to retire to the Continent, and 

 was for some time chaplain to the British merchants at 

 Hamburgh. It is not known at what particular time 

 Young was the domestic tutor of Milton, but it is cer- 

 tain, that before his going to the University, our poet 

 passed an interval of study at St. Paul's school, under 

 the direction of Alexander Gill. The son and assist- 

 ant of this schoolmaster was the intimate friend of 

 Milton, as we find by three of the poet's familiar let- 

 ters. He succeeded his father as master of St. Paul's 

 school, but, what is disagreeable to relate of one ho- 

 noured by such a friendship, was removed from his 

 situation for excessive severity to the boys. 



In his 16th year Milton was entered a pensioner at 

 Christ's College, Cambridge, (Feb. 12, 1624,) and was 

 committed to the tuition of the Rev. William Chapel, 

 the reputed author of the Whole Duty of Man, and after- 

 wards Bishop of Cork and Ross. Milton had at this time 

 exercised himself in the composition both of Latin 

 and in English verses. At 15, he translated and para- 

 phrased two psalms, which he thought in maturer life 

 worthy of the public eye. Dr. Symmons conceives, 

 that in the highly poetical epithets of these boyish 

 compositions, we may discover the first shootings of 

 the infant oak which in later times was to overshadow 

 the forest. We are rather inclined to think, with Dr. 

 Johnson, that these productions excite no expecta- 

 tionsthe boy Milton seems at that period not much 

 greater than other boys, when he indites such a cou- 

 plet as the following : 



" The high huge-bellied mountains skip like rams 

 Amongst their ewes the little hills like lambs." 



The treatment and conduct of Milton at the Uni- 

 versity has been a fruitful subject of controversy. Dr. 

 Johnson good-naturedly fears that he was one of the 

 last students in either University who suffered the 

 public indignity of corporal punishment. The barba- 

 rous custom of public corporal corrections was no 

 doubt retained at English Universities till about as 

 late as the time of Milton, and from the savageness of 

 the custom, and the utter ignorance of the science of 

 education which it betray, may easily be conceived to 

 have been often dispensed by brutal tempers for acts 

 of mere juvenile indiscretion. " C'est la crime fait la 

 honte, et non pas 1'echaufaud." So that, supposing 

 Milton had been punished, unless the turpitude of his 

 offence were proved, the anecdote needed not to have 

 stirred up the pious concern of either his friendly or 

 inimical biographers. It would only excite the dis- 

 gust of a reflecting mind to think that the barbarism 

 of the monkish ages came so far down into the system 

 of modern education ; and if Milton was flagellated at 

 college, and if the guardian spirits of human improve- 

 ment have any thing to do with schools and colleges, 

 they assuredly looked with an evil eye on Cambridge, 

 in that hour when the spirit and pride of genius were 

 exposed to the danger of extinction by a treatment so 

 degrading both to the teacher and the taught. But 

 Cambridge and Milton may both be easily acquitted of 

 the suspicion of this occurrence. The story is a mere 

 exhalation from the calumnies which were heaped 

 upon his name by those who dreaded and felt his po- 

 litical eloquence such as the son of Bishop Hall, and 

 the Du Moulins and Moruses of his own day. His 

 contemporaries believed not a word of the younger 

 Hall's assertion, when he accused Milton of having 

 been vomited forth from his university for disgraceful 

 crinMe; for Milton had unanswerable documents to 



produce at the moment, to shew that he had been an Miiion. 

 object of regard and partiality among his superiors at 

 Cambridge. But Aubrey, nevertheless, had heard of 

 a rumour of Milton's having been punished at col- 

 lege a rumour, however, which even Wood, ill-dis- 

 posed as he was to the poet's memory, rejected as 

 scandal a rumour distinctly falsified by Milton's ap- 

 peal in the face of the world to the members of his 

 university, against the charge of ill-behaviour at col- 

 lege and'one which he could not have made without 

 instantaneous detection, if he had ever been the object 

 of ignominious punishment. But Thomas Warton 

 would not let Aubrey's rumour drop, and Dr. John- 

 son, taking it up, and translating out of Milton's verses 

 to Deodati, the Latin word et cetera, (meaning some- 

 thing else by " SOMEWHAT MORE," which it does not 

 mean,) endeavoured to torture out of those verses the 

 evidence of a fact xvhich they will not yield. On 

 Aubrey's rumour, and on Dr. Johnson's false transla- 

 tion, the story rests, and let it there rest in peace. 



Early in the period of his college residence, we dis- 

 cover his progress as a writer both of English and 

 Latin poetry. Perhaps the first of his English poems 

 which can be fixed upon as an important date in the 

 history of his gcnins, is his ode on the death of a fair 

 infant, (his sister's child,) written at 17. He there 

 manages with facility and effect a stanza similar to the 

 Spenserian, though shorter, and evidently formed on 

 Spenser's style. The thoughts rise to tenderness and 

 sublimity, though sometimes blemished by conceit. 

 His Ode on the Nativity, written at 22, discloses still 

 greater beauties, and perhaps still deeper defects. 

 The " Verses at a Solemn Mustek" have something 

 peculiarly Miltonic ; and his vacation exercise, on the 

 subject of his native language, js pregnant with the 

 first stirring-spirit of Paradise Lost, where he speaks of 

 a subject of poetry. 



" Such, where the deep-transported mind may soar 

 Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven's door 

 Look in and see each blissful deity," &c. &c. 



Many of his Latin elegies were written as early as- 

 his 18th year. Ovid was his model in elegy. It has 

 been regretted that he had not a model of greater 

 strength, but to find power united with tenderness in 

 classical elegy is not an easy task. Among his Latin 

 verses it is interesting to meet with his description of 

 a tender passion which he cherished at the age of 19. 

 The object of it was a lady whom he saw in a public 

 walk near the metropolis. She suddenly disappeared 

 from him among the crowd, and he could never after- 

 wards obtain any intelligence respecting her. 



He took the degree of A.M. in 1632, and being 

 now 24 years of age, left Cambridge to reside at Hor- 

 ton in Buckinghamshire, where his father lived after 

 retiring from business. The five subsequent years 

 which he passed under his father's roof may justly be 

 regarded as the happiest of his life. To this favoured 

 period we are indebted for some of the most exquisite 

 productions of his genius. Comiis and Lycidas were 

 certainly written here, the former in 1634, the latter 

 in I6o7 and most probably the Arcades, L' 'Allegro, 

 and // Penseroso. The composition of the Arcades 

 probably preceded that of Comus. The piece was 

 written for the Countess Dowager of Derby, who re- 

 sided at Harefield, in the vicinity of Horton. She was 

 of the same family with Spenser the poet, and had 

 been his patroness and his theme of praise before she 

 was celebrated by Milton. 



The Arcades is evidently nothing more than the 

 poetical part of an entertainment, the bulk of whick 



