MILTON AS A WRITER ON EDUCATION 
Oliver M. Ainsworth 
Milton's contribution to educational theory, although neatly 
classified and apparently disposed of by several writers, still has 
possibilities for the investigator. Oscar Browning tells of a rude 
shock that his ideas on the subject once received, when he first 
thought of reprinting Milton's Tractate Of Education. ‘‘One 
of the senior masters at my school," says Browning, “set Milton 
as a subject for a Latin theme to his division, and told his boys 
that they were to prove that Milton, like Burke, went mad in his 
old age. I had never heard of this idea before, and I asked the 
master on what grounds it rested. He replied, ‘Did he not write 
a crack-brained book about education, in his old age ?' I concluded 
that my scheme was useless, and gave it up." Fortunately, how¬ 
ever, Browning's discouragement was not final. Thanks to him 
and to others, Milton's ideas are to-day somewhat better known. 
And yet, if one may judge from the readiness with which some 
educators dispose of Milton, their interest does not seem to have 
penetrated much further than that of Browning's senior master, 
more than seventy years ago. 
Milton's direct experience in teaching lasted only a few years; 
but the subject of education occupied his thoughts at frequent 
intervals throughout his whole life, as one may see from the many 
allusions to it in his writings. Even as an undergraduate at 
Cambridge, Milton was interested in educational theory. In one 
of his academic exercises,^ an address delivered before his fellow- 
students and his instructors, he attacks the problem, vigorously 
condemning the barren subtleties of scholastic philosophy, which 
was then a prominent part of the curriculum, and contrasting it 
with the pleasures of history, literature, and natural science, in 
which he would have preferred to spend his time. His little treatise 
on education appeared some twelve or fifteen years later (1644) 
in the midst of his earlier writings on public reform. Another 
notable reference to education is to be found in the tract. The 
^ Masson, Life of Milton, 1 :281. 
