that he grew rich and retired to an estate. He had probably more than common literature, as his son addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin poems. He married a gentlewoman of the name of Caston, a Welsh family, by whom he had two sons, John, the poet, and Christopher, who studied the law, and adhered, as the law taught him, to the King's party, for which he was awhile persecuted, but having, by his brother's interest, obtained permission to live in quiet, he supported himself so honourably by chamber-practice that soon after the accession of King James he was knighted and made a judge; but his constitution being too weak for business, he retired before any disreputable compliances became necessary.3 He had likewise a daughter, Anne, whom he married, with a considerable fortune, to Edward Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the Crown Office to be secondary: by him she had two sons, John and Edward, who were educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only authentic account of his domestic manners.a John, the poet, was born in his father's house, at the Spread Eagle in Bread Street, December 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning. His father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he was instructed at first by private tuition under the care of Thomas Young, who was butions of the most capital performers, in The Triumphs of Oriana (that is Queen Elizabeth), published by Morley in 1601. See Rimbault's 'Bibliotheca Madrigaliana,' 8vo., 1847, p. 15. One of the new judges was Christopher Milton, younger brother of the great poet. Of Christopher little is known, except that in the time of the Civil War he had been a Royalist, and that he now in his old age leaned towards Popery. It does not appear that he was ever formally reconciled to the church of Rome, but he certainly had scruples about communicating with the church of England, and had therefore a strong interest in supporting the dispensing power.-MACAULAY's Hist., ii. 82, 9th ed. 4 Edward was the elder, and it is from him alone that any authentic account of his domestic manners has been derived. Edward Philips's 'Life of Mr. John Milton' was prefixed to his 'Letters of State,' 12mo., 1694. 5 Young, a Scot by birth, and a rigid and zealous puritan. He was one of the authors of the book called Smectymnuus, defended by Milton; was admitted Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, by the Earl of Manchester in person, 12th April, 1644, but afterwards ejected for refusing the engagement. He died Vicar of Stowmarket, in Suffolk, and was buried there. 1608-1674. MODERN LATIN. 83 afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburg, and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar considered him as worthy of an epistolary elegy. He was then sent to St. Paul's School, under the care of Mr. Gill, and removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ's College in Cambridge, where he entered a sizar," February 12, 1624. He was at this time eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions— a boast of which Politian had given him an example-seems to commend the earliness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity. But the products of his vernal fertility have been surpassed by many, and particularly by his contemporary Cowley. Of the powers of the mind it is difficult to form an estimate many have excelled Milton in their first essays who never rose to works like 'Paradise Lost.' At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated or versified two Psalms, 114 and 136, which he thought worthy of the public eye; but they raise no great expectations; they would in any numerous school have obtained praise, but not excited wonder. Many of his elegies appear to have been written in his eighteenth year, by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with very nice discernment. I once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of Polybius, remark, what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman who, after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classic elegance. If any exceptions can be made, they are very few.8 Haddon and • Alexander Gill of Trinity College, Oxford, made usher of St. Paul's School about the year 1619, and appointed Master at his father's death in 1635. Died 1642. (Warton's 'Milton,' 2nd ed., p. 419.) 7 Milton was admitted a pensioner, and not a sizar: "Johannes Milton Londinensis, filius Johannis, institutus fuit in Literarum elementis sub Mag'ro Gill Gymnasii Paulini Præfecto, et admissus est Pensionarius Minor Feb. 12, 1624, sub M'ro Chappell, solvitq. pro Ingr. £.0 10s. 8d.”—Register of Christ's College, Cambridge. Pensionarius Minor is a Pensioner, or Commoner, in contradistinction to a Fellow-Commoner.-T. WARTON: Milton's Poems, p. 423. "But we must at least except some of the hendecasyllables and epigrams Ascham, the pride of Elizabeth's reign, however they have succeeded in prose, no sooner attempt verses than they provoke derision. If we produced anything worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was perhaps Alabaster's 'Roxana.' ' Of these exercises, which the rules of the University required, some were published by him in his maturer years. They had been undoubtedly applauded; for they were such as few can form yet there is reason to suspect that he was regarded in his college with no great fondness. That he obtained no fellowship is certain; but the unkindness with which he was treated was not merely negative. I am ashamed to relate what I fear is true, that Milton was one of the last students in either university that suffered the public indignity of corporal correction. It was, in the violence of controversial hostility, objected to him, that he was expelled: this he steadily denies, and it was apparently not true; but it seems plain from his own verses to Deodati that he had incurred rustication-a temporary dismission into the country, with perhaps the loss of a term. "Me tenet urbs refluâ quam Thamesis alluit undâ, Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet. Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum, Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri, Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemve recuso, I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and of Leland, one of our first literary reformers, from this hasty decision.”—T. WARTON: Milton's Minor Poems, 2nd ed., p. xvi. 9 Published 1632. "Whoever but slightly examines it will find it written in the style and manner of the turgid and unnatural Seneca."-JOSEPH WARTON: Milton's Minor Poems, p. 430. 10 The line Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meo obviously means nothing but a repugnance to the observation of those petty formalities and rules which irritate and insult great minds: it is absurd to construe it to have been corporal punishment.-SIR EGERTON BRYDGES: Life of Milton, p. 9. 1608-1674. RUSTICATED AT CAMBRIDGE. 66 85 reverence can give to the term vetiti laris, a habitation from which he is excluded;" or how exile can be otherwise interpreted." He declares yet more, that he is weary of enduring the threats of a rigorous master, and something else, which a temper like his cannot undergo. What was more than threat was probably punishment.12 This poem, which mentions his exile, proves likewise that it was not perpetual; for it concludes with a resolution of returning some time to Cambridge. And it may be conjectured, from the willingness with which he has perpetuated the memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no shame. He took both the usual degrees; that of Bachelor in 1628, and that of Master in 1632;13 but he left the university with no kindness for its institution, alienated either by the injudicious severity of his governors or his own captious perverseness. The cause cannot now be known, but the effect appears in his writings. His scheme of education, inscribed to Hartlib, supersedes all academical instruction, being intended to comprise the whole time which men usually spend in literature, from their entrance upon grammar, till they proceed, as it is called, masters of arts. And in his Discourse on the likeliest Way to remove Hirelings out of the Church, he ingenuously proposes that the "The words vetiti laris, and afterwards exilium, will not suffer us to determine otherwise than that Milton was sentenced to undergo a temporary removal or rustication from Cambridge. I will not suppose for any immoral irregularity. Dr. Bainbridge, the master, is reported to have been a very active disciplinarian; and this lover of liberty, we may presume, was as little disposed to submission and conformity in a college as in a state.-T. WARTON: Milton's Minor Poems, p. 421. 12 That Milton was whipped at college rests on the authority of Aubrey, who states the circumstance in connection with other particulars of the poet's early life as "from his brother Mr. Christopher Milton." Aubrey's accuracy is curiously confirmed by the industry and knowledge of T. Warton (see Aubrey's 'Lives,' iii. 444, and 'Milton's Minor Poems,' by Warton, p. 423). Aubrey was a curious inquirer, with ample means of information, and no motive whatever for telling a lie. He went to the poet's widow and to Marvell for information. Marvell promised Aubrey to write the Life of Milton. This (unfulfilled) promise I derive from an unprinted letter in the Ashmolean Mus., addressed by Aubrey to Wood. 13 In which year appeared his first printed performance, his epitaph on Shakespeare prefixed to the folio of 1632. profits of the lands forfeited by the act for superstitious uses should be applied to such academies all over the land where languages and arts may be taught together: so that youth may be at once brought up to a competency of learning and an honest trade, by which means such of them as had the gift, being enabled to support themselves without tithes by the latter, may, by the help of the former, become worthy preachers. One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted, is, that men designed for orders in the Church were permitted to act plays, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of Trincalos,14 buffoons and bawds, prostituting the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes of courtiers and court-ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles. This is sufficiently peevish in a man who, when he mentions his exile from the college, relates with great luxuriance the compensation which the pleasures of the theatre afford him. Plays were therefore only criminal when they were acted by academics. He went to the university with a design of entering into the Church, but in time altered his mind; for he declared that, whoever became a clergyman must "subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that could not retch, he must straight perjure himself. He thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing." These expressions are, I find, applied to the subscription of the Articles; but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical obedience. I know not any of the Articles which seem to thwart his opinions: but the thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil, raised his indignation. His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his friends who had reproved his suspended and 14 The last dramatic performance at either university was, it is said, The Grateful Fair, written by Christopher Smart, and represented at Pembroke College, Cambridge, about 1747. It has not, I believe, been printed. |