JOHN MILTON.

THE life of Milton has been written by sa many hands that it were needless, in such a volume as the present, to increase the number. All that is necessary here is to collect from the best sources those particulars which will best illustrate the character of this celebrated writer.

The family of Milton was ancient and respectable, in Oxfordshire, but he was himself born in Bread Street, London, where his father carried on the profession of a scrivener. He was a man of learning, and had a considerable skill in the theory and practice of musick, as some of his compositions still extant fully evince.

From him Milton derived a taste for literature and science; and by his own account we learn that his desire of knowledge discovered itself almost in his infancy.

"My father destined me," says he, "when I was yet a child to the study of elegant literature, and so eagerly did I seize on it, that, from my twelfth year, I seldom quitted my studies for my bed till the middle of the night. This proved the first cause of the ruin of my eyes; in addition to the natural weakness of which organs, I was afflicted with frequent pains in my head, When these maladies could not restrain my rage for learning,

learning, my father provided that I should be daily instructed in some school abroad, or by domestic tutors at home."

Milton repaid the kind assiduities of his father, not only by his attention and improvement, but in a Latin poem of considerable merit which is honourable to both, as expressive of the tenderness of the one and the dutiful feelings of the other.

One of the private tutors of Milton was Thomas Young, a puritan minister of great zeal in behalf of nonconformity, as appears from his making one of the five presbyterians who attacked Bishop Hall's Humble Remonstrance, under the barbarous title of Smectymnuus.* From this man it is very likely Milton imbibed that hatred to the hierarchy which he retained to the last moment of his life.

As Milton was intended for the church, it is strange that his father should place him under the tuition of a divine who was at that time an avowed puritan, and afterwards was obliged to retire on that account to Hamburgh, where he officiated to the factory of British merchants, who were generally of the same persuasion.

Before Milton's remove to the University, he spent some time at St. Paul's school, the master of which was Alexander Gill, between whose son

* See page 169.

and

and our author there arose a particular friendship.

At the age of seventeen Milton entered of Christ's College, Cambridge, where his tutor was William Chappel, afterwards provost of Dublin University, and lastly Bishop of Cork and Ross.

Such was the beauty and delicacy of Milton's person that he was commonly called the "Lady of Christ's College;"* but from one of his Latin elegies, addressed to a friend it is clear, if words have any meaning at all, that his residence there was by no means easy. Indeed, from them, some have asserted, and others inferred, that he was actually expelled from the University. This, however, was contradicted by himself, and is not supported by any proof; on the contrary, he kept his terms, and completed both his degrees in arts. Still that he underwent some mortifying punishment is apparent from the tone of resentment in which he writes. His words are these:

Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum
Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor :

Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles:
Quam malè Phœbicolis convenit ille locus!
Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri
Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.

* So great was the vanity of Milton, that he wrote and published an encomium on his own beautiful face. In some Greek lines on an engraved portrait of himself, he abuses the artist as a dauber and a bungler, for not giving a handsome representation of his "fair and open countenance."

Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiise penates

Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi:

Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemve recuso
Lætus et exihi conditione fruor.

Here he pours contempt enough upon the "naked Cam," and his "lately forbidden college;" but what follows sufficiently marks an irritated mind, ull of resentment at having been ill-treated. He s impatient of the "threats of a hard master, and other things, not to be endured by a temper like his ;" and he "exults at being an exile in his father's house."

Now though these lines do not prove that he was absolutely expelled, or as one of his antagonists coarsely enough expresses it, "vomited out of the university," they plainly indicate that he had undergone some academical censure and was rusticated from college.

It has been even asserted that Milton underwent the discipline still inflicted on school boys, that of being publicly whipped in the college.

The latter biographers and apologists of Milton have exerted their zeal to disprove this charge, which rests, to be sure, on the single authority of Aubrey, aud the keen allusions to college discipline in the above Latin lines. But against both, a quotation has been produced from one of Milton's controversial pieces. In his "Apology for Smectymnuus," in reply to an anonymous writer, (supposed to have been a son of Bishop Hall), Milton says:

"I must