"I must be thought, if this libeller can find be lief, after an inordinate and riotous youth spent at the University, to have been at length vomited out there. For which commodious lie, that he may be encouraged in the trade another time, I thank him; for it hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge publicly, with all grateful mind, that more than ordinary favour and respect, which I found above many of my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the fellows of that college, wherein I spent some years, who, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much better it would content them that I would stay, as by many letters full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I was assured of their singular good affection towards me. Which, being likewise propense to all such as were for their studious and civil life, worthy of esteem, I could not wrong their judgments and upright intentions so much as to think I had that regard for them for other cause than that I might be still encouraged to proceed in the honest and laudable cause, of which they apprehended I had given good proof. And to these ingenious and friendly men, who were ever the countenancers of virtuous and hopeful wits, I wish the best and happiest things that friends in absence wish one another."

If this passage be carefully and coolly examined, there will be found little in it to confute what Au

brey

brey has asserted. The flagellation of Milton is not said to have been in consequence of any criminal act, and as this remnant of barbarous discipline lasted in our universities till after his time, it could only confer a momentary disgrace. Milton, in his vindication from the false accusation of having been vomited out of the university, confines himself to the praise "of the fellows of his college;" but he makes not the slightest mention of the master, Dr. Bainbridge, who is recorded to have been a most rigid disciplinarian, and that on those very points which Milton particularly disliked. The latter had been puritanically educated, and was moreover of a temper impatient of controul: all his compositions prove, that he was vain and confident of himself, and of the opinions which he adopted. His early epistles and poems exhibit this feature of his character too strongly to be overlooked; and in the very poem already mentioned, he admits that his "disposition could not brook the threats of a rigorous master," by whom, as is most reasonable to be supposed, he meant Dr. Bainbridge, the head of his college.

It is remarkable, that in his Latin epistle he speaks of the pleasure he experienced from theatrical amusements.

Excipit hinc fessum sinuosi pompa theatri,

Et vocat ad plausus garrula scena suos.

Yet in his "Apology for Smectymnuus," he makes the universities the objects of his coarsest abuse,

for

for permitting the students to act plays. Thus, as Dr. Johnson aptly remarks, plays were therefore only criminal when they were acted by academicks."

It was his father's intention, as we have already observed, that he should enter into the church, but the principles he had imbibed from Young, and the course of studies which he afterwards pursued, alienated his mind from that profession which he not only renounced, but treated with a virulence peculiar to himself, saying, 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. I thought it better therefore, (he adds,) to prefer a blameless silence before the office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and foreswearing."

This, if it means any thing, can have an allusion only to the oaths of civil and canonical obedience, required to be taken by all persons who enter on the ministry of the church;-so early then may we fix the antimonarchical and puritanical principles of Milton.

In 108, he set out on his travels, passing through France to Italy, where he was treated with marks of uncommon respect, which he repaid by attacking the established religion in his conversation, contrary to the wholesome advice he had received from Sir Henry Wotton,

to

to "keep his thoughts close, and his countenance loose."

This fervid zeal of Milton can admit of no excuse; for it was only calculated to irritate the inhabitants of the country where he resided, and to make his own religion more hated by them, as being unfavourable to good manners. Of his imprudence in this respect we have the following anecdote.

The famous Giovanni Baptista Manso, to whom he was recommended by a hermit that had travelled with him from Rome, having received him with great respect, and waited upon him several times at his own lodgings, told him at his departure, that he would have gladly done him more good offices, if he had been more reserved in matters of religion: and he dismissed him with the following distich, alluding to that indiscretion, and Pope Gregory's remark upon the beauty of the English youths:

Ut men's forma, decor, facies, mos, si pietas sic,
Non Anglus, verùm herclè Angelus ipse fores.

During his residence at Florence, Milton visited Galileo, the celebrated astronomer, who for asserting the motion of the earth and the antipodes, was persecuted by the inquisition, and obliged to recant his heretical opinions. One of Milton's biographers conjectures that, from this intercourse, he obtained more correct ideas re

specting

specting our planetary system; but if so he made a bad use of what he had learnt, in his Paradise Lost, where he perplexes us with the jargon of the Ptolemaic school, and makes, "Confusion worse confounded," by leaving the reader in doubt, whether to prefer the plain and exact sys tem of Copernicus, or a cumbrous old fabric, of which a scientific monarch once said, with more astronomical zeal than piety, that if the "Almighty had called him to his counsel about the creation of the world, he would have made it better."*

The news of an approaching revolution at home, induced our young traveller to hasten his return to England, where he arrived at the close of 1639. The aspect of affairs was perfectly agreeable to his mind, but the times were not yet sufficiently ripened for him to display his hatred against the ecclesiastical government, which had long rankled in his heart. He then set up a school in Aldersgate Street, where he formed a new plan of education, which, according to the account of his nephew, Philips, proved more advantageous to the improvement of the tutor than of the pupils, as it consisted in reading a great variety of authors, not usually to be found in schools.

In 1641, he began his attack upon the bishops,

Alphonsus of Arragon.

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