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 [would] retch, he must [either] straight perjure himself [or split his faith]. He [I] thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the [sacred] office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing"."

These expressions are I find applied to the subscription of 18 the Articles 3, 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 19 yet advanced to a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his friends who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which he seems to have imputed to an insatiable curiosity and fantastick luxury of various knowledge 5. To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, in which he endeavors to persuade him that the delay proceeds not from the delights of desultory study, but from the desire of obtaining more fitness for his task; and that he goes on 'not taking thought of being late, so it give advantage to be more fit ".'

When he left the university he returned to his father, then 20 residing at Horton in Buckinghamshire', with whom he lived five years; in which time he is said to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what limitations this universality is to be understood who shall inform us?

21

22

It might be supposed that he who read so much should have done nothing else; but Milton found time to write the Masque of Comus', which was presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the Lord President of Wales, in 1634, and had the honour of being acted by the Earl of Bridgewater's sons 3 and daughter. The fiction is derived from Homer's Circe* ; but we never can refuse to any modern the liberty of borrowing from Homer:

'-a quo ceu fonte perenni

Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis 5.'

King

His next production was Lycidas, an elegy written in 1637 on the death of Mr. King, the son of Sir John King, secretary for Ireland in the time of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. was much a favourite at Cambridge, and many of the wits joined to do honour to his memory'. Milton's acquaintance with the Italian writers may be discovered by a mixture of longer and shorter verses, according to the rules of Tuscan poetry, and his malignity to the Church by some lines which are interpreted as threatening its extermination".

8

Greek history, and the history of the Italians under the Lombards, Franks, and Germans down to Rudolf who granted the Italians their liberty. Works, vi. 116. In Defensio Secunda he writes:-' Paterno rure... evolvendis Graecis Latinisque scriptoribus summum per otium totus vacavi.' Ib. v. 230.

'Milton's Greek Poetry,' wrote C. Burney, is abominably bad.' Parr's Works, vii. 408. For Burney's Remarks on the Greek Verses of Milton see T.Warton's Milton's Poems, p. 591.

Published in 1637. Post, MILTON, 175, 194.

2 Post, BUTLER, 9; Masson's Milton, i. 587, 604.

3 The elder of the sons, nearly twenty years later, wrote on a copy of Milton's Defensio post, MILTON,67]: -Liber igni, Author furca, dignissimi (Book richly deserving the fire, Author the gallows).' Masson's Milton, iv. 531.

Odyssey, x. 133-end. 'It was rather taken from the Comus of Erycius Puteanus, published at Louvain in 1611.' HAWKINS, Johnson's Works, 1787, i. 90. For other modern pieces it resembled see T.

Warton's Milton's Poems, p. 135;
Masson's Milton, i. 622.

'Lawes' music to Comus was never printed; but by a MS. in his own hand it appears that the two songs Sweet Echo and Sabrina Fair, together with three other passages,

Back, shepherds, back"; "To the ocean now I fly"; "Now my task is smoothly done," were the whole of the original music, and that the rest was uttered as blank verse.' HAWKINS, Hist. of Music, iv. 52, where the music to Sweet Echo is given. See Milton's Sonnet to Lawes (No. xiii). For masques see Masson's Milton, i. 578; Pattison's Milton, p. 21. 5 OVID, Amores, iii. 9. 25.

6 Ante, MILTON, II n.

He is supposed about this time to have written his Arcades; 23 for while he lived at Horton he used sometimes to steal from his studies a few days, which he spent at Harefield, the house of the countess dowager of Derby', where the Arcades made part of a dramatick entertainment.

He began now to grow weary of the country, and had 24 some purpose of taking chambers in the Inns of Court 2, when the death of his mother3 set him at liberty to travel, for which he obtained his father's consent and Sir Henry Wotton's directions, with the celebrated precept of prudence, i pensieri stretti, ed il viso sciolto, 'thoughts close, and looks loose".

In 1638 he left England, and went first to Paris, where, 25 by the favour of Lord Scudamore, he had the opportunity of visiting Grotius 6, then residing at the French court as ambassador from Christina of Sweden. From Paris he hasted into Ítaly, of which he had with particular diligence studied the language and literature; and, though he seems to have intended a very quick perambulation of the country, staid two months at Florence; where he found his

1 Her cousin, Edmund Spenser, had dedicated to her his Tears of the Muses, and now Milton wrote Part of an Entertainment presented to the Countess by some Noble Persons of her Family. There is no evidence that he was her guest. Masson's Milton, i. 598 n.

On Sept. 23, 1637, he wrote to Diodati from London:-'Dicam iam nunc serio quid cogitem, in hospitium iuridicorum aliquod immigrare, sicubi amoena et umbrosa ambulatio est...; ubi nunc sum, ut nosti, obscure et angus e sum.' Works, vi. 116.

She died on April 3, 1637. Gent. Mag. 1787, p. 779; Masson's Milton, i. 632. Milton described her as ' mater probatissima, et eleemosynis per viciniam potissimum nota.'

Works, v. 230.

4

Johnson's authority is Milton's Defensio Secunda. Ib. v. 231. For Wotton's letter to Milton see ib. vii. 85, and for his Life see Walton's Lives. Horton is within an easy walk of Eton College, of which Wotton was Provost.

5 Wotton says that he got this advice from 'an old Roman courtier

way into the academies 7, and

in dangerous times, having been
steward to the Duca di Pagliano,
who, with all his family, were [sic]
strangled, save this only man, that
escaped by foresight of the tempest.'
Milton's Works, vii. 87.

It was a favourite maxim of Ches-
terfield's. 'The height of abilities,'
he wrote, 'is to have volto sciolto, and
pensieri stretti; that is, a frank, open,
and ingenuous exterior, with a pru-
dent and reserved interior: to be upon
your own guard, and yet, by a seeming
natural openness, to put people off
of theirs.' Letters to his Son, ii. 90.

Scudamore was the English ambassador at Paris. Works, v. 231. Johnson described Grotius as a scholar from whom perhaps every man of learning has learnt something.' Boswell's Johnson, iii. 125.

7 'The academies in Italy corresponded to what are now called clubs, orto our literary and debating societies.

.. A list has been drawn up of more than 500 known to have existed before 1729.' Masson's Milton, i. 764. In the minutes of one of these, the Apatisti, preserved in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence, it is

7

26

27

28

produced his compositions with such applause as appears to have exalted him in his own opinion, and confirmed him in the hope, that 'by labour and intense study, which,' says he, 'I take to be my portion in this life, joined with a [the] strong propensity of nature,' he might '[perhaps] leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let it die '.' It appears in all his writings that he had the usual concomitant of great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not without some contempt of others 2; for scarcely any man ever wrote so much and praised so few 3. Of his praise he was very frugal, as he set its value high; and considered his mention of a name as a security against the waste of time and a certain preservative from oblivion *.

At Florence he could not indeed complain that his merit wanted distinction. Carlo Dati presented him with an encomiastick inscription, in the tumid lapidary style 5; and Francini wrote him an ode, of which the first stanza is only empty noise, the rest are perhaps too diffuse on common topicks, but the last is natural and beautiful.

From Florence he went to Sienna, and from Sienna to Rome, where he was again received with kindness by the Learned and the Great. Holstenius, the keeper of the Vatican Library, who had resided three years at Oxford, introduced him to Cardinal Barberini; and he at a musical entertainment waited. recorded that on Sept. 16, 1638:-'Il Giovanni Miltone, Inglese, lesse una poesia latina di versi esametri molto erudita.' Masson's Milton, i. 782.

For the foundation of these academies by the pastoral versifiers see Baretti's Account of the Manners, &c., of Italy, 1768, i. 254.

I

Works, i. 119, 224; v. 231. Post, MILTON, 47.

2 Post, MILTON, 138, 231, 277. See also the last lines of his Ad Patrem. Sylvarum Liber, vi. 115. Johnson had this lofty and steady confidence in himself'; also Dryden (post, DRYDEN, 161), Addison (post, ADDISON, 109), and Pope (post, POPE, 20).

3 In his sonnets, and in his Defensio Secunda, he liberally praises all the leading men of the republican party.' Firth's Milton, p. 90.

'He can requite thee, for he knows
the charms

That call fame on such gentle acts as these,

And he can spread thy name o'er lands and seas,

Whatever clime the sun's bright

circle warms.' Sonnets, No. viii. 5 Lapidary, as an adjective, is not in Johnson's Dictionary. See post, MILTON,275, where Johnson writes:'Blank verse makes some approach to that which is called the lapidary style.' 'In lapidary inscriptions,' he said, ‘a man is not upon oath.' Boswell's Johnson, ii. 407. For Dati's inscription and Francini's ode see Milton's Poetical Works (ed. W. Aldis Wright), pp. 493-5, and for translations of them see Masson's Milton, i. 783-5. Dati was but eighteen. Ib. i. 775. Milton mentions them in his Epitaphium Damonis, 1. 136. Works, vi. 120; Masson's Milton, i. 798.

for him at the door, and led him by the hand into the assembly. Here Selvaggi praised him in a distich 2 and Salsilli in a tetrastick3; neither of them of much value. The Italians were gainers by this literary commerce: for the encomiums with which Milton repaid Salsilli, though not secure against a stern grammarian, turn the balance indisputably in Milton's favour 5.

Of these Italian testimonies, poor as they are, he was proud 29 enough to publish them before his poems; though he says, he cannot be suspected but to have known that they were said non tam de se, quam supra se1.

At Rome, as at Florence, he staid only two months; a time 30 indeed sufficient if he desired only to ramble with an explainer of its antiquities or to view palaces and count pictures, but certainly too short for the contemplation of learning, policy, or manners 8.

'Ipse me tanta in turba quaesitum ad fores expectans, et pene manu prehensum persane honorifice intro admisit.' Works, vi. 120.

Evelyn, in 1644, wrote that 'Francisco Barberini styled himself Protector of the English, to whom he was indeed very courteous.' Diary, i. 130. Barberini was nephew of the Pope, Urban VIII. Masson's Milton, i. 798. According to Ménage, Holstein, by publicly styling Barberini Eminentissimus, so provoked the jealousy of the Cardinals, that the Pope decreed that they should all be addressed as Eminence and Eminentissime. Menagiana, iii. 289.

2 Milton's Poetical Works (ed. W. Aldis Wright), p. 492. Dryden's inscription under Milton's picture is an amplification of this distich. Works, xi. 162. Cowper turned Dryden's lines into Latin verse. Southey's Cowper, x. 237. 'Who Selvaggi was I have not been able to ascertain.' Masson's Milton, i. 805.

3 Milton's Poetical Works (ed. W. A. Wright), p. 492. 'Giovanni Salzilli is a poet not mentioned in any of the histories of Italian literature.' Masson's Milton, i. 806.

4 Bishop Wordsworth, in an article On some Faults in Milton's Latin Poetry, after writing:-'I admire Milton's Latin verses upon the whole very much,' adds that Johnson's re

mark'must not be confined to this one production.' Classical Review, i. 48.

5 T. Warton (Milton's Poems, p. 534) says of this poem:-'I know not any finer modern Latin lyric poetry than from this verse [23] to the end. The close is perfectly antique.'

'The scazons to Salsilli are a just and equitable return for his quatrain; for they are full of false quantities, without an iota of poetry.' 'LANdor, Imag. Conver. iv. 297. For Cowper's translation of them see Southey's Cowper, x. 169.

Milton, in his Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, says that 'the learned men' of Italy 'did nothing but bemoan the servile condition into which learning amongst them was brought; ...that nothing had been written there now these many years but flattery and fustian.' Works, i. 313.

7 The preface to the Latin poems thus begins:-'Haec quae sequuntur de Authore testimonia, tametsi ipse intelligebat non tam de se quam supra se esse dicta,' &c. 'Though these following testimonies concerning the Author,' he says, 'were understood by himself to be pronounced not so much about him as over him, by way of subject or occasion.' Masson's Milton, iii. 454.

'Postquam illius urbis antiquitas