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 3.

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 Diodati, that he had incurred Rustication, a temporary dismission into the country, with perhaps the loss of a term.

Me tenet urbs reflua quam Thamesis alluit unda,
Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet.

Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum,
Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor.-
Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri,
Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.
Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiise penates,
Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi.

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

I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence can give 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. This poem, which mentions his exile, proves likewise that it was not

3 The punishment of the rod was forbidden by the statutes of the university when the delinquent student had attained the age of puberty; and this circumstance, as Milton was in his seventeenth year when he entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, fully refutes that idle story, which here excites so much of Dr. Johnson's delicate sensibility.

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; 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 ingeniously proposes, that the 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 have 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 4, buffoons, and bawds; prostituting the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes of

This practice was then very frequent. The last dramatic performance at either university was The Grateful Fair, written by Christopher Smart, and represented at Pembroke College, Cambridge, about 1747.

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 dilatory life, which he seems to have imputed to an insatiable curiosity, and fantastic luxury of various knowledge, To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, in which he endeavours 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 gives advantage to be more fit.

When he left the university he returned to his father, then residing at Horton in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years, in which time he is

Isaid to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what limitations this universality is to be understood, who shall inform us?

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 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,

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. King 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.

He is supposed about this time to have written

5 It has nevertheless its foundation in reality. The Earl of Bridgewater, in 1634, had his residence at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire; at which time Lord Brackly and Mr. Egerton, his sons, and Lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, passing through the Hay-wood forest, or Haywood in Herefordshire, were benighted, and the lady for a short time lost: this accident being related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the request of his friend Henry Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote this masque. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night; the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes, bearing each a part in the repre

sentation.

his 'Arcades;' 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 dramatic entertainment.

He began now to grow weary of the country, and had some purpose of taking chambers in the Inns of Court, when the death of his mother 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, by the favour of Lord Scudamore, he had the opportunity of visiting Grotius, then residing at the French court as ambassador from Christina of Sweden. From Paris he hasted into Italy, 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 way into the academies, and 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 strong propensity of nature,' he might '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 for others; for scarcely any man ever wrote so much, and praised so few. 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.