MILTON.

1608–1674.

Born in London-Educated at St. Paul's and at Cambridge-Writes Comus' and Lycidas' Visits Italy-Sees Grotius and Galileo-Returns to London-His School —Marries-Pub

! lishes his Poems-Writes on Divorce-Sides with the Parliament against Charles I.-Made Secretary of the Latin Tongue to the Parliament and Cromwell—Prints a reply to Salmasius -Becomes Blind--Loses his Secretaryship-Is in Danger at the Restoration-Receives a Pardon-Publishes 'Paradise Lost' and ' Paradise Regained '-His Three Wives-His Children and Nephews-Dies in London, and is buried in St. Giles', Cripplegate-His Works and Character.

The Life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with such minute inquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented myself with the addition of a few notes to Mr. Fenton's elegant Abridgment, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the uniformity of this edition.

John Milton was by birth a gentleman, descended from the proprietors of Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate in the times of York and Lancaster. Which side he took I know not : his descendant inherited no veneration for the White Rose.

His grandfather, John (Richard ?], was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous papist, who disinherited his son because he had forsaken the religion of his ancestors.

His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse for his support to the profession of a scrivener. He was a man eminent for his skill in music (many of his compositions being still to be found”), and his reputation in his profession was such that he grew

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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.'

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 bim 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.*

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 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.

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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.® Haddon and 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.'

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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.

I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence can give to the term vešiti laris, “a habitation from which he is excluded ;” or how exile can be otherwise interpreted." He

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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 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 ;18 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 parts. And in his Discourse on the likeliest Way to remore Hirelings out of the Church, he ingenuously 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 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," buffoons, and bawds, prosti