To this translation there is prefixed in the original editions the words: "This and the following Psalm were done by the Author at fifteen years old." They are the earliest of Milton's compositions of which we have record, and the only ones dating from the period of his school-life at St. Paul's. Whether they were self-elected tasks or appointed exercises is unknown. The diction employed in them shows strongly the influence of the Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas, made popular in England early in the seventeenth century through Sylvester's translation.

The subject of this poem, the first of the English poems dating from Cambridge, was a niece of Milton's, the child of his sister Anne and of Edward Phillips. The couple had been married but a short time, and were living in the Strand, near Charing Cross. Their baby's death occurred during the severe winter of 1625-26, which followed upon the devastating plague of the autumn, alluded to in the next to the last stanza. The reader will remember that the Edward and John Phillips who figure so prominently in Milton's biography were brothers of this child.

Whether above that high first-moving

VII

Wert thou some Star, which from the ruined roof

Of shaked Olympus by mischance didst fall;

Which careful Jove in nature's true behoof
Took up, and in fit place did reinstall?
Or did of late Earth's sons besiege the wall
Of sheeny Heaven, and thou some God-
dess fled

Amongst us here below to hide thy nectared head?

VIII

Or wert thou that just Maid who once be

13

And wisely learn to curb thy sorrows wild; Think what a present thou to God hast sent,

And render him with patience what he lent:

This if thou do, he will an offspring give That till the world's last end shall make thy name to live.

AT A VACATION EXERCISE IN THE COLLEGE, PART LATIN, PART ENGLISH

(1628)

Light is thrown upon this curious fragment by one of the seven Prolusiones Oratoria, or academic speeches, which Milton carefully preserved from his undergraduate days, and published, along with his Latin Familiar Epistles, in the last year of his life. The prolusis, of which these verses are a fragment, was prepared for one of those odd festivals, survivals of mediæval university life, in which the students of Cambridge managed to unite a half-serious, half-burlesque display of learning with fun of a more boisterous kind. This particular festival fell at the end of the Easter term and beginning of the Long Vacation, in July, 1628. Milton, then nearing the end of his undergraduate life, was chosen by the students of Christ's to be the "Father" or leader of the ceremonies, with a number of assistants or "sons under him to help carry out the exercise which he should plan. The first part of this exercise consisted of a discourse, conceived in a heavy vein of serio-comedy, on the theme : "That occasional indulgence in sportive exercises is not inconsistent with philosophic studies." The second part consisted of a burlesque address, delivered in the person of the "Father to his sons. Both these were in Latin. Contrary to the usual custom, Milton, at this point in the exercises, abandoned Latin for the vulgar tongue. He excused himself for the unusual liberty by pronouncing the invocation to his native language, which makes up the first part of the preserved fragment. Realizing, however, that this is a digression, he soon

checks himself and turns to the business in hand; i. e., the introduction to the audience of his sons, each of whom was to deliver & speech dramatically appropriate to the character assigned him. The characters impersonated exemplify the quaint dress of pedantry in which college fun was wont in Milton's day to be clothed. Milton himself, as Father, represented Ens, or the Absolute Being, of

Aristotelian philosophy; his sons, ten in number, represented Substance and its nine conditions or accidents, Quantity, Quality, Time, Place, etc. These ten, taken together, make up the Aristotelian categories, or, as they are here called, Predicaments, of being. The second part of the verse-fragments consists of a figurative account of Substance, both in himself and as he is affected by the nine accidents. Although thus elaborately introduced, Substance does not speak, perhaps because it is only when affected by the accidents that substance becomes perceptible. The prose speeches of Quantity, Quality, and the other accidents, have not been preserved. It only remains to be noted that the part of Relation was taken by one of the two sons, George and Nizell, of Sir John Rivers, then freshmen at Christ's. The last ten lines of the fragment constitutes a punning allusion to the name.

The Latin speeches ended, the English thus began:

HAIL, Native Language, that by sinews weak,

Didst move my first-endeavouring tongue to speak,

And madest imperfect words, with childish trips,

Half unpronounced, slide through my infant lips,

Driving dumb Silence from the portal door, Where he had mutely sat two years before: Here I salute thee, and thy pardon ask, That now I use thee in my latter task: Small loss it is that thence can come unto thee,

I know my tongue but little grace can do thee.

pass

When beldam Nature in her cradle was; And last of Kings and Queens and Heroes old,

Such as the wise Demodocus once told
In solemn songs at king Alcinoüs' feast,
While sad Ulysses' soul and all the rest 50
Are held, with his melodious harmony,
In willing chains and sweet captivity.
But fie, my wandering Muse, how thou dost
stray!

Expectance calls thee now another way. Thou know'st it must be now thy only bent

To keep in compass of thy Predicament. Then quick about thy purposed business