MILT O N. THE HE Life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with such minute enquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented myself with the addition of a few notes to Mr. I enton's elegant Abridgement, but that a new narrative was thought necessary to the uniformity of this edition. JOHN MILTON was by hirth 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 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 rich, and retired to a 1 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 o fthe 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 hin, 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 Crownoffice to be secondary: by him 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 Spicad-Eagle in Breadstreet, Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning. His father appears to have been solicitous about his education; for he was instructed at first by very private private tuition under the care of Thomas Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburgh, 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. Gill; and removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ's College in Cambridge, where he entered a sizar*, Feb. 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 may have succeeded in prose, no sooner attempt verses than they provoke derision. If we produced any thing worthy of notice before the elegies of Milton, it was perhaps Alabaster's Roxana +. Of these exercises which the rules of the University required, some were pub lished by him in his maturer years. They had been undoubtedly applauded; for they were such as few can perform: 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 Diodati, that he had incurred Rustication; a temporary dismission into the country, with perhaps the loss of a term. In this assertion Dr. Johnson was mistaken. Milton was admitted a pensioner, and not a sizar, as will appear by the following extract from the College Register. "Johannes Milton "Londinensis, filius Johannis, institutus fuit in literarum Elementis sub Mag'ro Gill "Gymnasii Paulini præfecto, admissus est Pensionarius Minor Feb. 12°, 1624, sub M'ro Chappell, solvitq. pro Ingr. £.0 10. od. E. Published 1632. E. Me Me tenet urbs refuâ quam Thamesis alluit undâ, 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 to 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 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 Batchelor 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, 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 antick and dishonest gestures of Trincalos», buffans and bauds, prostituting the shame of that ministry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes of courtiers and court ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles. By the mention of this name he evidently refers to Albumazar, acted at Cambridge in 1514. Ignoramus and other plays were performed at the same time. The practice was then very frequent. The last dramatick performance at either university was The Grateful Fair, written by Christopher Smart, and represented at Pembroke College, Cambridge, about 1747. E. VOL. I. H This This is suficiently 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 hin. Plays were therefore, only criminal when they were acted by academicks. 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 mu.t "subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which unless he took with a con"science that could not retch, he must straight perjure Limself. 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; bot 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 give 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 said 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 163;; 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: It has nevertheless its foundation in reality. The earl of Bridgewater being president of Wales in the year 1634, had his residence at Ludlow-castle in Shropshire, at which time lord Brackly and Mr. Egerton his sons, and lady Ahce Egerton his daughter, passing through a place called 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 Flery Lawes, who taught music in the family, wrote this ma-que. Lawes set it to music, and it was acted on Michaelmas night; the two brothers, the young lady, and Lawes himself, bearing each a part in the representation. The lady Alice Egerton became afterwards the wife of the earl of Carbury, who at his sent called Golden-grove, in Ciermarthenshire, harboured Dr. Jeremy Taylor in the time of the Usurpation. Among the doctor's sermons is one on her death, in which her character is finely pourtrayed. Her sister, lady Mary, was given in marriage to lord Herbert of Cherbury. Notwithstanding 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 ElizaLeth, 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 veises, according to the rules of Tufcan poetry, and his malignity to the Church, by' fome lines which are interpreted as threatening its extermination. He is supposed about this time to have written his Arcades; for while he lived at Horton he used sometimes to steal from his studies a few cavs, 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 some purpose of taking dan.bers 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 Suits; "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 vifiting 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 thouglvie seems to have intended a very quick perambulation of the country, staid two months at Florence; where he found his way into the academics, and produced his compositions with such applause as appear to have exalted him in his own opinion, and confirmed him in the hope, that, "by labour "and intense study, which," fays he, "I take to be my portion in this life, joined with a strong propensity of nature," he might "leave something so "written to aftertimes, as they should not willingly let it die.” It appears, in all his writings, that he had the usual concomitant of great abi lities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not without some contempt of others; for scarcely any man ever wrote so mech, 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 preservation from oblivion. At Florence he could not indeed complain that his merit wanted diftinction. Cario Dati presented him with an encomiastic inscription, in the tumid lapidary style; and Francini wrote Lim an ode, of which the first stanza is only empry Notwithstanding Dr. Jolmson's assertion, that the fiction is derived from Homer's Circe, it y be conjectured that it was rather taken from the Comus of Erycius Pateanus, in which, underthe fiction of a dream, the characters of Comus and his attendants are deliacated, and the delights or sensualists exprsed and reprobated. This little tract was published at Louvain in 1611, and alterwards at Oxford in 1634, the very year in which Milton's Comus was written. II. Milton evidently was indebted to the Olives Tale of George Peele for the plan of Comus. E. |
