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PERHAPS no man ever inhabited more houses than our great epic poet, yet scarcely one of these now remains. The greater part of his residences were in London; and in the hundred and seventy-two years since his decease, the whole of this great metropolis has been, as it were, in a ferment of growth and extension. The great fire of London swept away an immense mass of the old houses; and if we look around us, we see how very few of the ancient framed tenements which then prevailed now remain. Again, Milton generally chose his houses, even in the city, with a view to quiet and retirement. They were, say his biographers, generally garden houses, where he enjoyed the advantages of a certain remoteness from noise, and of some openness of space. These spaces the progress of population has filled with dense buildings, in the course of the erection of which, the old solitary houses have been pulled down.

Milton, as is well known, was born in Bread-street, Cheapside, at the sign of the Spread Eagle. The spread eagle was the armorial bearing of the family. His father was an eminent scrivener, living and practising there at the time of Milton's birth, which took place on the 9th December, 1608. This house was destroyed in the fire of London. During his boyhood, which was passed here, Milton was educated at home, in the first instance, by a private tutor, Thomas Young. This man Aubrey calls "a puritan in Essex, who cutt his

hair short." Young had suffered persecution for his religious faith, and it is supposed that from him Milton imbibed a strong feeling for liberty, and a great predilection for the doctrines which he held. He was much attached to him, as he testified by his fourth elegy, and two Latin epistles. It has been remarked, that however much Milton might be swayed by the principles of his tutor, he never was by his cut of hair; for, through all the reign of the Roundheads, he preserved his flowing locks. After the private tutor was dismissed, he was sent to St. Paul's School. This appears to have been in his fifteenth year. Here, too, he was a favourite scholar. The then master was Alexander Gill, and his son was the usher, and succeeded his father in the school. With him Milton was on terms of great friendship, and has left a memorial of his regard in three of his Latin epistles.

From the relation of his original biographer, Aubrey, we may see the boy Milton going to and fro between Bread-street and his school, full of zealous thirst of knowledge, and the most extraordinary industry. He studied with excessive avidity, regardless of his health, continuing his reading till midnight, so that the source of his future blindness is obvious in his early passion for letters. Aubrey says, that "when Milton went to school, and when he was very younge, he studied very hard, and sate up very late, commonly till twelve or one o'clock; and his father ordered the maid to sett up for him." His early reading was in poetical books. He confirms this account of himself in his Defensio Secunda pro Populo, &c. He says that his father destined him to liberal studies, which he so eagerly seized upon, that from his twelfth year he seldom ever retired from his books to bed before midnight; and that his eyes, originally weak, thus received the first causes of their future mischief. That perceiving the danger of this, it could not arrest his ardour of study, though his nocturnal vigils, followed by his daily exercises under his masters, brought on failing vision and pains in the head. Humphrey Lownes, a printer, living in Bread-street, supplied him, amongst other books, with Spenser and Sylvester's Du Bartas. Spenser was devoured with the intensest enthusiasm, and he has elsewhere called him his master.

Todd, the generally judicious biographer of Milton, praises his father for his discernment in the education of his son. The father, who was a very superior man, and especially fond of and skilled in music, certainly appears to have at once seen in his son the evidences of genius, and to have given to it every opportunity of development; but it is to be regretted that his fatherly encouragement was not attended with more prudence, and that he had not, instead of encouraging the habit of nocturnal study, the most pernicious that a student can fall into,-restrained it. Had he done this, the poet might have retained his sight, and who shall say with what further advantage to the world!

At seventeen, Milton entered as a pensioner at Christ College, Cambridge. He was found to be a distinguished classical scholar, and conversant in several languages. His academical exercises

attracted great attention, as well as his verses, both in English and Latin. His Latin elegies, in his eighteenth year, have always been regarded with wonder; and, indeed, in his Latinity, both in verse and prose, perhaps no modern writer has surpassed him. Hampton, the translator of Polybius, pronounced him the first Englishman who, since the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classic elegance. His extraordinary merit and acquisitions found, from the authorities of his College, general applause, spite of a disposition to severity, induced by his sturdy opposition to them in opinion, on a plan of academical studies then under discussion.

Milton here, it appears, on the testimony of Aubrey, suffered an indignity from his tutor, which it was not in his high and independent nature to endure with impunity. He refers to the fact in his first elegy. He mentions threats and other things, which his disposition could not tolerate; that he was absent in a state of rustication, and felt no desire to revisit the reedy banks of the Cam. Aubrey says, from the information of our author's brother Christopher, that Milton's first tutor at Cambridge was Mr. Chappell, from whom receiving some unkindness, (he whipped him,) he was afterwards, though it seemed against the rules of the College, transferred to the tuition of one Mr. Tovell. This information stands in the MS. Mus. Ashmol. Oxon. No. x. p. iii. Warton, remarking on the fact, adds, that Milton "hated the place. He was not only offended at the College discipline, but had even conceived a dislike to the face of the country-the fields about Cambridge. He peevishly complains that the fields have no soft shades to attract the Muses, and there is something pointed in his exclamation, that Cambridge was a place quite incompatible with the votaries of Phoebus."

It was not very likely that a youth of perhaps eighteen, who was writing the elegies and epistles in Latin which drew upon him so much notice, would submit quietly to so degrading a treatment. This treatment, it appears from Warton, was common enough, nevertheless, at both Cambridge and Oxford, amongst the tutors at that time. But Milton spurned it, as became his great spirit and noble nature, and was in consequence, probably, rusticated for a time. But this could not have been long, nor could it have been accordant to the wishes of the fellows of his College. The offence was against the tutor, not against the heads of the College, in the poet's mind. In his Apology for Smectymnus, he thanks an enemy for the opportunity of expressing his grateful sense of the kindness of the fellows, in these words: "I thank him; for it hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge publickly, with all grateful mind, that more than ordinary favour and respect which I found above any of my equals, at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the fellows of the College wherein I spent some years; who at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much better it would content them if I would stay; as by many letters full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I was assured of their good affection to me."

Leaving Cambridge, Milton went to reside some time at Horton,

near Colnbrook, in Buckinghamshire. His father had retired from his practice, on a competent fortune, to this village. This portion of his life was, probably, one of the most delightful periods of it. He had acquired great reputation for talent and learning at College; he had taken his degree of M.A.; and in this agreeable retirement hə not only indulged himself, as he tells us, in a deep and thorough reading of the Greek and Latin authors, but, probably then contemplating his visit to Italy, made himself master of its language and well acquainted with its literature. To such perfection did he carry this accomplishment, that in Italy he not only spoke the language with perfect fluency, but wrote in it so as to astonish the most learned natives. Five years he devoted to these classical and modern studies, but not to these alone. He was here actively at work in laying the foundation of that great poetical fame which he afterwards achieved. Born in the city, he now made himself thoroughly familiar with nature. In the woods and parks, and on the pleasant hills of this pleasant county, he enjoyed the purest delights of contemplation and of poetry. Here he is supposed to have imbued himself with the allegoric romance of his favourite Spenser, and also to have written his own delightful Arcades, Comus, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Lycidas. It is a fact which his biographers have not seemed to perceive, but which is really significant, that the very Italian titles, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, of themselves almost identify the productions of this period and place, where he was busy with the preparation for his visit to Italy. The county of Buckingham appeared always to be from this time a particular favourite with him; and no wonder, for it is full of poetical beauty, abounds with those solemn and woodland charms which are so welcome to a mind brooding over poetical subjects, and shunning all things and places that disturb. It abounds, being so near the metropolis, also, with historic associations of deep interest.

"This pleasant retreat," says Todd, "excited his most poetical feelings; and he has proved himself, in his pictures of rural life, to rival the works of nature which he contemplated with delight. In the neighbourhood of Horton, the Countess Dowager of Derby resided; and the Arcades was performed by her grandchildren at this seat, called Harefield-place. It seems to me that Milton intended a compliment to his fair neighbour,-for fair she was,-in his L'Allegro :

'Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where, perhaps, some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.'

The woody scenery of Harefield, and the personal accomplishments of the Countess, are not unfavourable to this supposition; which, if admitted, tends to confirm the opinion that L'Allegro and Il Penseroso were composed at Horton. The Masque of Comus, and Lycidas, were certainly produced under the roof of his father."

The whole of these poems breathe the spirit of youth, and of scenes like those in which he now daily rambled. Whether L'Allegro and

Il Penseroso were written, as Sir William Jones contends, at Forest-
hill, in Oxfordshire, or here, need not be much contested. If they
were written there, it must have been many years afterwards, after
his return from abroad, and after his first marriage; for it was at
Forest-hill that he found his wife. But for the reason assigned, and
for that of their general spirit, I incline to the belief that they were
written at Horton, as there is plenty of evidence that Comus and the
Arcades were. These latter poems overflow with the imagery and
the feeling of the old wooded scenery of Buckinghamshire.
"Comus. I know each lane, and every alley green,
Dingle, or bushy dell of this wild wood,

And every bosky bourne from side to side,
My daily walks and ancient neighbourhood."

How full of the old pastoral country are these lines!—

"Sec. Bro.

Might we but hear

The folded flocks penned in their wattled cotes,
Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops,
Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock
Count the night watches to his feathery dames,
'Twould be some solace yet, some little cheering,

In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs."

There is no other poet who has been able to transfuse the very spirit of nature into words, as it is done in the following passages, except Shakspeare, on whose soul images of rural beauty and repose fell with equal felicity of effect:

"This evening late, by then the chewing flocks
Had ta'en their supper on the savoury herb

Of knot-grass dew besprent, and were in fold,

I sate me down to watch upon a bank

With ivy canopied, and interwove
With flaunting honeysuckle, and began,
Wrapt in a pleasing fit of melancholy,
To meditate my rural minstrelsy,

Till Fancy had her fill; but ere a close,

The wonted roar was up amidst the woods," &c.

How exquisite is every image of this passage:

"Return, Sicilian Muse,

And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells, and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enamelled eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid Amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,

To strow the laureat hearse where Lycid lies."

A power of poetic landscape-painting like this, is only the result genius deeply instructed in the school of nature. But the time we now come for the survey of other and more striking scenes tha

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