learning, my father provided that I should be daily instructed in some school abroad, or by domestic tutors at home."

Milton repaid the kind assiduities of his father, not only by his attention and improvement, but in a Latin poem of considerable merit which is honourable to both, as expressive of the tenderness of the one and the dutiful feelings of the other.

One of the private tutors of Milton was Thomas Young, a puritan minister of great zeal in behalf of nonconformity, as appears from his making one of the five presbyterians who attacked Bishop Hall's Humble Remonstrance, under the barbarous title of Smectymnuus.* From this man it is very likely Milton imbibed that hatred to the hierarchy which he retained to the last moment of his life.

As Milton was intended for the church, it is strange that his father should place him under the tuition of a divine who was at that time an avowed puritan, and afterwards was obliged to retire on that account to Hamburgh, where he officiated to the factory of British merchants, who were generally of the same persuasion.

Before Milton's remove to the University, he spent some time at St. Paul's school, the master of which was Alexander Gill, between whose son

* See page 169.

and

out of his miseries; no, no, let him live, for if he is old, poor, and blind, he has punishment enough in all conscience!"

Yet it is said that Milton was not without apprehensions of vengeance, and he was in fearful terror of being assassinated; though he had escaped the talons of the law, he knew he had made himself enemies in abundance. He was so dejected he would lie awake whole nights.*

Why he should be afraid of assassination it is difficult to account, though one of his admirers. gravely adduces the cases of Dorislaus, and Ascham, to justify Milton's fears. But these men were killed in the height of the rebellion, and when the rage of both parties was wound up to a degree of deadly hatred; besides, these two men were agents for the prevailing faction at home, and the exiled cavaliers, therefore, at the Hague and Madrid, thought themselves justified in getting rid of their enemies wherever they could find them. But now the laws of government had recovered their force, and tranquillity followed. Since the restoration, no instance of revenge like that which Milton feared had happened, even upon men who had been more deeply engaged in the rebellion than he had, so that his apprehensions certainly did "indicate a weak mind.”

The last residence of Milton was in Artillery

Richardson's Life of Milton.
Q

Walk,

Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiise penates

Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi:

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

Here he pours contempt enough upon the "naked Cam," and his "lately forbidden college;" but what follows sufficiently marks an irritated mind, ull of resentment at having been ill-treated. He s impatient of the "threats of a hard master, and other things, not to be endured by a temper like his ;" and he "exults at being an exile in his father's house."

Now though these lines do not prove that he was absolutely expelled, or as one of his antagonists coarsely enough expresses it, "vomited out of the university," they plainly indicate that he had undergone some academical censure and was rusticated from college.

It has been even asserted that Milton underwent the discipline still inflicted on school boys, that of being publicly whipped in the college.

The latter biographers and apologists of Milton have exerted their zeal to disprove this charge, which rests, to be sure, on the single authority of Aubrey, aud the keen allusions to college discipline in the above Latin lines. But against both, a quotation has been produced from one of Milton's controversial pieces. In his "Apology for Smectymnuus," in reply to an anonymous writer, (supposed to have been a son of Bishop Hall), Milton says:

"I must

"I must be thought, if this libeller can find be lief, after an inordinate and riotous youth spent at the University, to have been at length vomited out there. For which commodious lie, that he may be encouraged in the trade another time; I thank him; for it hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge publicly, with all grateful mind, that more than ordinary favour and respect, which I found above many of my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the fellows of that 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 that 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 singular good affection towards me. Which, being likewise propense to all such as were for their studious and civil life, worthy of esteem, I could not wrong their judgments and upright intentions so much as to think I had that regard for them for other cause than that I might be still encouraged to proceed in the honest and laudable cause, of which they apprehended I had given good proof. And to these ingenious and friendly men, who were ever the countenancers of virtuous and hopeful wits, I wish the best and happiest things that friends in absence wish one another."

If this passage be carefully and coolly examined, there will be found little in it to confute what Au

brey

brey has asserted. The flagellation of Milton is

not said to have been in consequence of any cri

minal act, and as this remnant of barbarous discipline lasted in our universities till after his time, it could only confer a momentary disgrace. Milton, in his vindication from the false accusation of having been vomited out of the university, confines himself to the praise "of the fellows of his college; but he makes not the slightest mention of the master, Dr. Bainbridge, who is recorded to have been a most rigid disciplinarian, and that on those very points which Milton particularly disliked. The latter had been puritanically educated, and was moreover of a temper impatient of controul: all his compositions prove, that he was vain and confident of himself, and of the opinions which he adopted. His early epistles and poems exhibit this feature of his character too strongly to be overlooked; and in the very poem already mentioned, he admits that his " disposition could not brook the threats of a rigorous master," by whom, as is most reasonable to be supposed, he meant Dr. Bainbridge, the head of his college.

It is remarkable, that in his Latin epistle he speaks of the pleasure he experienced from theatrical amusements.

Excipit hinc fessum sinuosi pompa theatri,

Et vocat ad plausus garrula scena suos.

Yet in his "Apology for Smectymnuus," he makes the universities the objects of his coarsest abuse,

for