for permitting the students to act plays. Thus, as Dr. Johnson aptly remarks, "plays were therefore only criminal when they were acted by academicks." It was his father's intention, as we have already observed, that he should enter into the church, but the principles he had imbibed from Young, and the course of studies which he afterwards pursued, alienated his mind from that profession which he not only renounced, but treated with a virulence peculiar to himself, saying, that whoever became a clergyman must "subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that could not retch, he must straight perjure himself. I thought it better therefore, (he adds,) to prefer a blameless silence before the office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and foreswearing." This, if it means any thing, can have an allusion only to the oaths of civil and canonical obedience, required to be taken by all persons who enter on the ministry of the church;-so early then may we fix the antimonarchical and puritanical principles of Milton. In 1668, he set out on his travels, passing through France to Italy, where he was treated with marks of uncommon respect, which he repaid by attacking the established religion in his conversation, contrary to the wholesome advice he had received from Sir Henry Wotton, to to "keep his thoughts close, and his countenance loose." This fervid zeal of Milton can admit of no excuse; for it was only calculated to irritate the inhabitants of the country where he resided, and to make his own religion more hated by them, as being unfavourable to good manners. Of his imprudence in this respect we have the following anecdote. The famous Giovanni Baptista Manso, to whom he was recommended by a hermit that had travelled with him from Roine, having received him with great respect, and waited upon him several times at his own lodgings, told him at his departure, that he would have gladly done him more good offices, if he had been more reserved in matters of religion: and he dismissed him with the following distich, alluding to that indiscretion, and Pope Gregory's remark upon the beauty of the English youths : Ut men's forma, decor, facies, mos, si pietas sic, During his residence at Florence, Milton visited Galileo, the celebrated astronomer, who for asserting the motion of the earth and the antipodes, was persecuted by the inquisition, and obliged to recant his heretical opinions. One of Milton's biographers conjectures that, from this intercourse, he obtained more correct ideas re specting specting our planetary system; but if so he made a bad use of what he had learnt, in his Paradise Lost, where he perplexes us with the jargon of the Ptolemaic school, and makes, "Confusion worse confounded," by leaving the reader in doubt, whether to prefer the plain and exact system of Copernicus, or a cumbrous old fabric, of which a scientific monarch once said, with more astronomical zeal than piety, that if the "Almighty had called him to his counsel about the creation of the world, he would have made it better."* The news of an approaching revolution at home, induced our young traveller to hasten his return to England, where he arrived at the close of 1639. The aspect of affairs was perfectly agreeable to his mind, but the times were not yet sufficiently ripened for him to display his hatred. against the ecclesiastical government, which had long rankled in his heart. He then set up a school in Aldersgate Street, where he formed a new plan of education, which, according to the account of his nephew, Philips, proved more advantageous to the improvement of the tutor than of the pupils, as it consisted in reading a great variety of authors, not usually to be found in schools. In 1641, he began his attack upon the bishops, *Alphonsus of Arragon. who who were already exposed to the infuriate rage of a deluded rabble set on by fanatical lecturers. Milton had imbibed a deadly hatred against the prelates, and his malignity had much of that enthusiasm in it which was the prevalent fashion of those turbulent times. He represents himself as actually under the impulse of the Divine Spirit, and, says he, "When God commands to take the trumpet and blow a dolorous and jarring blast, it is not in man's will what he shall say, or what he shall conceal."* This is sufficiently strong, but though it might have well become such men as George Fox, James Naylor, Lodowick Muggleton, or such crack-brained illiterate zealots, it is not language that could have been expected from the author of Comus. There was little occasion for Milton's "trumpet to blow a dolorous blast and jarring sound,” when the whole nation was become mad through the preaching of the men of his party, and when the hierarchy was shaking to the foundations. But to plead the command of God for what he did, was little less than blasphemous. What manner of spirit Milton was of will appear from the following invective against the bishops, when they were enduring a severe persecution. * Reason of Church Government. "But A "But they," says he, "that by the impairing and diminution of the true faith, the distresses and servitude of their country, aspire to high dignity, rule and promotion here, after a shameful end in this life, (which God grant them!) shall be thrown down eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell; where, under the despiteful control, the trample and spurn of all the other damned, who, in the anguish of their torture, shall have no other ease than to exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over them, as their slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight for ever, the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and trodden down vassals of perdition."* So much for the Christian charity and meekness of this celebrated genius, who could, while venting such horrible curses and impious wishes, pretend that he acted by divine commandment! In 1643, he entered into the marriage state, with the daughter of Mr. Powel, of Forest Hill, in Ox`fordshire, who was a firm royalist. In little more than a month, however, the lady, under pretence of visiting her relations, withdrew from him, and on her refusal to return, Milton formed the resolution of repudiating her, and accordingly published several treatises in defence of that reso⚫lution. * Treatise on Reformation, in his prose works, Vol. I. page 274. "There |