The following pages are compiled from various sources, with the desire of presenting in small compass a faithful memoir of one who was not only a great poet, but a great and a good man. THE LIFE OF MILTON. JOHN MILTON speaks of himself as having been born of gentle blood (natus genere honesto), and his family appears for several generations to have occupied a respectable station. During the Wars of the Roses, one of his ancestors sided with the House of Lancaster, and sharing in their misfortunes, lost his patrimony by sequestration. In the middle of the sixteenth century, John Milton, the grandfather of the poet, was under-ranger or keeper of the king's forest of Shotover, near Oxford. He was a Papist, and so bigoted to the old ways, that he disinherited his son John, a student in the College of Christ Church, Oxford, for embracing the doctrines of the Reformation. The son, being thus left to his own resources, entered the legal profession, and establishing himself in Bread-street, London, near St. Paul's, commenced the business of a scrivener, which nearly resembled that of the modern attorney. According to the custom of the times, he set up a sign over his office, adopting for that purpose a spread eagle, which was the armorial bearing of his family. He was successful in his calling, and before he had passed the middle of life, was able to retire into the country with a competent fortune. He had a genius for music, and became one of the most celebrated composers of the time. His wife's maiden name was either Caston or Bradshaw, it is not positively known which; but it appears certain that through her our poet was related to the regicide Bradshaw. She is mentioned by her son as an eminent example of almsgiving, and other virtues. The fruits of the marriage were five children, three of whom, Anne, JOHN, and Christopher, grew up to years of maturity. John was born in Bread-street, on the 9th Dec. 1608. At an early age he was placed under a tutor, one Thomas Young, a clergyman, described by Milton's friend and biographer, Aubrey, as a "Puritan who cut his hair short." From him it has been supposed that the poet imbibed the doctrines of the Puritans. However that may be, he neither then, nor at any time of his life, adopted the outward symbol of the sect. He is always represented as having worn the long "clustering locks," which in his Comus he has attributed to the god Bacchus, and in Paradise Lost, to Adam. When he was ten years old, his father had his portrait taken by the celebrated Dutch artist, Cornelius Jansen, who was then newly come to England. This portrait, for which the artist received five broad pieces (or crowns), was sold, on the death of Milton's widow, to Mr. Thomas Stanhope, for twenty guineas; and on his death, in 1760, was bought by Mr. Thomas Hollis, for thirty guineas. He had it engraved by Cypriani, in whose memoirs a print of it is published. It is now in the possession of Mr. Disney, of the Hyde, near Ingatestone, in Essex, to whom it descended from Mr. Thomas Hollis. A good print of it is given in the first volume of Mr. Masson's "Life of Milton" (1859). But Milton did not receive his education entirely from a private tutor; he was sent (at what age is uncertain) to St. Paul's School, which had the double recommendation of being near his father's house, and of having Alexander Gill, a man of learning, for its head master. The future poet had in his boyhood an uncommon passion for books; for he tells us himself that, from the time he was ten years old, he seldom went to bed before midnight; and he considers that his eyes, which were naturally weak, received an irreparable injury from this his excessive devotion to his studies. We learn from another source, that while he kept these late hours, his father took the precaution of making the maid-servant sit up for him. We cannot but think it would have been a still wiser exercise of parental care, had he insisted upon the candle being put out at nine or ten o'clock. It is a wonder that, with such application, at such a tender age, the faculties of the mind were not injured, as well as the power of vision. On the 12th Feb. 1624-5, he was entered at Christ's College, Cambridge, being then sixteen years old. At the University, as in his earlier years, he gave himself chiefly to the study of poetry, and attracted notice by his Latin poems, some of which he afterwards published. He disliked extremely the logical disputations, derived from the middle ages, which at that time continued to form the principal element in the academical system of education; and it may have been by his unwillingness to conform to this system that he incurred the punishment of rustication, or temporary suspension from residence at the University. The story of his having been whipped by his college tutor, Mr. Chappell, though related by a good authority, his friend Aubrey, has been discredited by those who are jealous for the honour of the poet. Corporal punishment was, however, not uncommonly resorted to at that time in the universities, and might be considered no disgrace (if the offence for which it was inflicted was not disgraceful), when the youth who received it was not more than sixteen or seventeen years of age. At any rate, it is clear that he had little enjoyment in his residence at Cambridge. He disliked the place itself, as well as the discipline to which he was subjected. In one of his Latin elegies, written at the time, he complains of the wide open fields, |