the shame of that miniftry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes of courtiers and court-ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles.

This is fufficiently peevish in a man, who, when he mentions his exile from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compenfation which the pleafures of the theatre afford him. 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 muft" fubfcribe flave, and "take an oath withal, which, unless he took "with a confcience that could not retch, he "muft ftraight perjure himself. He thought "it better to prefer à blameless filence before "the office of speaking, bought and begun "with fervitude and forfwearing."

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tice was then very frequent. The laft dramatick perfor mance at either univerfity was The Grateful Fair, written by Christopher Smart, and represented at Pembroke College, Cambridge, about 1747. R.

Thefe expreffions are, I find, applied to the fubfcription of the Articles; but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical obedience. I know not any of the Articles which feem to thwart his opinions: but the thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil, raised his indignation.

His unwillingness to engage in the miniftry, perhaps not yet advanced to a fettled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his friends, who had reproved his fufpended and dilatory life, which he feems to have imputed to an infatiable curiofity, and fantastick luxury of various knowledge. To this he writes a cool and plaufible anfwer, in which he endeavours to perfuade him, that the delay proceeds not from the delights of defultory study, but from the defire of obtaining more fitness for his tafk; and that he goes on, not taking thought of being late, fo it give advantage to be more fit.

When he left the univerfity, he returned to his father, then refiding at Horton in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five

years,

years, in which time he is faid to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what limitations this univerfality is to be underftood, who fhall inform us?

It might be fuppofed, that he who read so much should have done nothing else; but Milton found time to write the Masque of Comus, which was prefented at Ludlow, then the refidence of the Lord Prefident of Wales, in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the Earl of Bridgewater's fons and daughter. The fiction is derived from Homer's Circe*; but we never can refuse to any mo

dern

It has neverthelefs its foundation in reality. The earl of Bridgewater being Prefident of Wales in the year 1634, had his refidence at Ludlow-caftle in Shropshire, at which time lord Brackly and Mr. Egerton, his fons, and lady Alice Egerton, his daughter, paffing through a place called the Hay-wood foreft, or Haywood in Herefordshire, were benighted, and the lady for a fhort time loft: this accident being related to their father upon their arrival at his castle, Milton, at the request of his friend Henry Lawes, who taught mufic in the family, wrote this mafque. Lawes, fet 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 reprefentation.

dern the liberty of borrowing from Homer:

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 fon of Sir John King, fecretary for Ireland in the time of Elizabeth, James, and

The lady Alice Egerton became afterwards the wife of the earl of Carbury, who, at his feat called Golden-grove, in Caermarthenshire, harbored Dr. Jeremy Taylor in the time of the Ufurpation. Among the doctor's fermons is one on her death, in which her character is finely pour. trayed. Her fifter, lady Mary, was given in marriage to lord Herbert of Cherbury.

Notwithstanding Dr. Johnson's affertion, that the fiction is derived from Homer's Circe, it may be conjectured, that it was rather taken from the Comus of Erycius Puteanus, in which, under the fiction of a dream, the characters of Comus and his attendants are delineated, and the delights of fenfualifts expofed and reprobated. This little tract was published at Louvain in 1611, and afterwards at Oxford in 1634, the very year in which Milton's Comus was written. H.

Milton evidently was indebted to the Old Wives Tale of George Peele for the plan of Comus. R.

Charles.

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 difcovered by a mixture of longer and fhorter verfes, 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 fuppofed about this time to have written his Arcades; for while he lived at Horton he used fometimes to fteal from his studies a few days, which he spent at Harefield, the house of the countefs 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 chambers in the Inns of Court, when the death of his mother fet him at liberty to travel, for which he obtained his father's confent, and Sir Henry Wotton's directions, with the celebrated precept of prudence, i penfieri firetti, ed il vifo fciolto; thoughts clofe, and looks loofe."

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