and if any such trace existed, it could hardly have escaped the research of two such men as Anthony Wood and Dr. Philip Bliss." But we find that Wood also did not succeed in finding any trace of Milton's having had a degree at Oxford, as he himself stated to Aubrey.

NOTE C.

MILTON'S PUNISHMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY.

This fact we learn from the poet himself:

"Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum,
Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor;
Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles :
Quam male Phoebicolis convenit ille locus!
Nec duri libet usque minas perferre Magistri,
Ceteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.

Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates,

Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi,

Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemque recuso,

Lætus et exilii conditione fruor."—Eleg. i. 11.

Now surely no one who reads these lines is justified in inferring anything more than that Milton was, for some offence or other, in College phrase, rusticated, i. e. ordered to quit the University for a limited period. That it could not have been long is proved by his having taken his degree at the regular time, so he must have kept all his terms. Aubrey however says, "His first tutor was Mr. Chappel, from whom receiving some unkindness (he whipt him), he was afterwards. . . transferred to the tuition of one Mr. Tovey." The Tory and High Church Warton and Johnson eagerly catch at this note of Aubrey's, assume its truth, and assert that Milton was publicly whipped previous to his rustication, and suppose the poet to allude to it in Ceteraque ingenio non subeunda meo. It must raise, we fancy, a smile in even the most sombre, to find the serious Milton thus gravely telling his friend that he did not much like being whipped.

But, after all, where did Aubrey get his information? He was not himself a Cambridge man, and the poet or his brother hardly gave it to him. Besides, if it was a matter of notoriety, it could scarcely have escaped the knowledge of Hall (?), or Dumoulin, who wrote so many years earlier than Aubrey. Little stress then, we apprehend, can be laid on his assertion. Even though it was the

custom to use the rod in those times at Oxford and Cambridge, it was only on the younger students that it was employed in general; and that by the Tutor, and not by the Master of the College, and it is only of the latter that Milton speaks. It is unfortunate that the author has not dated his two elegies to Diodati; but from the tone of this elegy, his speaking of his frequenting the theatres and Gray's Inn Walks, and admiring the beauties he saw there, and fearing the loss of his heart, we may perhaps infer, that when he wrote it he had been two or three years at the University, so that he was quite beyond the whipping age. The whole story is, we are convinced, a baseless fiction.

Milton, we know, had a thorough contempt for the course of studies pursued at the Universities. To this he may have given expression in various ways; and by this and some acts of insubordination he may have drawn on himself the indignation of Dr. Bainbridge, the Master, who is said to have been a strict disciplinarian, and who was probably a narrow-minded pedant. For this he was ordered to leave the University for a short time; and the period was, in all probability, a very brief one, for it appears to have been in the spring-an active season at College- that he wrote this elegy, and he speaks in it of returning shortly to the banks of Cam.

NOTE D.

MILTON AND THE EGERTON FAMILY.

The Arcades was represented before the Countess Dowager of Derby, at Harefield House, near Uxbridge, and Comus before her son-in-law the Earl of Bridgewater, at Ludlow Castle, in Shropshire. How Milton happened to be the writer of them we will attempt to explain when we come to the consideration of these poems in the sequel of our work; in this Note it is our object to show the utter instability of the structure of adulation and sycophancy toward the descendants of those noble persons which Warton and Todd have conspired to raise.

Alice, the sixth daughter of Sir John Spenser of Althorpe, had been, under the name of Amaryllis, the theme of the verse of her real or supposed kinsman, the poet of the Faerie Queene, in his 'Colin Clout's come home again;' and he had dedicated to her his Tears of the Muses. She married Ferdinando Lord Strange,

who, on the death of his father in 1594, became Earl of Derby, but who died in the following year. In 1600 she married the Lord Keeper, afterwards Lord Chancellor Egerton, a widower. He died in 1617, leaving her again a widow. She seems to have spent the remainder of her days at Harefield House, where she died on the 20th of January, 1635-6. The Earl of Bridgewater, the Lord Chancellor's eldest son, had married one of her daughters by Lord Strange.

It is the theory of Warton that this noble lady, who in her younger days had been the patroness of Spenser, admiring the poetic talents of her young neighbour at Horton, took him under her patronage, and that in consequence Milton was a frequent visitor at Harefield, where of course he became acquainted with Lord Bridgewater and his family. When therefore the entertainment of Arcades was projected at Harefield, Milton, to show his gratitude to the Countess, supplied the poetry; and when the success of that piece had emboldened the young Egertons to project an entertainment on a grander scale, to celebrate their father's entrance on his office of Lord President of Wales, the Muse of Horton gladly and gratefully once more exerted her powers in the service of her noble patrons, and Comus was the magnificent result.

Now we may observe, in opposition to this fine theory, that Miltou at this time was almost totally unknown to fame as a poet. His poetic efforts had been nearly all in Latin, and their renown had hardly gone beyond the walls of Cambridge, for he had never printed a line. It may however be said, that his friend Henry Lawes, the musician, who was in the service, as it was termed, of the family, may have magnified his talents in the ears of the Countess, and thus have directed her patronage toward the young poet, who accepted it with gratitude. But this will appear a most improbable supposition when we consider the character and position of Milton. Descended from an ancient and honourable family, of a noble and independent spirit, conscious of possessing the highest powers given unto man by God, and in worldly circumstances which placed him, if not in affluence, far above want, he could ill have brooked the tone of superiority assumed, often unconsciously, by the possessors of worldly wealth and titles over those who, however superior in other respects, are destitute of these advantages. All through his life he seems to have had be

fore his eyes the beautiful example of the worthy woman of Shunem, who, when the prophet, in return for her kindness, offered to exert his influence in her favour with the King or his officers, replied, "I dwell among mine own people." At no period did he seek the society and intimacy of those who were great in the world's regard; his delight was in friends of his own rank in life, like-minded with himself, like him devoted to the pursuits of literature and science: these alone he sought, and with these he was contented. At this very time he was personally unacquainted even with the learned and accomplished Sir Henry Wootton, who lived at Eton, some miles nearer to him than Harefield. Further, when we consider the manners of the time in which the nobility kept up so much pomp and state in their abodes, and in their intercourse with their inferiors in rank, the supposition becomes still more incredible. It was not till the eighteenth century that men of genius began to visit at the houses of the aristocracy on somewhat of a footing of equality; and had Milton frequented Harefield House, it must have been in the character of a dependant, or one in its service, as the phrase was.

Todd, without naming any authority, tells us that Milton "had lived in the neighbourhood of Ashridge, the seat of the Earl of Bridgewater," adding from Warton, "for his father's house and lands at Horton, near Colnbrook, in Buckinghamshire, were held under the Earl, before whom Comus was acted." It is really very provoking that people will write in such a loose and careless manner. Any one who reads this passage will, if not aware of the truth, naturally infer that Ashridge also is near Colnbrook; whereas, if Mr. Todd had taken the trouble to look at a map, he would have seen that it is near Berkhampstead in Herts, and little less than twenty miles from Colnbrook.

Todd goes on

This is bad enough, but what follows is worse. to tells us, chiefly on his own authority it would seem, that "Milton afterwards lived in Barbican, where the Earl had great property, as well as his town residence Bridgewater House; and though Dr. Johnson observes that Milton had taken a larger house in Barbican for the reception of scholars, it is not improbable that he may have been accommodated with it rent-free by that nobleman, who, it may be supposed, would gladly embrace an opportunity of having in his neighbourhood the admirable author of Comus, and of promoting his acquaintance with that finished

scholar, who, being willing, says his nephew Phillips, to impart his learning and knowledge to his relations, and the sons of gentlemen who were his intimate friends, might afford to his family at least the pleasure of his conversation, if not to some of them the advantages of his instruction."

No doubt the Archdeacon of Cleveland thought this a piece of very pretty writing, and very gratifying to the representatives of the Earl of Bridgewater. But, unfortunately for him, it is as much at variance with chronology as his preceding one was with topography. It was in 1645 or 1646 that Milton took his house in Barbican; and as the inscription on Lord Bridgewater's monument tells us that "he was a loyal subject to his sovereign in those worst of times when it was accounted treason not to be a traitor," it is hardly possible that he was living quietly within the enemy's quarters, and exhibiting a rather unusual kind of generosity to one of the most determined foes of the cause of his Royal master, and of the Church, to which the said Earl was "a dutiful son in her persecution, as well as in her great splendour."*

There remains one more piece of this Egerton idolatry. In a note on the epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, Warton, after telling us that she was of a Cheshire family, adds that “it is natural to suppose that it was well acquainted with the family of Lord Bridgewater belonging to the same county. It is therefore," he continues," not improbable that Milton wrote this elegy, another poetical favour, in consequence of his acquaintance with the Egerton family." Of this supposition we will show the absolute impossibility when we come to treat of that elegy.

The materials of this note will be found in Todd's Introduction to Comus.

NOTE E.

PASSAGES IN MILTON'S WRITINGS RELATING TO HIS FIRST WIFE.

"Not that license and levity and unconsented breach of faith, *Speaking of the applause which Milton received for his Defensio, Todd adds (i. 80) in a note: "He perhaps lost the friendship of others on this occasion. Certain it seems that the amiable and learned Earl of Bridgewater, who had performed the part of the First Brother in his Comus, then disdained his acquaintance. On the title-page of the Defensio, now in Lord Francis Egerton's possession, that nobleman has written: Liber igne, author furca dignissimi." He lost what he probably never had possessed.