or were near having, to the eyes of cour tiers and court-ladies, their grooms and mademoifelles.

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 univerfity with a defign 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 retch, he muft

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ftraight perjure himself. He thought

"it better to prefer a blameless filence "before the office of fpeaking, bought

"and begun with fervitude and for

Thefe expreffions are, I find, applied to the fubfcription of the Articles; butit feems 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 ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to a fettled refolution 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 fitnefs 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; in which time he is faid to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what limitations this univerfality is to be understood, who fhall inform us?

It might be fuppofed that he who read fo much fhould have done nothing elfe; but Milton found time to write the Mafque 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 modern 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,

fecro

fecretary for Ireland in the time of Elizabeth, James, and 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 discovered by a mixture of longer and shorter verfes, according to the rules of Tuscan 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 steal from his ftudies a few days, which he spent at Harefield, the house of the countefs dowager of Derby,

where