piety, a prosperous scrivener (conveyancer and moneybroker) of London, living in Bread Street just off Cheapside. At that period houses were distinguished by a name instead of a number, and usually marked by some semiheraldic device. Mr. Milton's house was ornamented by the singularly inappropriate carving of a spread-eagle, for the owner was an "eminently safe" man and something of a musician and composer of sacred music. In Ravenscroft's compendium of church music, 1621, two of the tunes, known as "Norwich" and "York," were harmonized by Mr. Milton. No pains nor expense was spared on the education of his children. The eldest, John, the future poet, was provided with a tutor in his childhood and later sent to the famous school in St. Paul's churchyard founded by Dean Colet, and in due time, February, 1625, to Christ's College, Cambridge, the college most in favor with the better class of Puritan families. Here the young man remained seven years, taking his B. A. in 1628 and his M. A. in 1632, when he was twenty-three years and eight months old. He was an exceptionally diligent and conscientious student.

After being graduated young Milton retired to his father's country house at Horton and spent some time in further reading and study. He had been destined for the Church, for it must be remembered that up to the death of James I. in 1625, and even later, those who were called Puritans did not constitute either a separate church or a political party in the full sense. They were a disaffected minority, holding to Calvinistic theology, to simple forms of worship, and rebelling at what they considered the arbitrary and absolute authority of the bishops. Some bodies of them, like the Brownists or Separatists, the Pilgrims who came to Plymouth, Massa

chusetts, in 1620,-detached themselves or were driven out of the country, but the great body of them were simply protestants against ecclesiastical authority and in Milton's youth had not coalesced into open resistance. When he left the university, however, the breach had so widened and deepened that, as he said, "he who would take orders must subscribe himself slave and take an oath withal." His choice was to be a teacher of virtue and wisdom as a poet, since as a clergyman he must be restrained by an authority he could not respect. In a sonnet written on attaining his twenty-third year he promises to use the lot "toward which time leads me and the will of heaven,” “ as ever in my great Taskmaster's eye." He spent seven years in special training at Horton and fifteen months in travel on the continent, always with a view to becoming a poet. He is the only instance of a man dedicating himself in early youth to the poet's vocation with a sense of the importance and dignity of the undertaking, and writing not so much from delight in the work as to prepare himself for some great task. His father acquiesced in his determination, but that he did not altogether approve of it is evident from a passage in a Latin poem addressed "Ad Patrem," about the time young Milton left Cambridge. The translation is by the poet Cowper :

"Nor thou persist, I pray thee, still to slight

The sacred Nine, and to imagine vain
And useless, powers, by whom inspired, thyself
Art skilful to associate verse with airs
Harmonious, and to give the human voice
A thousand modulations, heir by right
Indisputable of Arion's fame.

Now say, what wonder is it if a son
Of thine delight in verse, if, so conjoined
In close affinity, we sympathise

In social arts, and kindred studies sweet?
Such distribution of himself to us

Was Phœbus' choice; thou hast thy gift, and I
Mine also, and between us we receive,

Father and son, the whole-inspiring God."

We cannot but regret that Milton did not translate the lines himself, for he would have made a great sonnet of them.

Most of his minor poems were produced during this period, and are amply sufficient to prove that he was justified in dedicating himself to poetry in a lofty and

Milton's

Minor
Poems.

reverent spirit. All show his very remarkable power of forming musical word combinations and the serene and austere temper of his soul. They are (or should be) too well known to need more than passing mention. They show that his mind was full, as, indeed, it always was, of images from classical litera

ture. "L'Allegro," the cheerful mood, and "Il Penseroso," the thoughtful mood, of the man of culture, show that he was susceptible to every form of the beautiful and the ennobling in Elizabethan England. "Arcades" is a short but charming out-of-door pastoral, sung by Henry Lawes, the musician, and the Egerton children in honor of the dowager Countess of Derby. "Lycidas” is a lament for Edward King, a fellow student of Milton's, drowned off the coast of Wales, in which appears a pretty vigorous expression of Milton's antiprelatic convictions. It is thoroughly classical and artificial in construction and imagery, but is one of the most subtly harmonious compositions in the English language, and is ranked with Shelley's "Adonais," or lament for Keats, and Tennyson's Memoriam," as one of the three great elegiac poems of our language. These, with the "Ode on the Nativity" and

“In

the Masque, "Comus," constitute the bulk of Milton's work till he went to the continent. "Comus was presented at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, by Lawes and the younger children of John Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater, and Lord President of Wales. Its theme is the beauty of temperance and chastity and the ugliness of riotous indulgence, treated in allegorical form and illustrated by exquisite songs. It breathes throughout the lofty spirituality

and austere virtue of Milton's mind.

In April, 1638, attended by one manservant, Milton left England, intending to travel for two years or more in Italy and Greece. He visited Paris, went from there to Nice, thence to Genoa and Pisa, and remained two months in Florence. He then went to Rome, where he remained two months longer. In spite of the corruption of the Church, Rome was still the intellectual center of Europe, and the young scholar poet of England was received with enthusiastic appreciation. He was master of six languages and of all the literature then known to the world. His Latin poems, his personal beauty and refinement, his elegant scholarship, his knowledge of music and command of the Italian language, gave him an introduction to those best worth knowing and insured him a welcome. He intended to go to Greece by the way of Sicily, but as he said afterward, "The melancholy intelligence which I received of the civil commotions in England made me alter my purpose; for I thought it base to be traveling for amusement, while my fellow citizens were fighting for liberty at home." He retraced his steps rather leisurely, stopping for some time in Rome, Florence, Venice, and Geneva, and reached England after an absence of about fifteen months.

He found his school friend, Charles Diodati, to whom