THE AGE OF MILTON.

CHAPTER I.

MILTON'S EARLY LIFE AND POEMS.

MILTON'S works in prose and verse fall into three groups, corresponding to three clearly marked periods of his life. The first of these the period of L'Allegro, Comus and Lycidas-ends with the return of the poet from Italy in (1639, and the composition of the Epitaphium Damonis; ↳ the second is the period of his political activity and controversial prose writings; the third comprises the last fifteen years of his life, and his three great masterpiecesParadise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes.

During the first of these periods, with which we have now to deal, the predominating influence over his mind was that of Spenser. The great poem to which he looked forward, and for which he was deliberately fitting himself during these years, was to be an allegorical romance, more majestic perhaps, and charged with deeper meaning than the Faerie Queene, but moving through the same scenes of chivalrous emprise and full of the same delicate sweetness.

The task remained unfulfilled till the poet emerged, sterner and stronger, from the turmoil and conflict of the succeeding period; but the poems that belong to these years suffice to prove how the disciple of Spenser might

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have equalled, or even surpassed, his master, if a few more years of peaceful life at Horton had afforded him the opportunity. A second Faerie Queene by the author of Lycidas would be an almost priceless treasure, but it would have been too dearly purchased at the price of Paradise Lost.

Milton's early life was uneventful. He was born on the 9th of December, 1608, in Bread Street, London, where his father, John Milton, carried on the business of a scrivener. This John Milton had come to London from his home near Oxford some twenty years before, having been disinherited by his father, Richard Milton, a sturdy adherent of the old faith, for joining the Anglican Church. We know him as a prosperous London citizen, a man of culture and a musician of no mean ability. Puritanism already had its stronghold in the homes of the citizens of London, and a reverent seriousness, which had in it nothing of moroseness or gloom, coloured the home-life of Milton's childhood. Of his early education, he says: "I had, from my first years, by the ceaseless diligence and care of my father (whom God recompense!) been exercised to the tongues and some sciences, as my age would suffer, by sundry masters and teachers, both at home and at the schools."

The scrivener seems to have recognized from the first the exceptional ability of his eldest son, and to have spared neither pains nor money to secure for him a careful and thorough education. His earliest tutor was Thomas Young, a Scotch Presbyterian minister, who afterwards became Master of Jesus College, Cambridge. At the age of twelve he was sent to St. Paul's School, where he formed the only close friendship of his life with Charles Diodati, the son of an Italian physician who had married an English wife and settled in London. Milton and Diodati remained loyal and devoted friends long after their school-days were over,

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corresponding frequently in Latin verse and English prose; and the magnificent Latin elegy which the poet laid upon the tomb of his friend in 1639 closes one of the happiest chapters in the history of great friendships.

Next to the Bible, the Authorized Version of which was published only three years after Milton's birth, the most frequent companions of his childhood among books must have been Spenser and Du Bartas. Spenser had already won that high place among English poets from which he has never since been dethroned, and had become the father of a school of pastoral poets, of which the two Fletchers and William Browne were the most distinguished representatives. Du Bartas has not shared Spenser's immortality; but few books have won a wider popularity than Sylvester's translation obtained in the Puritan homes of England. The author, a French Huguenot who had fought for Henry of Navarre, left behind him at his death, in 1590, a long descriptive poem entitled The Divine Weeks and Works. The first part, which alone was complete, gave ar account of the days of the Creation, founded on the biblical record; and the second week' carried on the Scripture story to the reign of David, where it abruptly terminated. This poem was translated into English by Joshua Sylvester, himself a poet of some ability, in 1605, and passed through several editions in rapid succession. Its scriptural basis secured for it a welcome in Puritan households, and as the publisher's office was in Bread Street, an early copy would certainly find its way to the Spread Eagle. Sylvester's uncouth imagery and quaintly-structured verse is not without a certain attractiveness even now, but they have a higher claim to remembrance as an influence of Milton's childhood, out of which was destined to grow, in the fulness of time, Paradise Lost.

In 1625 Milton entered Christ's College, Cambridge,

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where he spent the next seven years. Although he appears to have chafed somewhat under the restraints of academic discipline, and to have been hindered by his natural reserve from sharing freely in the life of the college, he seems, after a time, to have won the respect of many for whose friendship he did not ask, and to have gained a high reputation both for intellectual ability and moral purity. He spoke afterwards of "that more than ordinary respect which I found above many of my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the fellows of that college wherein I spent seven years." But such measure of affection as Milton felt for his university -and it was not very deep-did not prevent him from writing in strong disapproval of the methods of education in use there. The dissatisfaction he afterwards expressed with his own university career may perhaps have been partly due to political prejudice, but it was certainly with very little regret that he said farewell to the university in 1632, and retired to the peaceful seclusion of Horton.

Among his contemporaries at Cambridge were several destined to high place in the literary history of the period. The year after he entered at Christ's, the name of Jeremy Taylor appears among the entries at Caius College; and in the following year John Cleveland came up to Christ's, ✓ while George Herbert, resigning the office of Public Orator, which he had held for six years, went down to enter upon the pastoral care of his church at Leighton. In Milton's last year there appear several entries of note-Richard Crashaw at Pembroke College, Cudworth and Worthington at Emmanuel, and Henry More at Christ's. There is no proof that Milton ever came into contact with any of these with some of whom he would certainly have had much in

common.

When he left Cambridge in 1632 he had written

twelve poems in English and about the same number in Latin. His earliest verses are paraphrases of Psalms cxiv and cxxxvi, notable as the work of a boy of fifteen, and showing clear traces of the influence of Sylvester's Du Bartas. A little poem written two years later On the Death of a Faire Infant dying of a Cough shows considerable promise. The verses entitled At a Vacation Exercise L in the College, composed in 1628, and the two elegies on Hobson, the university carrier, which belong to the same period, are of interest as Milton's only attempts at a lighter vein of poetry-attempts which his lack of any sense of humour rendered only moderately success1ful. His Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, who died in 1631, though poor as a whole, has some lines not unworthy of the poet. The three remaining poems that belong to this period require more detailed notice. The first of these, both in order of date and of importance, is the Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, the date of ► which a letter to Diodati fixes as Christmas, 1629. The poet is represented as waking on the Christmas morn and recalling the sacred association of the day. Moved by these, he resolves to forestall the 'star-led wizards' with a 'humble Ode.' These introductory stanzas are in the same metre as Spenser's Foure Hymnes, with the addition~ of an alexandrine at the end; but the metre of the hymn itself seems to be Milton's own invention. It is notable chiefly for the concluding alexandrine, which gives a sonorous roll to the end of each verse. In sublimity of thought and splendour of imagery the hymn resembles Milton's later poems more closely than any other of his earlier verses. The Earth is the scene of a great conflict between the forces of good and evil; vast and shadowy deities sink into darkness, and angels descend to serve the infant king. This ode has received high praise from