partiality in his diatribes) are the strongholds of what he detested: "nurseries of superstition "-" not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages"-given up to "monkish and miserable sophistry," and unprogressive in their educational methods. But it may fairly be assumed that Milton the scholar and poet, who chose to spend seven years at Cambridge, owed to her more than Milton the fierce controversialist admitted or knew. A poet he had proved himself before leaving the University in 1632. The short but exquisite ode At a Solemn Music, and the Nativity Hymn (1629), were already written.

Milton's father had settled1 at Horton in Buckingham

The five years (16321637) spent at

Horton.

shire. Thither the son retired in 1632. He had gone to Cambridge with the intention of qualifying for some profession, perhaps the Church. This purpose was soon given up, and when Milton returned to his father's house he seems to have made up his mind that there was no profession which he cared to enter. He would choose the better part of studying and preparing himself, by rigorous selfdiscipline and application, for the far-off divine event to which his whole life moved.

It was Milton's constant resolve to achieve something 1 As tenant of the Earl of Bridgewater, according to one account; but probably the tradition arose from Milton's subsequent connection with the Bridgewater family.

66

2 Cf. Milton's own words, "The Church, to whose service by the intention of my parents and friends I was destined of a child, and in my own resolutions." What kept him from taking orders was not, at first, any difference of belief, but solely his objection to Church discipline and government. 'Coming to some maturity of years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded in the church, that he who would take orders must subscribe slave......(I) thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing.”—Reason of Church Government, P. W. 11. 482. Milton disliked in particular the episcopal system, and spoke of himself as "Church-outed by the prelates.'

The key to Milton's life.

that should vindicate the ways of God to men, something great1 that should justify his own possession of unique powers-powers of which, with no trace of egotism, he proclaims himself proudly conscious. The feeling finds repeated expression in his prose; it is the guiding-star that shines clear and steadfast even through the mists of politics. He has a mission to fulfil, a purpose to accomplish, no less than the most earnest of religious enthusiasts; and the means whereby this end is to be attained are fourfold: devotion to learning, devotion to religion, ascetic purity of life, and the pursuit of σπουδαιότης or "excellent seriousness" of thought.

This period of self-centred isolation lasted from 1632 to 1637. Gibbon tells us among the many wise things contained in that most wise book the Autobiography, that every man has two educations: that which he receives from his teachers and that which he owes to himself; the latter being often the more important. During these five years Milton completed his second education; ranging the whole world of classical antiquity and absorbing the classical genius so thoroughly that the ancients were to him what they afterwards became to Landor, what they have perhaps never become to any other English poet in the same degree, even as the very breath of his being; learning, too, all of art, especially music, that contemporary England could furnish; wresting from modern languages and literatures their last secrets; and combining these vast and diverse influences into a splendid equipment of hard-won, well-ordered culture.

1 Cf. the second sonnet; "How soon hath Time." Ten years later (1641) Milton speaks of the "inward prompting which grows daily upon me, that by labour and intent study, which I take to be my portion in this life, joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave something so written to after times, as they should not willingly let it die "-Reason of Church Government, P. W. 11. 477, 478.

The world has known many greater scholars in the technical, limited sense than Milton, but few men, if any, who have mastered more things worth mastering in art, letters and scholarship1. It says much for the poet that he was sustained through this period of study, pursued ohne Hast, ohne Rast, by the full consciousness that all would be crowned by a masterpiece which should add one more testimony to the belief in that God who ordains the fates of men. It says also a very great deal for the father who suffered his son to follow in this manner the path of learning2.

True, Milton gave more than one earnest of his future Milton's fame. The dates of the early pieceslyric verse; L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus its relation to conten- and Lycidas-are not all certain; but proporary life. bably each was composed at Horton before 1638. We must speak of them elsewhere. Here we may note that four of them have great autobiographic value as an indirect commentary, written from Milton's coign of seclusion, upon the moral crisis through which English life and thought were passing, the clash between the careless, pleasure-seeking Cavalier world and the deepening austerity of Puritanism. In L'Allegro the poet holds the balance almost equal between the two opposing tendencies. In Il Penseroso it becomes clear to which side his sympathies are leaning. Comus is a covert prophecy of the downfall of the Court-party, while Lycidas openly “foretells the ruine" of the Established Church. The latter poem is the final utterance of Milton's lyric genius.

1 Milton's poems with their undercurrent of perpetual allusion are the best proof of the width of his reading; but interesting supplementary evidence is afforded by the commonplace book discovered in 1874, and printed by the Camden Society, 1876. It contains extracts from about 80 different authors whose works Milton had studied.

2 Cf. the poem Ad Patrem, 68-72, in which Milton thanks his father for not having forced him to be a merchant or lawyer.

Here he reaches, in Mr Mark Pattison's words, the highwater mark of English verse; and then-the pity of ithe resigns his place among poets, gives himself up to politics, and for nearly twenty years suffers his lyre to hang mute and rusty in the temple of the Muses.

Travels in

Italy; close of the first period in his

life.

Cause of his return to England.

The composition of Lycidas may be assigned to the year 1637. In the spring of the next year Milton started for Italy. He had long made himself a master of Italian, and it was natural that he should seek inspiration in the land where many English poets, from Chaucer to Shelley, have found it. Milton remained abroad some fifteen months. Originally he had intended to include Sicily and Greece in his travels, but news of the troubles in England hastened his return. He was brought face to face with the question whether or not he should bear his part in the coming struggle; whether without self-reproach he could lead any longer this life of learning and indifference to the public weal. He decided as we might have expected that he would decide, though some good critics see cause to regret the decision. Milton puts his position very clearly. "I considered it," he says, "dishonourable to be enjoying myself at my ease in foreign lands, while my countrymen were striking a blow for freedom." And again: "Perceiving that the true way to liberty followed on from these beginnings, inasmuch also as I had so prepared myself from my youth that, above all things, I could not be ignorant what is of Divine and what of human right, I resolved, though I was then meditating certain other matters, to transfer into this struggle all my genius and all the strength of my industry."

The second

The summer of 1639 (July) found Milton back in England. Immediately after his return he wrote the Epitaphium Damonis, the beautiful period, 1639--elegy in which he lamented the death of his school friend, Diodati. Lycidas was the last

1660. Milton abandons poetry.

of the English lyrics: the Epitaphium, which should be studied in close connection with Lycidas, the last of the long Latin poems. Thenceforth, for a long spell, the rest was silence, so far as concerned poetry. The period which for all men represents the strength and maturity of manhood, which in the cases of other poets produces the best and most characteristic work, is with Milton a blank. In twenty years he composed no more than a bare handful of Sonnets, and even some of these are infected by the taint of political animus. Other interests filled his thoughts-the question of Church-reform, education, marriage, and, above all, politics.

and Educa

tion.

Milton's first treatise upon the government of the Pamphlets Established Church (Of Reformation touchon the Church ing Church-Discipline in England) appeared in 1641. Others followed in quick succession. The abolition of Episcopacy was the watchword of the enemies of the Anglican Church-the great rallyingcry of Puritanism, and no one enforced the point with greater eloquence than Milton. During 1641 and 1642 he wrote five pamphlets on the subject. Meanwhile he was studying the principles of education. On his return from Italy he had undertaken the training of his nephews1. This led to consideration of the best educational methods; and in the Tractate on Education, 1644, Milton assumed the part of educational theorist. In the previous year, May, 1643, he married?. Marriage. The marriage proved, at the time, unfortunate. Its immediate outcome was the pamphlets on

1 Edward and John Phillips, sons of Milton's only sister. Both subsequently joined the Royalist party. To Edward Phillips we owe a memoir of the poet.

His wife (who was only seventeen) was Mary Powell, eldest daughter of Richard Powell, of Forest Hill, a village some little distance from Oxford. She went to stay with her father in July 1643, and refused to return to Milton; why, it is not certain. She was reconciled to her husband in 1645, bore him four children, and died in 1652, in her twenty-seventh year.