for in this much more extensive educational romance, this English complement of Xenophon's Cyropaedia, we find absolutely nothing to point to Baconian methods or new science, but a stern and rather unprogressive adherence to the classical and pre-Baconian deductive school, and when the author indulges in really excellent critical remarks as to what true poetry should consist of, there are not the slightest allusions to Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, or, in fact, to any modern authorities whatever. Both in his acknowledged Tractate and his anonymous Romance, while speaking of the Teaching and Art of Poetry, Milton totally ignores Sir Philip Sidney's Apologie for Poetry of 1595 and Puttenham's Art of English Poesie of 1589. In the Romance this may be thought due to the plot being laid in that Utopian locality where the vernacular was Hebrew; but since two of the principal interlocutors and auditors were Englishmen, Eugenius and Politian, this marked abstention of any reference to the great English exponents and authorities is certainly unusual, and points to Milton. For Milton's great authority was always himself and his own consciousness: he would not yield himself to "subscribe slave" to any man's dictation; to no one could the hackneyed Horatian line Nullius addictus, etc., be more applicable than to him. And this same unconventional spirit appears most strikingly in Nova Solyma. Here we have views on duelling, almsgiving, Divine worship, the mortality of the soul, and much more, altogether different from what was generally held, and agreeing almost completely with all we know of the accredited opinions of the great poet. This is, as I freely admit, only good internal evidence of two writers and two books having the same high, reserved, and self-sufficient tone and the same unconventional views. But my contention is considerably strengthened when we remember that one of the two writers was the illustrious, the world-renowned, and, in his own line, the incomparable, John Milton, a personality who stood upon a pedestal, as it were, apart, upon an eminence of "plain living and high thinking,"

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to the sublime heights of which few had ever aspired or attained. In that age there was not one assuredly so high as he. Who, then, was the other anonymous contemporary author who seemed in a literary sense to be so nearly in the same category, and to wear on his heart and conscience that same protecting robur et aes triplex which no common, unjust, or mere conventional arguments could successfully pierce through, and in whom. striking similarities of style and subject were so obvious? Who but Milton himself? In that age, whether in English or in Latin, all judges now admit of John Milton that None but himself can be his parallel.

But before I leave this endeavour to connect Milton with Nova Solyma through the educational theories that are common to the two and through Hartlib in his eagerness to obtain from his friend Milton some literary fuel for the great cleansing fire of Reform, so much desired by both, I ought to give some reason why Hartlib, who was always writing to somebody or other about new books and literary matters generally, never mentions Nova Solyma at all, although it undoubtedly would be of the highest interest to him personally. It does seem very strange, especially as Hartlib mentions Olbia, a hare-brained Utopian work of John Sadler, more than once to Worthington, and is always recurring to his own pet Macaria. I can only suggest that he was bound to the strictest reticence by Milton; neither was he to disclose the author, or draw any attention to the book. Milton wanted unprejudiced criticism entirely. Perhaps also he was not anxious to be held responsible just then for the many singular opinions he had propounded.

The ever-busy Hartlib was pre-eminently a middleman between authors and their public. He saw to the printing and publishing, and usually put a prefatory letter or dedication of his own to the work. There is a good

example in a book which Hartlib arranged to have printed for Thomas Underhill in 1658. In the prefatory letter, signed in full by Hartlib, he says: "I having this treatise from the author to dispose of it in Publick, as I should find Cause, could choose no other patronage for it." He dedicates it to the heads of colleges at the two universities, and it was a production of his friend John Durie. So here we see Hartlib and Underhill and Durie carrying through their literary business, just in the same manner as we suggest that Milton's first letter on Education was carried through by Hartlib and Underhill and Milton. May we not shrewdly conjecture that Nova Solyma also was a case of Hartlib and Underhill and Milton?

To sum up this rather wandering statement of facts, it seems pretty clear that there was a small band about the middle of the seventeenth century in England who were very active and enthusiastic on the great question of the education of the rising generation. They rightly felt that this was a matter of primary importance if the work of general reform, in which they were so much interested, was to continue at all in the generations to come. Hartlib was the prime mover and agent in this work, and the principal personages of the little band who were in sympathy with him, and worked for him when called upon, were Durie, Petty, and last, but certainly not least, John Milton.

Hartlib's work, as far as we have the record of it, seems to have consisted chiefly in introducing books on educational and other reforms to the public. He would get the author's MS., and carry through the publication, and put a preface or introduction to it, signed with his own name. He was a busy man, delighting in work, and would take. all the publishing trouble off his contributors' hands.

I have many books in my library with his prefaces, generally introductory letters to the Christian reader; and if the author of Nova Solmya had not, for the nonce, strictly desired to be a second Apelles, and well out of sight, very probably we should have had some forewords

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from Hartlib in this case also. Milton and Hartlib were not merely casual acquaintances; they often met and conversed on this subject of the education of the rising generation. Milton admits this unreservedly. "Thus, Mr. Hartlib, you have a general view in writing, as your desire was, of that which at several times I had discoursed with you concerning the best and noblest way of Education; not beginning, as some have done, from the cradle, which yet might be worth many considerations, if brevity had not been my scope. Many other circumstances also I could have mentioned, but this. . . may be enough."

This points out distinctly that Milton had much in reserve on the subject, and that younger boys were worthy of educational schemes as well. Hartlib, of course, was aware of this, and it adds probability to the suggestion that he induced Milton to give his "former thoughts" and the considerations which he had reserved, to be published to the world with less brevity in Nova Solyma, and so help the work in which the band of reformers took such interest and thought of such high importance for the coming age.

It is pleasing to notice that at this beginning of the twentieth century there is a body of active enthusiasts who hold similar views as to the extreme importance of the education of youth. These, like the earlier, belong to the Evangelical-Puritan-Nonconformist stamp, and their mouthpiece (among others) is Dr. Clifford, who in the first January of the new century delivered himself thus: "The greatest discovery of the nineteenth century was the truth that the best national asset was not the Army or Navy, or gold-mines, or commerce, but childhood; and the training of children was a primary obligation upon the parent, the Church, and the State." One great requirement, he said, was that they should be brought over to the ranks of self-denial from the ranks of self-indulgence. "The great danger of the new century lay in self-indulgence." Here, indeed, we have Milton and the author of Nova Solyma alive again—“ two gentlemen rolled in one."

EXCURSUS B

MILTON'S NEPHEWS-HOW DID THEY PROFIT BY THEIR UNCLE'S EDUCATIONAL THEORIES?

especially John Phillips, a supervision and instruction Before attempting a reply,

AFTER such excellent and just remarks on the education of young lads, which, though much fuller, agree unreservedly with what Milton published to the world in 1644, the thought naturally comes into one's mind, How could such training bring about such unfortunate and inadequate results as appear in Milton's two most constant pupils, his nephews Edward and John Phillips ? or, expressed in other words, How could the greatest private tutor (for Milton was not a schoolmaster) of his time turn out such disreputable literary hacks and such unworthy pupils as these were, boarder, and under constant from the early age of nine? I would first quote what Mr. Lecky justly observes in his last work (The Map of Life, 1899, p. 244): "One of the most fatal mistakes in education is the attempt which is so often made by the educator to impose his own habits and tastes on natures that are essentially different. It is common for men of lymphatic temperaments, of studious, saintly, and retiring tastes, to endeavour to force a high-spirited young man starting in life into their own mould-to prescribe for him the cast of tastes and pursuits they find most suited for themselves, forgetting that such an ideal can never satisfy a wholly different nature. . . . Such an education generally begins by producing hypocrisy, and not unfrequently ends by a violent reaction into vice."

Next I would quote what Godwin says in his Life