Showed him his room where he must lodge that night,
Pulled off his boots, and took away the light:
If any ask for him, it shall be said,
"Hobson hath supped, and 's newly gone to bed."

Another, on the Same.

Here lieth one who did most truly prove
That he could never die while he could move;
So hung his destiny, never to rot
While he might still jog on and keep his trot,
Made of sphere-metal, never to decay
Until his revolution was at stay!
Time numbers motion, yet (without a crime
'Gainst old truth) motion numbered out his time;
And, like an engine moved with wheel and weight,
His principles being ceased, he ended straight.
Rest, that gives all men life, gave him his death,
And too much breathing put him out of breath;
Nor were it contradiction to affirm
Too long vacation hastened on his term.
Merely to drive the time away he sickened,
Fainted and died, nor would with ale be quickened.
“Nay,” quoth he, on his swooning bed outstretched,
“If I may not carry, sure I'll ne'er be fetched;
But vow," (though the cross doctors all stood hearers)
“For one carrier put down, to make six bearers."
Ease was his chief disease, and to judge right,
He died for heaviness that his cart went light;
His leisure told him that his time was come,
And lack of load made his life burdensome;
That even to his last breath, (there be that say't,)
As he were press’d to death, he cried “More weight!”
But, had his doings lasted as they were,
He had been an immortal Carrier.
Obedient to the moon, he spent his date
In course reciprocal, and had his fate
Linked to the mutual flowing of the seas;
Yet, strange to think, his wain was his increase :.
His letters are delivered all and gone;
Only remains this superscription.

These verses might have been written in London, but they seem rather to have been written at Cambridge. At all events, Milton must have been at Cambridge on the 15th of the month following that of the carrier's death; on which day the following entry was made in the admission-book of Christ's College :

“ Feb. 15, 1630–31.— Christopher Milton, Londoner, son of John, grounded in letters under Mr. Gill in Paul's public school, was admitted a lesser pen-. sioner, in the 15th year of his age, under the charge of Mr. Tovey."

Thus, it seems, Milton's younger brother Christopher, after having been educated at the same school in London as himself, was sent to the same College in Cambridge, and there placed under the same tutor. The fact proves, at least, that, whatever fault Milton may have found with his first tutor, Chappell, he was satisfied with Tovey.!

From this point forward we have not the advantage of Meade's letters to Stuteville; the series closing in April 1631. It is from other sources that we learn that, soon after Christopher Milton's admission at Christ's, he had the opportunity of seeing a Latin comedy in one of the Colleges. The College was Queen's; the title of the piece was “ Senile Odium ; " the actors were the young men of Queen's; and the author was Peter Hausted, M. A., of that society, afterwards a clergyman in Hertfordshire. The play was printed at Cambridge in 1633; on which occasion, among the commendatory Latin verses prefixed to it, were some Iambics by Edward King, of Christ's.

To the same Easter Term of 1631 is to be referred the composition of another of Milton's minor English poems—that entitled An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester. The lady thus honored was Jane, one of the daughters of Viscount Savage, of Rock-Savage, Cheshire, by his wife, Elizabeth Darcy, the eldest daughter of Earl Rivers. She had been married to John Paulet, fifth Marquis of Winchester, who had succeeded his father in that title in February 1628. Both before and after her marriage to this Catholic nobleman, afterwards distinguished for his loyalty in the civil wars, she was spoken of as one of the most beautiful and accomplished of the ladies of her time. Suddenly, while she was yet in the bloom of early youth, she was cut off by a miserable accident. The date and the circumstances are settled by the following extract from a news-letter of the period :

“ The Lady Marquess of Winchester, daughter to the Lord Viscount Savage, had an imposthume upon her cheek lanced; the humour fell down into her throat and quickly despatched her, being big with child: whose death is lamented as well in respect of other her virtues as that she was inclining to become a Protestant.” 1

The incident seems to have produced a sensation quite unusual. It forms the subject of one of the longest of Ben Jonson's elegies, in his “ Underwoods”:

*

“Stay, stay; I feel
A horror in me; all my blood is steel,
Stiff, stark! my joints 'gainst one another knock.
Whose daughter ? — Hal great Savage of the rock.
He's good as great. I am almost a stone,
And ere I can ask more of her, she's gone!.
*

米 *
Her sweetness, softness, her fair courtesy,
Her wary guards, her wise simplicity,
Were like a ring of virtues round her set,
And Piety the centre where all met.
A reverend state she had, an awful eye,
A dazzling, yet inviting Majesty:
What Nature, Fortune, Institution, Fact,
Could sum to a perfection was her act!
How did she leave the world, with what contempt!
Just as she in it lived, and so exempt
From all affection! When they urged the cure
Of her disease, how did her soul assure
Her sufferings, as the body had been away,
And to the torturers, her doctors, say:
'Stick on your cupping-glasses; fear not; put
Your hottest caustics to; burn, lance, or cut:
'T is but the body which you can torment,
And I into the world all soul was sent."

*

Davenant, and others of the poets of the day besides Jonson, celebrated the event. How it came to interest Milton's Muse does not appear; but these lines of Milton on the Marchioness may have come into the hands of many who also saw Jonson's ::

This rich marble doth inter
The honored wife of Winchester,
A Viscount's daughter, an Earl's heir,
Besides what her virtues fair
Added to her noble birth,
More than she could own on earth.
Summers three times eight save one
She had told; alas! too soon
After so short time of breath,
To house with darkness and with death!

来 *
Once had the early matrons run
To greet her of a lovely son,
And now with second hope she goes
And calls Lucina to her throes;
But, whether by mischance or blame,
Atropos for Lucina came,
And with remorseless cruelty
Spoiled at once both fruit and tree.

*

And some flowers and some bays
For thy hearse, to strew the ways,
Sent thee from the banks of Camo
Devoted to thy virtuous name.

There is some interest in comparing the grace of these lines by the young Cambridge student with what the veteran laureate produced on the same occasion.

ACADEMIC YEAR 1631-2.

MILTON ætat. 23. Vice-Chancellor, Dr. HENRY BUTTs, of Benet (elected to the office for the third time

in unusual compliment to his zeal and efficiency). Proctors, Thomas Tyrwhit, of St. John's, and LIONEL GATFIELD, of Jesus.

MICHAELMAS TERM . October 10, 1631, to December 16, 1631.
LENT TERM

January 13, 1631-2, to March 23, 1631-2.
EASTER TERM April 11, 1632, to July 6, 1632.

This was to be Milton's last year at Cambridge; and, as it involved his preparations for his M. A. degree, it was necessarily the busiest of the three subsequent to his attaining the degree of Bachelor. During this session, accordingly, all that we have from his pen of a non-academical character consists of one English letter sent from Cambridge to a friend, together with the English sonnet, entitled “On his being arrived at the age of twenty-three." It will be best to defer farther notice of these till next chapter.

About the time when the letter and the sonnet were written, there was published at Cambridge a little volume of academical verses, to which Milton, if he had chosen, might have been a contributor. It was now eighteen months since a living heir to the throne had been born in young Prince Charles, afterwards Charles II.; but as the event had happened when the University was broken up by the plague (May 29, 1630), Cambridge had not been able, like her more fortunate sister of Oxford, to collect her muses for the customary homage. The omission had lain heavily on her heart; and the Queen having again (Nov. 4, 1631) presented the nation with a royal babe — the Princess Mary, afterwards Mary of Orange, and mother of William III. - the University poets thought it best to celebrate this birth and the former