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of heroic men or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that is praiseworthy."

What marvel if a young mind in Cambridge, with thoughts of this nature struggling to get form and fixedness, should have been to a great extent, a mind dwelling apart? What marvel if such a youth is found to lament the all but total absence of persons with conceptions or sympathies at all of this order among those who were about him?2 That the collapse and reserve following from such a sense of isolation should have been construed as the evidence of a haughty temper, and of undue self-esteem, was no more than might have been expected. In some connections, to make men enemies, you have only to allow them to suspect that you deem them inferiors. It is clear that from these causes Milton suffered during the early days of his college course. Something of haughtiness there probably was in his manner, but much that had that appearance came from another source. His self-esteem, too, was considerable; but it was calm, intelligent, and such as his intelligence would not have allowed him to throw off, even if he had endeavoured to do so. His superiority was a fact, and it would have been affectation in him to have seemed to be unconscious of it. Every one has heard that from his fair complexion, and the beauty of his features, he sometimes went by the name of the "lady of Christ's." But it was well known that he was a good swordsman; and Wood says, "His deportment was affable, his gait erect and manly, bespeaking courage and undauntedness."

Milton must have commenced the study of Hebrew when very young. The earliest poetry that has reached us from his pen consists of his paraphrases on the 114th and 136th Psalms. Those attempts, he tells us, were made in his fifteenth year. There is a stately and vigorous tone in them of the kind which was to be characteristic of his later writings. His next poetical composition known to us dates nearly a year after his connection with Cambridge. It is a poem entitled "On the Death of a Fair Infant" The infant was the child of his sister Philips. The verses exhibit a rich play of fancy, and are full of conceptions and expressions which only a true poet would have been able to command. The "Vacation Exercise," which stands next in order, was written some twelve months later, and is chiefly interesting as showing how the young poet could manipulate the dry logic of the schools, when disposed to exercise his skill on such subjects. The hymn which followed, "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," is of another order. It is a glorious utterance, worthy of its subject. In the judgment of Mr. Hallam, it may, perhaps, be said to be the most beautiful hymn in our language. It was produced for the Christmas of 1629. Immediately afterwards the pieces on the "Circumcision" and the "Passion" were written; but at the eighth verse of the piece last named, the poet stayed his hand, and at a later time subjoined the following statement of his reason for so doing: "This subject the author finding to be above the years he then had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left unfinished." Critics have regarded this judgment as a sound one. His sixteen lines "On Shakespeare" are supposed to have been written on a blank leaf of a copy of the works of the great dramatist, probably on a copy of the first folio edition. In 1632 we find them, with other

verses of the same kind, prefixed to the second edition of that collection, but they are printed anonymously. The fact, however, of their appearing there is interesting, from their being the first lines of Milton that, so far as we know, had then found their way into print at all. The piece, from about the same time, on listening to "Solemn Music," is quite Miltonic in its cast:—

That undisturbed song of pure content,

Aye sung before the saphire-coloured throne,

To Him who sits thereon,

With saintly shout and solemn jubilee:

Where the bright scraphims in burning row,

And the cherub host in thousand quires,

Touch their immortal harps of golden wires,

With those just saints that wear victorious paims,

Hymns devout and holy psalms,

Sing everlastingly.

The Marchioness of Winchester was a lady of great beauty, beloved for her benevolence, and reverenced for her extraordinary endowments. An inflammation, which passed from her face to her throat, carried her off almost suddenly, and while in a state of pregnancy. Her death was widely and deeply deplored, and called forth poetical tributes to her memory from Ben Jonson. Davenant, and some other well-known names. Milton also brought his lament, under the title of "An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester." Of this production it will be enough to say, that the young poet of Christ's did not suffer from being brought into comparison on this occasion with the yeterans in his art. We only need direct the attention of the reader to the sonnet on his reaching "The age of twenty-three," to his lines on "Time," and to those on Hobson, the "University Carrier," to complete our account of the known English poetry of Milton during his seven years of residence at Cambridge.

But Milton's poetry in Latin during his student years was not inconsiderable. No fragment of it, however, passed into print during that period; and it has been generally accepted as evidence of his scholarship, rather than as presenting a fitting vehicle for the action of his genius as a poet.

If Milton was dissatisfied with the aids to culture which he found in Cambridge, it should be remembered that Gibbon was much more dissatisfied with Oxford on that ground a century later, and a man like the poet Wordsworth may be found expressing himself somewhat after the same manner even in our time. But the truth is, in the best colleges and in the best times, the man who gets no more education than tutorial oversight and help may secure to him will get very little. Milton, no doubt, owed something to his tutor Tovey; but more, immensely more, to that wider tutoring of society and of books which gave its influence to the voluntary action of his nature. The things which grow in the soul are things more or less native to it. To educate the mind is to draw out its power, and the power must be there, or it cannot be educed. All gifted minds have been conscious of this fact. It was thus eminently with the man who was to become the author of "Paradise Lost."

Milton did not seem to be in haste to decide on his walk in life. His course was so apparently aimless, down even to the last year of his time in Cambridge, that a friend, to whose judgment he owed some deference, appears to have expostulated with him on that ground. In a carefully-written letter he attempts to vindicate himself. He denies being governed by a mere love of learning. Were he influenced by no stronger motive, there were considerations, such as the desire of "home and family," or of "honour and repute," that would soon overpower that motive. But the love of learning being good in itself, may beget such a reverence of what should be

Apology for Smeetymnuus.

^"It is thus he writes after about two years' residence in college: "Truly among us here, as far as I know, there are hardly one or two, here and there, who do not fly off unfeathered in theology, while all but rude and uneducated in philology, as well as in philosophy, content to lightly pick up as much theology as may suffice for anyhow sticking together a little sermon, and stitching it over with worn rags from other quarters."

Letter to Alexander Gill, July 2, 1628; Masson's Life of Micton, 164-5. This discontent with the men, and a discontent, no less marked, with the routine of the place, was not a mood likely to make many friends; yet who can wonder at the feeling?