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we should have expected Milton to have sought as a friend. He had nothing of the stately decorum of the pedagogue about him. His brusque and rash ways did not minister to his father's comfort or to his own; but he was some ten years older than Milton, was a good classic, had printed Latin and Greek verses, and made his intercourse with the youth from Bread Street so profitable to him that Milton was constrained to speak of it in after years with much gratitude. Many an attempt in verse, we can suppose, was submitted by him to the judgment of his senior friend, and assistance obtained in many a difficulty in his general studies.

On the 12th of February, 1625, Milton entered Christ's College, Cambridge, as a "lesser pensioner," which was a middle position between that of a "fellow commoner," who paid the most, and that of a "sizer," who paid the least. All received the same education, but the difference in payment secured a difference in domestic privileges. The students and officials of Christ's College at that time; when all were assembled, numbered about two hundred and fifty; the students in the university were nearly three thousand. In Christ's College, the most remarkable man was Joseph Meade, fellow and tutor, well known to divines by his Clavis Apocalyptica and his studies in that direction; and now better known to the students of English history by his letters, full of the news and gossip of the hour. Many of those letters have been recently printed. Meade was wont to say freely, "I like to know how the world goes;" and fortunately for those who came within his reach, his genial nature prompted him to communicate readily the intelligence which he had been so eager to acquire. He must, in fact, have been the newspaper of his college; and if any man there was very ignorant of what was passing in Parliament, Court, or Country, the blame must have been his own. Milton, we may be sure, would not have been thus at fault. The next man of mark in Christ's College was William Chappell, also fellow and tutor, and, for a time Milton's tutor. Chappell could dispute in Latin, after the old scholastic fashion still in vogue, with much keenness and readiness. But he was of the school of Laud in ecclesiastical affairs, and does not seem to have possessed the sort of power necessary to impress capable and independent minds.1

Milton's connection with Cambridge extended through seven years, from 1625, when in the seventeenth year of his age, to 1632, when in his twenty-third year. In respect to public affairs those years were memorable. James I. had breathed his last. Charles had prosecuted his struggle with his Parliament, and had at length resolved on the perilous experiment of attempting to rule England without convening any such assemblies. The war with France had been added to the war with Spain; and both, after becoming the cause of much disorder and suffering through the country, had reached a disgraceful close. The Duke of Buckingham had been cut off by the dagger of Felton, and the government came to rest in the hands of Charles and Laud. The names of the popular leaders in the Commons—the Eliots, the Cokes, and the Seldens, had been ringing in the ears of the country, and the harsh treatment to which men of that order were subjected, had called forth comments of all kinds, in all places. The stronger men among the Parliamentarians muttered their prophesy that affairs would be worse and then better. It was a matter of grateful recollection to such men that the Petition of Right had its place on our statute-book, constituting as it did a signal landmark in our constitutional history.

The events of this interval in Cambridge were not of a remarkable description. The election of Buckingham to the office of Chancellor, in obedience to the pleasure of the king, filled one-

half of the university with a sense of humiliation, and prompted the other balf to acts of sycophancy which verged not a little upon the ludicrous. Then, some while after, came the installation of his Grace, with all the honours and flatteries deemed suitable to the occasion. Subsequently the king and queen favoured the university with their presence, and a hectic flush of loyalty attended the event, which deceived no one who could look beneath the surface.

The course of study while Milton was at Cambridge, was still in process of transition from the old middle-age form towards that which has since obtained. The fame of the university in its study of mathematics was wholly to come. Not until some thirty years after Milton had left was a chair separated to that science. The elements of geometry, indeed, were not entirely overlooked, but the first rank was assigned to philology, theology, and philosophy—the latter term having respect mainly to logic and metaphysics. Lectures were delivered by university professors, which the students of the various colleges were expected, more or less, to attend. The tutorial work in each college, though systematically carried on, had not then superseded the university professor, as in later times. In every college the students were separated into sections, and were placed in connection with different tutors. The comparative merits of the students was ascertained, not by the kind of examination now usual, but by the set disputations carried on in Latin in the college chapel. Such disputations, coming to the turn of each man but rarely, together with readings with the tutor, and private reading, made up the routine from which a university education was to be realised.

We should conclude, without any direct testimony on the subject, that Milton acquitted himself creditably in his class with his tutors, that he took his full share in the chapel disputations, and that he was not negligent of private reading. We know more, however, from authentic sources, on this subject, than we should have felt at liberty to suppose, apart from such evidence. His nephew Philips says, that "for the extraordinary wit" and reading he had shown in his performances to attain his degree," he was "loved and admired by the whole university, particularly by the fellows, and the most ingenious persons of his house." Aubrey states that " he was a very hard student in the university, and performed all the exercises there with very great applause." Wood is still more emphatic, stating that as during his school-days, three years before, so at college, "'twas usual with him to sit up till midnight at his book, which was the first thing that brought his eyes into the danger of blindness;" that " he profited exceedingly by his indefatigable study, and performed his collegiate and academical exercises to the admiration of all, and was accounted to be a virtuous and sober person, yet not to be ignorant of his own parts." In 1642, one of his assailants described him as having spent a riotous youth at the university, and as having been at length "vomited thence." To which Milton replies, "for which commodious lie, that he may be encouraged in the trade another time, I thank him; for it has given me an apt occasion to acknowledge publicly, with all grateful mind, that more than ordinary respect which I found, above any of my equals, at the hands of those courteons and learned men, the fellows of that college wherein I spent some years, who, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified, in many ways, how much better it would content them that I should stay, as by many letters, full of kindness and loving respects, both before that time and long atter, I was assured of their singular good affection towards me . It should be borne in mind that these state-

Mitford—Masson. See many of Meade's Letters, as published by Ellis; and frequent citations from those in MS. in the third volume of Revolutions in English History.

^&lt;sup>1</sup> Masson's Life of Milton.

² This word was used at the time in the sense of capacity or genius.

Apology for Smeetymenway.