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done with it as to dispose a man to hazard the charge of being late in the field, rather than incur the reproach of appearing there not duly equipt. He then transcribes for his friend the sonnet he had written, when arrived at the age of twenty-three, as evidence that he had not been without thought on this subject. The friend so addressed evidently hoped to see him a parish priest. Milton does not express, on this occasion, any conscientious objection to becoming a clergyman-as a Cambridge student, and as Cambridge was then governed, it was not likely that he would do so. We have good reason to think that he felt scruples on that point even then. But he had enough to urge in self-defence, without touching upon matters which Laud and his instruments were doing their best to punish as crimes. Ten years later he had cast aside all such reticence. He then says, as we have seen, that by his parents and friends he was destined, "of a child," to the church, and that his own inclination tended that way, "till coming to some maturity of years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the church," he saw clearly "that he who would take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which unless he took with a conscience that would retch. he must straight perjure himself, or split his faith." He thought it good, therefore, "to prefer a blameless silence, before the sacred office of speaking, bought and began with servitude and forswearing." He speaks of himself, accordingly, as a man "Church-ousted by the prelates," and as possessing a right, in return to criticise both the church and her rulers.1

Milton, we have reason to think, had his moments in which he thought of giving himself to the law. But his writings in prose and verse, before leaving Cambridge, gave his friends the impression that he had a vocation to write poetry that would live; and such was, no doubt, the dream of his own spirit, when in his higher moods. To this idea he endeavoured, by degrees, to reconcile the more conventional sagacity of his worthy father. He reminded him of his own passion for music—what marvel if the son of such a father should have a passion for poetry? It was painful for him to disappoint the hopes of one so well entitled to his reverence and affection; but in his estimation, the silver mines of Peru were of small value compared with the power to produce immortal verse. His father, in his generous wisdom, had aided him in realising capacity and passion in that form, and must bear with him in obeying this current of his nature.² In this mood Milton left Cambridge.

By that time the scrivener had relinquished business, and had settled in the village of Horton, in Buckinghamshire, with the intention, apparently, of passing the evening of his days in that retreat. How it went with the son in the next five years of his life, he has himself stated in few words. "At my father's country residence," he says, "whither he had retired to pass his old age, I, with every advantage of leisure, spent a complete holiday in turning over the Greek and Latin writers; not but that sometimes I exchanged the country for the town, either for the purpose of buying books or for that of learning something new in mathematics or in music, in which sciences I then delighted." During those five years Milton wrote his sonnet on the Nightingale, the Allegro and Penseroso, the Arcades, and Comus, and Lycidas. The Nightingale is founded on the bit of rural credulity which supposed that to hear the note of that bird in spring before the cuckoo was a sign of success in love. Concerning the Allegro and Penseroso, we only need repeat that they have their place in the first rank of our idyllic poetry. The Arcades is an incomplete production; the omitted portion was probably in prose. Harefield, the seat of that distinguished lady, the Countess Dowager of Derby, where this dramatic poem was presented, was only a few miles distant from Horton. But we have no reason to suppose that Milton was known to the family. It is probable that

1 The Reason of Self-Government.

Ad Patrem.

\* Defensio Secunda-

the lines were written at the request of his musical friend, Henry Lawes. To a request from that quarter we no doubt owe the origin of Comus, of which we shall speak elsewhere.

It was during his residence at Horton that Milton was incorporated as a member of the University of Oxford. In those days, the standing of a scholar in one university might thus give him a place in the other. Oxford was much more accessible from Horton than Cambridge.

It was at Horton, too, and in this interval, that Milton lost "his most excellent mother." She lies buried in the chancel of the parish church. By the side of that grave Milton must have stood, and have shed his tear with his mourning father, his sister, and his brother, as they listened to the earth falling on that coffin, and looked their last look into that narrow house to which all come in their allotted time.

It was also towards the close of these five years at Horton, that Edward King, of Christ's College, the friend of Milton, perished in the St. George's Channel, an event which called forth from the poet the monody under the name of Lycidas. The gifted man whose life thus closed in the twenty-fifth year of his age, was looking towards the ministry of the church; and Milton glances at this fact so as to indicate, as clearly as was then safe, his own malcontent feeling in relation to the ecclesiastical establishment, and his expectation of a coming retribution in that quarter. When this monody was reprinted, in 1645, the author could dare to proclaim his whole meaning, and he accordingly placed the following sentence at the head of the poem: "In this monody, the author bewails a lost friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester, in the Irish seas, 1637; and by occasion foretels the ruin of our corrupted clergy, then in their height."

But an interval was still to pass before this prophesy would be realized.

We have two letters written by Milton about this time, to his friend Diodati, which give us some insight into his habits and inner life. He assures his friend that he is a slow man in letter-writing. Another cause of his seeming negligence as a correspondent consisted in his inability to mingle work and play. In his case, generally, to be committed to a thing was to be committed to it without interruption until done, or until he should come to some natural resting-place. In some respects he will not venture to say what God may or may not have conferred upon him; but one gift, at least, has been instilled into him—viz., a fervent love of the beautiful, and a passion to seek it wherever it may be found. To a commerce with such things he must aspire; and if he should not do so with a success commensurate with his hopes, his next effort should be to do fitting homage to those who have been more fortunate. He confesses that in this spirit he is pluming his wings, moving slowly, but, as he hopes, wisely. It must not be supposed, however, that he has no thought of the practical. Far from it. He has some notion of taking chambers in one of the Inns of Court; and thinks it would be pleasant to see his friends there, and to saunter with them, on summer evenings, in the neighbouring warks.

We have no reason to suppose that this last thought was ever acted upon. Another idea took much stronger possession of his mind about this time. His studies had filled his imagination with visions of the past, associated with the Alps, the land of the Apennines, and the regions beyond. How natural that he should wish to traverse those countries, to trend the old pathways in their ancient cities, and to gaze on the monumental wonders still to be seen there. The failing health of his mother may have constrained him to check this desire hitherto; and the fact that since her decease his brother Christopher had married, and had come to reside with his father,

'Masson's Milton, pp. 597-801.