mental amplitude for which he was intended. We know that a portrait of him, when he was only ten years of age, was painted by the celebrated Cornelius Janssen; and, if we had not been positively told, on the authority of Aubrey3, that he was then a poet, we should have inferred that the son, who was made the object of so flattering a distinction by a father, in competent indeed but by no means in affluent circumstances, could not have been a common child9. "My father destined me (our author says), when I was yet a little boy, to the study of elegant literature; and, so eagerly did I seise on it that, from my twelfth year, I seldom quitted my studies for my bed till the middle of the night. This proved the first cause of the ruin of my eyes; in addition to the natural weakness of which organs, I was afflicted with frequent pains in my head. When these maladies could not restrain my rage for learning, my father provided that I should be daily instructed in some school 8 Aubrey, who is usually distinguished by the title of the Antiquarian, is the author of " Monumenta Britannica," and of a MS. Life of Milton, preserved in the Mus. Ash. Oxon. He was personally acquainted with our poet, and from him Wood professes to derive the materials of his account of Milton. It is but fair to state, that I owe my acquaintance with Aubrey principally to Mr. Warton; who speaks of the "Monumenta Britannica," as a very solid and rational work, and vindicates its author from the charge of fantastical, except on the subjects of chemistry and ghosts. Aubrey however, on the whole, is a weak and old womanish writer; whose authority, on the present subject at least, is to be received with caution, and only where no other can be obtained. 9" Pater me puerulum humaniorum literarum studiis destinavit; quas ita avidè arripui, ut ab anno ætatis duodecimo vix unquam ante mediam noctem à lucubrationibus cubitum discederem; quæ prima oculorum pernicies fuit: quorum ad naturalem debilitatem accesserant et crebri capitis dolores; quæ omnia cum discendi impetum non retardarent, et in ludo literario, et sub aliis domi magistris erudiendum quotidie curavit." Defen. Secun. P. W. v. 250. abroad, or by domestic tutors at home." How great are the obligations of Britain and of the world to such a father, engaged in the assiduous and well directed cultivation of the mind of such a son! But the reward of the father was ample; and no one, but a parent of taste and sensibility under circumstances of some resemblance, can form any estimate of the gratification which he must have felt from his child's increasing progress, and from the prospects which it gradually opened. How exquisite must have been his sensations on receiving, in that admirable Latin poem which is addressed to him, the fullest evidence of the learning, genius, taste, piety, and gratitude which had unfolded beneath his eye! How pleased must he have been to accept immortality from the hand which he had himself fostered-to be assured of visiting posterity as the benefactor of his illustrious offspring, and of being associated, as it were, with him in the procession and expanding pomp of his triumph! We may imagine with what pleasure a father would read the following elegant compliment to his own peculiar talent from the pen of his accomplished and poetic son: Nec tu perge, precor, sacras contemnere Musas; Ipse volens Phœbus se dispertire duobus, Nor you affect to scorn the Aonian quire, Arion's tuneful heir:-then wonder not My kindred blood is warm with kindred flame; This must have been most acceptable; and yet, perhaps, more gratifying to the heart of a parent would be that effusion of filial affection with which the poem concludes. At tibi, chare pater, postquam non æqua merenti But since, dear sire, my gratitude can find my large heart my bounded fortunes wrong,- And you, sweet triflings of my youthful state, How one could merit, and how one could praise 1o ! Some part of our author's early education was committed to the care of Mr. Thomas Young, a puritan minister and a native, as Aubrey affirms, of Essex but at what precise period this connexion began or ended is not now to be ascertained. It has been deemed probable that Young continued in his office till the time when, in consequence of his religious opinions, he was compelled to retire to the continent, where he obtained the appointment of minister to the British merchants at Hamburgh. Young's departure from England is stated to have taken place in 1623, when his pupil is supposed to have been placed, in his fifteenth year, at St. Paul's school. But this statement seems to be inaccurate, as his pupil, in a letter dated from Cambridge in 1628, promises him a visit at his country house in Suffolk, and compliments him on the independency of mind with which he maintained himself, like a Grecian sage or an old Roman consul, on the profits of a small farm 11. 10 The reader will find an entire translation of this poem at the end of the volume. 11 "Rus tuum accersitus, simul ac ver adoleverit, libenter adveniam ad capessendas anni tuique non minus colloquii delicias: et ab urbano strepitu C 66 Availing myself" Milton writes to his late tutor" of your invitation to your country house, I will with pleasure come to you as soon as the spring is further advanced, that I may at once enjoy the delightfulness of the season and that of your conversation. I will then retire for a short time, as I would to the celebrated porch of Zeno or to the Tusculan villa of Cicero, from the tumult of the town to your Suffolk Stoa, where you, like another Serranus or Curius, in moderate circumstances but with a princely soul, reign tranquilly in the midst of your little farm.”—In the same year, however, we find him on the con subducam me paulisper ad Stoam tuam Icenorum, tanquam ad celeberrimam illam Zenonis porticum aut Ciceronis Tusculanum, ubi tu, in re modicâ regio sanè animo, veluti Serranus aliquis aut Curius, in agello tuo placide regnas *." Mr. Warton imagines that Young returned in or before this year (1628): but Laud's persecution of the puritans was now at its height; and if Young formerly fled from this persecution, he must at the time in question have returned by stealth, and could hardly have resided openly upon his Suffolk living at Stow-Market. As the Iceni are supposed to have inhabited the counties of Norfolk and Cambridge as well as that of Suffolk, the expression of "Stoam tuam Icenorum," can be confined to Suffolk only by a reference to Young's living of Stow-Market. When Milton used the word 66 Stoa," on this occasion, and forced it from its proper station next to "Zenonis," he playfully intended, no doubt, an allusion to his tutor's Stow. It is probable that Young did not return from the continent till about the end of 1640 or the beginning of the following year, when the Long Parliament offered to him and to his brother exiles protection from the tyranny of the High Commission and the Star-Chamber courts. Soon after this period, we find him engaged in controversy, as one of the writers of the pamphlet called Smectymnuus, against Bishop Hall and Archbishop Usher. He was a preacher at Duke's Place, and was nominated one of the famous Assembly of Divines, whom the Parliament appointed in 1643 for the management of religion. On the visitation of the University of Cambridge, by the Earl of Manchester, he was established, on the ejection of Dr. Richard Stern, in the Mastership of Jesus College; and retained it, with much credit to himself and advantage to the college, till his refusal of subscription to THE ENGAGEMENT occasioned his expulsion from the office. He died, and was buried, as Mr. Warton in one of his notes in his edition of Milton's juvenile poems informs us, at Stow-Market, of which parish he had been Vicar during thirty years. * Epis. Thomæ Junio Jul. 2, 1628. P. W. vi. 112. |