Confutation" (whom Milton believed to be the son of Bishop Hall) confesses that he had no

Where genial shade the naked fields refuse;
(Ah, most unfriendly to the courted Muse!)
And ill my soul a master's threats can bear,
With all the fretting of the pedant's war.
If this be banishment,-all cares aloof,
To live my own beneath a father's roof,
Still,-let an idle world condemn or not,—
Mine be a truant's name, an ́exile's lot.
O had no weightier ills oppress'd the doom
Of the sad bard in Tomi's wintry gloom;
Great Homer's self had seen a rival lay,
And Maro had resign'd his victor bay.
For here the Muses lead my hours along,
And all my day is study or is song.
Then tired, I hasten where the scene commands
The crowded theatre's applauding hands:
Whether its fictions show, with mimic truth,
A cautious parent, or a spendthrift youth;
A lover, or a peaceful son of war;-
Or, bawling the base jargon of the bar,
Pompous, and pregnant with a ten-years' cause,—
The prating, puzzled pleader of the laws.
There oft a servant aids the doting boy

To elude his sire, and gain his promised joy:
There a new feeling oft the maiden proves;

Knows not 'tis love, but while she knows not, loves.
Or there high tragedy, in wild despair,

Lifts her red hand and rends her streaming hair.

I look and weep:-I weep-yet look again,
And snatch from sorrow a delicious pain:
Whether the hapless youth, from love and life
Torn by strong fate, resign his virgin wife :
Or, hot from hell, the dire avenger stand,
Exerting o'er the wretch her Stygian brand:
Or Heaven's dread wrath o'ertake, with tardy pace,
The crimes of Atreus in his bleeding race:

Or Creon's court atone the incestuous sire's embrace.
Nor always do I lose, 'mid walls and streets,
Spring's painted blossoms and refreshing sweets.
Sometimes beneath my suburb grove I stray,
Where blending elms dispense a checquer'd day:
Where passing beauties often strike my sight,
Diurnal stars that shoot a genial light.
With raptured gaze, ah! often have I bung
On forms, of power to make old Saturn young:
Ah! often have I seen the radiant eye
Outblaze the gem, or Zembla's nightly sky;
The neck, more white than Pelops' ivory arm;
The nectar'd lip, with dewy rapture warm;

certain notice of his opponent, further than what he had gathered from the "Animadversions;" and Milton says, "18 He blunders at me for the

The front's resplendent grace; the playful hairs,
Compell'd by Love to weave his golden snares;

And the sweet power of cheek, where dimples wreathe,
And tints beyond the blush of Flora breathe.
Yield, famed Heroides! yield Nymphs! who strove
With heaven's great empress for the heart of Jove!
Stoop, Persian dames! your structured foreheads low!
Ye Grecian, Dardan, Roman damsels, bow!
And thou, Tarpeian poet*, cease to boast
Thy Pompey's porch, and theatre's bright host.
Let foreign nymphs the fruitless strife forbear:
Beauty's first prize belongs to Britain's fair,
Imperial London! built by Trojan hands,
With towery head illustrious o'er the the lands,
Happy-thrice happy!-what the sun beholds
Of female charms thy favor'd wall infolds.
Not more the stars, whose beams illume thy night
(Gay homagers of Luna's regent light),

Than lovely maids, of faultless form and face,
Who o'er thy crowded paths diffuse a golden grace.
Hither, 'tis thought, came wafted by her doves,
With all her shafts and war, the Queen of loves:
For this her Gnidos, Paphos, Ida scorn'd,
And Cyprus, with her rosy blush adorn'd.
But I, ere yet her sovereign power enthralls,
Prepare to fly these fascinating walls:
To shun with moly's aid, divine and chaste,
The courts by Circe's faithless sway disgraced;
And (fix'd my visit to Cam's rushy pools)

To bear once more the murmur of the schools.
But thou accept, to cheat the present time,

My pledge of love, these lines constrain'd to rhyme.

As this translation was made during a period of peculiar solicitude, when my mind was fevered, or rather phrensied, with alternate hopes and fears respecting a life far dearer to me than my own; and was written, only by scraps, in the few less agitated moments which it was then my fortune to enjoy, it is perhaps the worst of those versions which I have had the confidence to offer to the public. But I will not now either replace it with another, or even essentially alter it. With me it is consecrated by associated ideas; and if the reader, to whom it now belongs, cannot tolerate its imperfections, he may pass it over with a superficial glance; and may either condemn or pity me as his judgment or his sympathy may predomi

nate.

18 Apol. for Smectymnuus, P. W. i. 213.

* Ovid.

rest, and flings out stray 19 crimes at a venture, which he could never, though he be a serpent, suck from any thing that I have written."

Notwithstanding this strong assertion, the hostility of the present generation has again brought the evidence of Milton to convict Milton, and to establish the charges of his calumniator. In opposition to this pretended evidence stand the records of our author's university, and the force of his own positive declarations. By the former of these, which prove that he took his bachelor's degree as soon as it could regularly be taken 20, it is made highly probable, if not absolutely certain, that he lost no term"; and by the latter we are assured that he was not only exempted from punishment during his continuance at Cambridge, but in that seat of learning was an object of affection and respect. The passage, which I shall cite as worthy of the reader's attention, is in the "Apology for Smectymnuus." After mentioning the charge which we have already noticed, our author proceeds: "22 For which commodious lie, that he may be encouraged in the trade another time, I thank him: for it hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge publicly with all grateful mind that more than ordinary favor and respect which I found above any of my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the fellows of that college wherein I spent some

19 From the "Animadversions" no suspicion of a charge against their writer could by any process be extracted.

20 In Jan. 1628-9.

22 P. W. i. 219.

21 See Appendix.

years; who at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much better it would content them that I would stay: as by many letters full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I was assured of their singular good affection towards me. Which, being likewise propense to all such as were for their studious and civil life worthy of esteem, I could not wrong their judgments and upright intentions so much as to think I had that regard from them for other cause than that I might be still encouraged to proceed in the honest and laudable courses of which they apprehended I had given good proof."

23

The evidence now before us seems to be conclusive; for I know not to what tribunal an appeal can be carried from the authority of the registers of a University, strengthened with assertions 2, publicly made and uncontradicted, at a time when their falsehood would be jealously watched and might easily be detected. What interpretation then are we to assign to those expressions in the elegy to Deodati, which certainly refer to some compulsive absence of the young student from his college, and which discover no fondness in the poet for the society or the country of Cambridge? As we find from some lines in the conclusion of the same elegy that it was his intention to return to his college, we

23 The slander was repeated, with some additional circumstances, by Du Moulin in his " Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum." "Aiunt hominem Cantabrigiensi academiâ ob flagitia pulsum, dedecus et flagitium fugisse et in Italiam commigrasse," p. 8. edit. printed 1652. This is the vague and baseless echo of the writer of the "Modest Confutation." We shall soon have occasion to cite our author's reply to this revived calumny.

may fairly, as I think, impute the banishment, of which he speaks, to the want of pecuniary sup→ plies for his maintenance at the University; and the example of Gray may instruct us, that it is possible for a man of genius and of taste to dislike the conversation of a college, or the naked vicinity of the Cam, without being impelled to that dislike by unpopularity or injurious treatment.

The absurd story of the corporal punishment, which Milton is asserted to have suffered, may be regarded as undeserving of notice. It was communicated, as we are informed, with the pretence that it came from himself or from some of his near relations, by Aubrey to Wood; but with Wood, ill disposed as he is known to have been to the fame of Milton, it obtained so little credit as not to find admission into his page. Can the testimony then of Aubrey be received in this instance as possessing any weight? On the value of that confirmation of this tale which Mr. Warton, with dry positiveness, and Dr. Johnson, with the insult of affected concern, have pretended to discover in that expression of the last cited verses, "Cæteraque," &c. "and other things," I shall leave to the reader to determine; suggesting only that Dr. Johnson, for the purpose of concealing the weakness of his inference, has intimated a false translation of the passage, or rather has drawn a conclusion not warranted by his premises. He says that Milton declares himself weary of enduring "the threats of a rigorous

24 Warton's Life of Dean Bathurst.

D