by Bologna and Ferrara to Venice: here he sojourned for a month; and then travelled by Verona and Milan to Geneva. His way back lay through France; having been absent about fifteen months.

I have brought these facts together rather out of order, because I believe they were the preservatives of Milton's poetical genius against his political adoptions. I now go back to his earliest manhood. From school the poet was sent to Christ's College, Cambridge, in February, 1624, æt. 16, just before King James's death. Already, or about this time, he had commenced his poetical character, for he had paraphrased two of the Psalms, cxiv. and cxxxvi. In this latter are some fine stanzas, indicative of the character of his future genius; witness this speaking of the Creator:

Who by his wisdom did create

The painted heavens so full of state:
Who did the solid earth ordain

To rise above the watery main :
Who by his all-commanding might
Did fill the new-made world with light,
And caused the golden-tressed sun
All the day long his course to run;
The horned moon to shine by night
Amongst her spangled sisters bright.
He with his thunder-clasping hand
Smote the first-born of Egypt land;
And, in despite of Pharaoh fell,
He brought from thence his Israël.
The ruddy waves he cleft in twain
Of the Erythræan main:

The floods stood still, like walls of glass,
While the Hebrew bands did pass :

But full soon they did devour
The tawny king with all his power.
His chosen people he did bless
In the wasteful wilderness:
In bloody battle he brought down
Kings of prowess and renown:
He foil'd both Seon and his host,
That ruled the Amorrean coast;
And large-limb'd Og he did subdue,
With all his over-hardy crew;
And to his servant Israël

He gave their land, therein to dwell.

'On the

In 1625 also Milton wrote his poem Death of a Fair Infant dying of a cough,' said to be his niece, daughter of his sister Phillips. It has some fine stanzas, but a little quaint and farfetched. Take these for instance :

V.

Yet can I not persuade me thou art dead,

Or that thy corse corrupts in earth's dark womb;
Or that thy beauties lie in wormy bed,

Hid from the world in a low-delved tomb.
Could heaven, for pity, thee so strictly doom?
Oh, no! for something in thy face did shine
Above mortality, that show'd thou wast divine.

VI.

Resolve me, then, oh soul most purely bless'd!
(If so it be that thou these plaints dost hear,)
Tell me, bright spirit, where'er thou hoverest,
Whether above that high first-moving sphere,
Or in the Elysian fields, if such there were.
Oh, say me true, if thou wert mortal wight,
And why from us so quickly thou didst take thy flight?

on

Thomas Warton observes of this Ode, that " the whole, from a boy of seventeen, it is an extraordinary effort of fancy, expression, and ver

sification: even in the conceits, which are many, we perceive strong and peculiar marks of genius. I think Milton has here given a very remarkable specimen of his ability to succeed in the Spenserian stanza: he moves with great ease and address amidst the embarrassment of a frequent return of rhyme."

Several other poems of Milton, both English and Latin, were written at college: from all these extraordinary compositions it appears that the tone, richness, and character of Milton's genius were always the same from the age of fifteen; and probably even much earlier: it was always mixed up with both classical and abstruse learning; and with an infusion from the poetry of the Bible. His Latin verses had less of the wild, the sublime, and the visionary than his English, which of course arose from the difference of his models, and the different characters of the respective languages. The feudal institutions, the enthusiasm and splendour of chivalry, and the superstitions of the dark ages had introduced a new school of poetry in Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Sackville, Spenser, and Shakspeare, more suited to Milton's genius; which yet he was deterred from introducing in compositions, where he endeavoured to rival the ancient classics. There is more of what would be by cold minds called sober thoughts, sentiments, and images in his Latin productions than in his vernacular; but there certainly is not the same raciness, vigour, and picturesqueness.

His Epistles to his friend Charles Deodate are, indeed, very beautiful: they relate his studies, his amusements, his feelings, his ambitions; but these have more of amiable virtue in them than of imaginative richness.

From one of these poems it comes out that he was rusticated from his college: the cause has been speculated upon with various comments and conclusions, according to the tempers and political and personal prejudices of the censors; but I have no doubt that Mr. Mitford's opinion is the correct one. Milton, with a haughty spirit, and a consciousness of his own great genius and learning, would not submit to academical discipline. The line

Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meoobviously means nothing but a repugnance to the observation of those petty formalities and rules which irritate and insult great minds: it is absurd to construe it to have been corporal punishment.

He retired to his father's villa at Horton, near Colebrook, in Middlesex, glad to quit the dulness of the reedy Cam; and gave himself up entirely to the literature of his own taste in his exile-except during occasional visits to the capital to enjoy the the theatres, and the conversation of his friends. His college was glad to have him back again, conscious of the honour he did them by his mighty gifts and acquirements of intellect. But at Horton he says of himself,

Tempora nam licet hic placidis dare libera Musis,
Et totum rapiunt me, mea vita, libri.

Excipit hinc fessum sinuosi pompa theatri,

Et vocat ad plausus garrula scena suos.

Warton says, "Milton's Latin poems may be justly considered as legitimate classical compositions, and are never disgraced with such language and such imagery as Cowley's. Cowley's Latinity, dictated by an irregular and unrestrained imagination, presents a mode of diction, half Latin and half English. It is not so much that Cowley wanted a knowledge of the Latin style, but that he suffered that knowledge to be perverted and corrupted by false and extravagant thoughts. Milton was a more perfect scholar than Cowley, and his mind was more deeply tinctured with the excellences of ancient literature: he was a more just thinker, and therefore a more just writer: in a word, he had more taste, and more poetry, and consequently more propriety. If a fondness for the Italian writers has sometimes infected his English poetry with false ornaments, his Latin verses, both in diction and sentiment, are at least free from gross depravations.

"Some of Milton's Latin poems were written in his first year at Cambridge, when he was only seventeen: they must be allowed to be very correct and manly performances for a youth of that age; and, considered in that view, they discover an extraordinary copiousness and command of ancient fable and history. I cannot but add that Gray resembles Milton in many instances: among others, in their youth they were both strongly attached to the cultivation of Latin poetry."

Such was Milton's boyhood and youth; so predominant was his genius from the first. It was at Horton that Milton seems to have meditated