language.' In 1630 he wrote the "Epitaph * on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, W. Shakspeare," which was published anonymously in the Second Folio Shakspeare in 1632, and was the first of Milton's productions that appeared in print.

At Cambridge Milton's tutor was William Chappell (afterwards Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and Bishop of Cork); but before he had completed a year's residence, owing to some difference with his tutor, Milton had to withdraw from the University for some months. That he was not wholly to blame is shown by the fact that his absence did not cause the loss of the term, and that on his return he was allowed to select another tutor-Nathaniel Tovey.

There was probably already a revolutionary or eikonoclastic spirit in Milton; at all events he showed the same dislike to the course of studies and the whole tone of Cambridge life as Gray did a century later in almost the same words. In spite, however, of the freedom of his strictures on the University curriculum or practices, and the probable aloofness of his life from that of his fellow students, he was evidently regarded with esteem and admiration, and his powers frankly acknowledged by the University. Two passages from writings of his own best illustrate the feelings he had inspired in himself and felt towards the members of a University of which he afterwards, with his mature judgment, wrote that he " never greatly admired" it. The first of these is in a Latin

"What needs my Shakspeare for his honoured bones," etc.

+ See the Life of Gray " in this series, p. xxviii. "Apology for Smectymnuus," 1642.

oration, delivered in the hall of Christ's College, before the fellows and students, at the close of the summer session in 1628. After acknowledging his selection to be the spokesman on the "celebration of a very old custom,” he says:—

"There also drew and invited me, in no ordinary degree, to undertake this part, the very-recently-discovered graciousness to me of you who are of the same College with me. For when, some few months ago, I was about to perform an oratorical office before you, and supposed that any lucubrations of mine would be absolutely disagreeable to you, and would have more merciful judges in Eacus and Minos than among you, truly beyond my fancy or slightest hope, they were received as I heard and myself felt with the applause of all, even of those who on account of the disagreements of our studies were of a wholly hostile and unfriendly spirit. What a generous mode of exercising rivalry is this, and not unworthy of a royal breast, if, when friendship itself is wont to misconstrue many a thing blamelessly done, bitter and hostile enmity did not grudge to interpret with more clemency than I deserved much that was perhaps erroneous, and not a few things which I had doubtless said without sufficient skill. Truly I am delighted and wonderfully pervaded with pleasure, when I see myself surrounded, begirt with such a crowd of most learned men; and yet again, when with inturned eyes I behold my weakness, I indeed am conscious of often blushing to myself, and a certain sadness depresses and chokes my rising joy. . . . Let no one wonder if I triumph, as one placed among the stars, that so many men eminent for erudition, and nearly the whole University, have flocked thither."

The other passage is in reply to the "libeller " who had taunted him with being expelled from Cambridge. To this he says:—

"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 grateful mind, that more than ordinary favour 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 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.'

The wilder spirits among the youth at Cambridge nicknamed Milton “the Lady,”—a tribute to the virtuous life of the undergraduate who afterwards wrote that 'glorious passage' about the "pious and just reverence for his own person"; he was, moreover, as Wood tells us, " erect and manly, bespeaking courage and undauntedness."

Milton graduated as B.A. in 1629, and as M.A. in July, 1632, and, after seven years' residence at Cambridge, retired, in 1632, to an estate which his father had purchased at Horton, in Buckinghamshire. Horton is not far from Windsor and Eton; and a few miles further off are Stoke Poges and Burnham, and beyond lie Chalfont St. Giles, and Beaconsfield. Referring to his life at Horton Milton, in a college declamation, exclaims :- "I call to witness the groves and rivers, and the beloved village elms, under which in the last past summer I remember so pleasantly having had supreme delight with the Muses, where I too, among rural scenes and remote forests, seemed as if I could have grown and vegetated through a hidden eternity."+

To this pleasant retreat, with its

* "An Apology for Smectymnuus."

† Almost the very words Gray uses in a letter from

"Meadows trim with daisies pied,

Shallow brooks and rivers wide,"

we owe those shorter poems of his, the picturesqueness of which reflects the beauties of the scenery amid which they were written, rivalling in the sweetness of their cadence the charm of earliest birds,' while we

"Are held with his melodious harmony

In willing chains and sweet captivity." Between 1632 and 1637 he wrote 66 Arcades," "L'Allegro," "Il Penseroso,” the Mask of “Comus," and "Lycidas." Thus all Milton's poetry, with the exception of the " Sonnets," ""Paradise Lost," "Paradise Regained," and "Samson Agonistes," was written before the commencement of the Civil War.

"L'Allegro' " and the companion poem "Il Penseroso," the one representing the scholar as the cheerful man and the other as the thoughtful man, contain

Many a winding bout

Of linked sweetness long drawn out."

"Comus was written as a dramatic entertainment, with music by Henry Lawes, and was performed on Michaelmas night, 1634, at Ludlow Castle, in Shropshire, to celebrate the installation of the Earl of Bridgewater, as Lord President of Wales. It was first printed anonymously by Lawes in 1637; and in 1645 appeared in the First Edition of Milton's Poems, with a letter from Sir Henry Wotton, in which he says of the lyrical

Burnham to Horace Walpole, a hundred years later: "Both vale and hill are covered with most venerable beeches, and other very reverend vegetables; . . . at the foot of one of these squats me (il penseroso), and there I grow for a whole morning."

parts in it that he had seen yet nothing parallel in our language.' In "Comus we have a revival of the melody and fancy of the minor poems of Spenser and Shakspeare, but the poem it most resembles is Fletcher's "Faithful Shepherdess."

In the monody of "Lycidas" he bewails the loss of his friend, Edward King, Fellow of Christ's College, who was drowned crossing over to Ireland in August, 1637. It was finished in November, 1637, and was first printed in a volume of Elegies, published at Cambridge in 1638, on the death of King; twenty-three were Latin or Greek, and fifteen in English; the last is Milton's, it is without title and is signed "J. M."

The reputation of almost every great poet or author rests on some one work,—an ‘Iliad' or an Eneid,' linked with which his name descends to posterity; yet had Milton not survived the Restoration, and had "Paradise Lost' never appeared, still for his Minor Poems-minor only when compared with his great Epic-for his Comus," his Lycidas," his " L'Allegro " and "Il Penseroso," the name of Milton would be among the first of those

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"On Fame's eternal bead-roll worthy to be filed."

Here may be resumed Milton's account of his life in Cambridge, at Horton, and of his tour on the Continent:

"Here I passed seven years in the usual course of instruction and study, with the approbation of the good, and without any stain upon my character, till I took the degree of Master of Arts. After this I did not, as this miscreant feigns, run away into Italy, but of my own accord retired to my father's house, whither I was accompanied by the regrets of most of the fellows of the college, who shewed me no common marks of friendship