For the most part, Milton is a young Ovid at the time when he wrote the lines that I have quoted. One of his poems describes the coming of spring (Eleg. v). It is Pagan from beginning to end, joyous in spirit, sensuous in flavor, perfect in form. Really if Milton had written it on musty parchment and had somebody discover it, the Classical pundits of his day would have proved beyond question by all the tests of scholarship that a lost work of Ovid had come to light. So with most of the other pieces that he collected into a tiny book of "elegies." To write them, he must have known his Ovid virtually by heart, not merely the Metamorphoses, which then and now make the best possible introduction to the world of romance and human charm preserved in the old Greek myths, but all the poems of Ovid, Fasti and Ibis as well as the poor verses of lamentation poured forth on the shores of the Black Sea, and of course, as Milton is writing elegy, the love poems, Amores, with Heroides and the Art of Love. The imitation is of the subtlest kind. There were no scientific works accessible in Milton's time, as there are now, on Ovid's versification, with imposing tables of statistics in which you can find the percentage of dactyls in any foot of the verse. It was a primitive age; our youthful poet had merely absorbed all the niceties of Ovid's art without cataloguing them. In looking back over these years, Milton speaks of the "smooth Elegiack Poets, whereof the Schools are not scarce. Whom, both for the pleasing sound of their numerous (melodious) writing, which in imitation I found most easie, and most agreeable to natures part in me, and for their matter, which what it is, there be few who know not, I was so allur❜d to read, that no recreation came to me better welcome." 2 But let none imagine that the experiences, real or imaginary, recorded in Milton's Latin poems, match those of Ovid. In his nearest approach to an Ovidian episode, he describes his youthful contempt of Cupid and tells how the winged god took revenge on him one bright Mayday in his nineteenth year. Here is what befell him. (Eleg. VII, 51 ff.)

And now I took my pleasure, sometimes in the city parks, where our citizens promenade, sometimes at neighboring country-places. Crowds of girls, with faces like to the faces of goddesses, came and went radiantly

(for) Smectymnuus, in Works, Ed. Pickering, 1851,

through the walks; the day brightened with a double splendor. Surely, the sun himself stole his beams from their faces. I was not stern with myself; I did not flee from the gracious spectacle, but let myself be led wherever youthful impulse directed. Rashly I sent my gaze to meet theirs; I could not control my eyes. Then by chance I noted one supreme above the others, and the light of her eyes was the beginning of my ills. She looked as Venus might wish to seem to mortals; lovely to behold as the queen of the gods was she. That rascal Cupid, harboring his grudge, had thrown her in my path; all alone, he had woven this plot against me. Not far off the sly god was hiding; his torch and many arrows hung as a great load from his back. Not a moment did he lose. Now he clung to her eyelids, now to her virgin face; thence he hopped upon her lips, and now he occupied her cheeks; and wherever the nimble archer went, ah, me! from a thousand points of vantage he struck my defenceless breast. Suddenly unwonted furies assailed my heart; I burned inly with love, I was all aflame. Meanwhile she who was my only delight in misery disappeared, never to be given to my eyes again.3

This is after all a tolerably harmless experience,-he spies a pretty girl in his promenade, falls desperately in love, and, ah, me! never beholds the fair creature thereafter. Ovid is often tantalizing, but never to this extent.

Perhaps you think that I am too long in getting at my subject,-Milton's rustication. I can plead in excuse that the prelude is part of the play. For it is in the first of these Ovidian pieces (Eleg. 1) that Milton tells how he was rusticated; no less sure in art and in sentiment than its successors, this poem was written when the lad was but seventeen. I will read you part of it. It was sent to Charles Diodati.

At last, my dear friend, your letter has reached me; the missive paper bears me your words from the western shore of the Dee, by Chester, where that river goes down swiftly to the Irish Sea. Much joy it gives me to think that a far-off country keeps for me so dear a head as yours, and a heart that loves me; and that this distant region owes me my merry mate, aye, and will soon repay him at my prayers. That city which Thames washes with her tidal wave, keeps me fast, nor does my pleasant birth-place detain me against my will; I have no wish to go back to reedy Cam; I feel no homesickness for that forbidden college room of mine. The bare fields there, niggard of pleasant shade, do not attract me. How ill does that place suit with poets! I have no fancy to endure

The translations of Milton's Latin poems given in this paper are from the admirable version (slightly revised) by William Vaughan Moody in the Cambridge Edition of Milton.

forever my stern master's threats or any of those other actions at which my nature rebelled. If this is "exile," to live under my father's roof and be free to use my leisure pleasantly, I will not repudiate either the outcast's name or lot but will in all happiness enjoy this state of banishment. Oh would that Ovid, sad exile in the fields of Thrace, had never suffered a worse lot! Then he would have yielded not a whit even to Ionian Homer, nor would the first praise be thine, Virgil, for he would have vanquished thee.

He then speaks of the joy of his freedom, freedom to bury himself in his books, which he calls his very life, and freedom to see whatever appears on the stage; it is hard to tell from his words. whether he means the actual theatre of his day or merely his reading in the ancient drama. I think he means both, now giving stock examples from the ancient stage, now suggesting modern plays by ancient examples, and now referring to what could come only from a modern play.*

Then there are the walks in town or country, and the fair visions that brighten these promenades.

Ah, how often have I stood stupified before the miracle of some gracious form, such as might give old Jove his youth again! Ah, how many times have I seen eyes brighter than gems, brighter than all the fires that roll about either pole, necks whiter than the ivory shoulder of Pelops or the Milky Way that flows with pure nectar. And exquisite grace of brow, and floating locks,-golden nets which Love casts deceivingly,—inviting cheeks, to which—even the blush of thy flower, Adonis, is dull! Yield, ye Heroides so praised of yore, and all ye loves that ensnared gadding Jove! Yield ye Persian damsels with your turreted brows; and all ye who dwell in Susa, in Memnon's Ninevah!-And let not Ovid boast the dames of Pompey's porch, nor the theatre resplendent with fashionable gowns. To the maidens of Britain first glory is due; suffice it, foreign dame, that thou canst follow them! And thou city of London, built by Trojan colonists, towered head conspicuous far and wide, thou, all too happy, enclosest with thy walls whatever beauty the pendulous Earth possesses. Not so many stars twinkle over thee in the clear night sky, ministrant troops of Endymion's goddess, as through thy highways throng troops of girls, bright with beauty and with gold, drawing all eyes with their radiance.

This encomium of British beauty is suddenly succeeded by the

The "lawyer, pregnant with a ten-years' suit, thundering barbarous words before an ignorant court" does not correspond to anything that I can recall in ancient comedy.

unexpected conclusion that he will leave these halls of Circe the deceiver, for he is permitted after all,

to go back to the bulrush swamps of Cam, and to the raucous murmur of the school.

We do not know the reason for Milton's rustication. The same mystery hangs about it as about Ovid's exile. Crimen et error explains the latter event, according to its victim; whatever the crimen and the error were, the confession of them indicates the exile's repentance. Not so with young Milton; the blame attaches not to him but to the pedagogue, hard of heart and sense, who had presumed to interfere with his scheme of living.

I will now for a moment descend suddenly to our own times, and ask you to imagine what sort of an epistle would be written by a college Freshman to his best friend from a state of rustication, if the Administrative Board will allow us, in New York. The average Freshman today is over seventeen, but on that detail we need not dwell. It is tolerably certain that he would not send a missive of Latin elegiacs in the best manner of Ovid. The theme might include some of the same points, such as the delights of city life, the freedom of the writer to indulge in his favorite pursuit (though this would not necessarily be reading), constant attendance at dramatic exhibitions (perhaps different in character from those that interested Milton, though one of the ancient varieties, the fabula motoria, might appeal), and finally, a sincere panegyric of the fair sex in general and American girls in particular. I can imagine such an outline; the filling would be nothing recondite or exotic; the language would be a simple and exceedingly contemporaneous species of the vernacular.

Whether or not it is desirable that undergraduates today should be young Miltons, it is plain that our youth are fed on a different literary staple from that which was regarded as indispensable in the seventeenth century. Of course Milton was a prodigy. He doubtless had read more than any youth of his acquaintance. Still, his acquaintances had all had essentially the same training. Charles Diodati, so far as we know, was not a genius, but an average college man. Milton would not have polished off Latin verses for him, or read those that Diodati sent in reply, had not that seemed a natural and intelligible mode of communication for two college friends.

Ovid was by no means the only Classic with whom Milton was familiar as an undergraduate. Echoes of Virgil and Horace, of Lucretius and Persius are no less apparent to the reader of his early verses, whether Latin or English. He was as deep in Greek literature; indeed it is sometimes said, though one would not gather this from his verse, that his chief models were the Greeks rather than the Romans. He knew the English classics, too,Chaucer and Spenser and Shakespeare; and of course he knew his Bible. These diverse elements he combined in that finely hybrid culture which has always been the essence of Christian humanism. How much of this he had gained from his tutors, particularly Thomas Young,5 before coming to college it were rash to guess; but whatever the acquisitions from year to year, his education is all of a piece.

In reading his ancients, Milton did not merely feast his soul with indiscriminate pleasure; he studied their art in its larger outlines and in its smallest traits. A line like

shows that he is aware, in his seventeenth year, that Virgil allowed Greek words at the end of a verse a certain metrical liberty,-a spondee in the fifth foot, or a hiatus there, or a short syllable under the ictus, or all of these licenses in a general riot; when the glorious Greeks got into a Roman verse, they broke the rules (with Virgil's kind permission). Milton has studied, and he illustrates in his own adaptation, the principles that govern elegy and epigram, ode and epode, and the short epic known as epyllion. He gives us Catullan choliambics, and later, just after the publication of his minor poems in 1645, he writes an ode to Rouse, the librarian of the Bodleian, which is a rarity in Latin versification. It imitates, with a not wholly serious intent, the glorious freedom and glorious formalism, of a Greek chorus, with strophies and antistrophies, changing metres and occasional free verse; I use this latter term advisably, as it translates Milton's description,-metra partim sunt κarà oxéow partim ảπoλeλvμéva. The best way to get its effect in English is not to read Cowley's translation, but to chop up Mr. Moody's prose translation,-in which no unpoetical element can be found-into