every college there is or fhould be a regifter, in which are entered all orders for expulfion and ruftication of delinquents. This is neceffary for the juftification of the master and fellows against whom appeals and complaints are often lodged by the fufferers, either before the vifitor or in Weftminster-Hall. We have been informed, from the best authority, that there is an entry in the register of this very college, importing, that a candidate for a fellowship *, being rejected by the fociety, was, upon calling in the visitor +, established in his right, not without fome fevere expreffions inferted

*The late Dr. Hutton, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Bishop Sherlock, then Vice-chancellor.

in the fentence, which the vifitor, upon application, refufed to expunge.

If therefore the Regifters of Chrift's College are filent with refpect to the expulfion of John Milton, it is not plain that he was either expelled or rufticated, not to mention that the terms, vetiti laris et exilium, may refer to twenty causes befides that affigned by the new Biographer. If Milton's return to college was voluntary, it would be invidious to afcribe his abfence to compulfion, unless you will fuppofe that the prohibition was the effect of his father's economy, which is by far most likely to have been the cafe.

Milton however was certainly out of humour with the univerfities (except per

perhaps with a few of his ingenious and judicious friends in them); and Dr. Johnfon gives us our choice of two caufes of it, the injudicious feverity of his governors, and Milton's captious perverfeness *.

Had Milton left us nothing upon the fubject but rude and indifcriminate abufe of the univerfities, Dr. Johnfon's alternative in affifting us to account for it had been liberal and gracious. But the fingle letter of Milton to Hartlib fhews that his objections were of another fort, and: took their rife neither from any refentment against his governors for their severity, nor from any perverfeness of his own temper. So far from blaming their feverity, he reproves the idle vacancies

* Life, p. 10.

D 3

given

given both to schools and univerfities, as a detrimental and improper indulgence; with refpect to his own difpofition, nothing appears here but a defire to meliorate the mode of education, in which Hartlib was as hearty as himself; and it appears by our late academical reformations, that the authors of them were no more in humour with the methods of their predeceffors than Milton himself..

It is true, Milton was zealous for Reformation in the church, and who can fay it was not wanted? or who but Dr. Johnfon will fay it? Milton laid the errors. and abufes in the church to the account of the bishops. The bifhops countenanced and encouraged the univerfities ; and it was but natural for the univerfi

ties in their turn to inculcate that fort of learning which tended to uphold the epifcopal authority, and confequently to prevent the reformation Milton wished for.

tor,

"One of his objections," fays the Doc

"to academical education, as it was "then conducted, is, that men defigned "for orders in the church were per"mitted to act plays, writhing and un"boning their clergy limbs to all the antic "and difhoneft geftures of Trinculoes, "buffoons, and bawds, proflituting the

Shame of that miniftry, which either they "bad or were nigh having, to the eyes of "courtiers and court-ladies, with their

grooms and madamoiselles *."

Apology for Smectymnus, p. 110. Birch's ed.