The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0002/00028.txt

Text File | 1992-08-14 | 34KB | 577 lines

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$Title{Dr. Samuel Johnson On Milton
Part I}
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$Author{Johnson, Dr. Samuel}
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$Subject{milton
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$Date{1889}
$Log{Hear On Education*55405010.aud
See John Milton*0002801.scf
}
Title:       Dr. Samuel Johnson On Milton
Author:      Johnson, Dr. Samuel
Date:        1889

Part I

     The life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with
such minute inquiry, that I might perhaps more properly have contented myself
with the addition of a few notes on Mr. Fenton's elegant Abridgment, but that
a new narrative was thought necessary to the uniformity of this edition.

     John Milton was by birth a gentleman, descended from the proprietors of
Milton, near Thame, in Oxfordshire, one of whom forfeited his estate in the
times of York and Lancaster.  Which side he took I know not; his descendant
inherited no veneration for the White Rose.

     His grandfather, John, was keeper of the forest of Shotover, a zealous
papist, who disinherited his son because he had forsaken the religion of his
ancestors.

     His father, John, who was the son disinherited, had recourse for his
support to the profession of a scrivener.  He was a man eminent for his skill
in music, many of his compositions being still to be found; and his reputation
in his profession was such that he grew rich, and retired to an estate.  He
had probably more than common literature, as his son addresses him in one of
his most elaborate Latin poems.  He married a gentlewoman of the name of
Caston, a Welsh family, by whom he had two sons - John, the poet, and
Christopher, who studied the law, and adhered, as the law taught him, to the
king's party, for which he was a while persecuted; but having, by his
brother's interest, obtained permission to live in quiet, he supported himself
so honorably by chamber practice, that, soon after the accession of King
James, he was knighted, and made a judge; but, his constitution being too weak
for business, he retired before any disreputable compliances became necessary.

     He had likewise a daughter, Anne, whom he married with considerable
fortune to Edward Philips, who came from Shrewsbury, and rose in the Crown
Office to be secondary: by him she had two sons, John and Edward, who were
educated by the poet, and from whom is derived the only authentic account of
his domestic manners.

     John, the poet, was born in his father's house, at the Spread Eagle, in
Bread Street, December 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning.  His
father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he was
instructed at first by private tuition, under the care of Thomas Young, who
was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburg, and of whom we
have reason to think well, since his scholar considered him as worthy of an
epistolary elegy.

     He was then sent to St. Paul's School, under the care of Mr. Gill; and
removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ's College, in
Cambridge, where he entered a sizar, February 12, 1624.

     He was at this time eminently skilled in the Latin tongue and he himself,
by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the learned
Politian had given him an example, seems to commend the earliness of his own
proficiency to the notice of posterity.  But the products of his vernal
fertility have been surpassed by many, and particularly by his contemporary
Cowley.  Of the powers of the mind it is difficult to form an estimate: many
have excelled Milton in their first essays, who never rose to works like
"Paradise Lost."

     At fifteen, a date which he uses till he is sixteen, he translated or
versified two Psalms, 114 and 136, which he thought worthy of the public eye;
but they raise no great expectations: they would in any numerous school have
obtained praise, but not excited wonder.

     Many of his elegies appear to have been written in his eighteenth year,
by which it appears that he had then read the Roman authors with very nice
discernment.  I once heard Mr. Hampton, the translator of Polybius, remark,
what I think is true, that Milton was the first Englishman who, after the
revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classic elegance.  If any
exceptions can be made, they are very few: Haddon and Ascham, the pride of
Elizabeth's reign, however they have succeeded in prose, no sooner attempt
verse than they provoke derision.  If we produced any thing worthy of notice
before the elegies of Milton, it was perhaps "Alabaster's Roxana."

     Of the exercises which the rules of the University required, some were
published by him in his maturer years.  They had been undoubtedly applauded,
for they were such as few can perform; yet there is reason to suspect that he
was regarded in his college with no great fondness.  That he obtained no
fellowship is certain; but the unkindness with which he was treated was not
merely negative.  I am ashamed to relate, what I fear is true, that Milton was
one of the last students in either University that suffered the public
indignity of corporal correction.

     It was, in the violence of controversial hostility, objected to him, that
he was expelled: this he steadily denies, and it was apparently not true; but
it seems plain, from his own verses to Diodati, that he had incurred
rustication, a temporary dismission into the country, with perhaps the loss of
a term:

     "Me tenet urbs reflua quam Thamesis alluit unda,
          Meque nec invitum patria dulcis habet.
     Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum,
          Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor. -
     Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri,
          Caeteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.
     Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates,
          Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi,
     Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemve recuso,
          Laetus et exilii conditione fruor."

     I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence can
give the term vetiti laris, "a habitation from which he is excluded;" or how
exile can be otherwise interpreted.  He declares yet more that he is weary of
enduring the threats of a rigorous master, and something else, which a temper
like his cannot undergo.  What was more than threat was probably punishment.
This poem, which mentions his exile, proves likewise that it was not
perpetual; for it concludes with a resolution of returning some time to
Cambridge.  And it may be conjectured, from the willingness with which he has
perpetuated the memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no
shame.

     He took both the usual degrees; that of bachelor in 1628, and that of
master in 1632; but he left the University with no kindness for its
institution, alienated either by the injudicious severity of his governors, or
his own captious perverseness.  The cause cannot now be known, but the effect
appears in his writings.  His scheme of education, inscribed to Hartlib,
supersedes all academical instruction, being intended to comprise the whole
time which men usually spend in literature, from their entrance upon grammar,
till they proceed, as it is called, masters of arts.  And in his discourse on
the likeliest way to remove hirelings out of the church, he ingeniously
proposes that "the profits of the lands forfeited by the act for superstitious
uses should be applied to such academies all over the land, where languages
and arts may be taught together; so that youth may be at once brought up to a
competency of learning and an honest trade, by which means such of them as had
the gift, being enabled to support themselves (without tithes) by the latter,
may, by the help of the former, become worthy preachers."

[Hear On Education]
Languages and arts may be taught together.

     One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted,
is, that men designed for orders in the church we