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$Title{Dr. Samuel Johnson On Milton
Part I}
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$Date{1889}
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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 were permitted to act plays,
"writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest
gestures of Trinculos, buffoons, and bawds, prostituting the shame of that
ministry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes of the courtiers and
court ladies, their grooms and mademoiselles."

     This is sufficiently peevish in a man who, when he mentions his exile
from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compensation which the
pleasures of the theatre afford him.  Plays were therefore only criminal when
they were acted by academics.

     He went to the University with a design of entering into the church, but
in time altered his mind; for he declared that whoever became a clergyman must
"subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a
conscience that could not retch, he must straight perjure himself.  He thought
it better to prefer a blameless silence before the office of speaking, bought
and begun with servitude and forswearing."

     These expressions are I find, applied to the subscription of the
Articles; but it seems more probable that they relate to canonical obedience.
I know not any of the Articles which seem to thwart his opinions: but the
thoughts of obedience, whether canonical or civil, raised his indignation.

     His unwillingness to engage in the ministry, perhaps not yet advanced to
a settled resolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his
friends, who had reproved his suspended and dilatory life, which he seems to
have imputed to an insatiable curiosity, and fantastic luxury of various
knowledge.  To this he writes a cool and plausible answer, in which he
endeavors to persuade him that the delay proceeds not from the delights of
desultory study, but from the desire of obtaining more fitness for his task;
and that he goes on, not taking thought of being late, so it gives advantage
to be more fit.

     When he left the University, he returned to his father, then residing at
Horton, in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years, in which time he is
said to have read all the Greek and Latin writers.  With what limitations this
universality is to be understood, who shall inform us?

     It might be supposed that he who read so much should have done nothing
else; but Milton found time to write the "Mask of Comus," which was presented
at Ludlow, then the residence of the Lord President of Wales, in 1634; and had
the honor of being acted by the Earl of Bridgewater's sons and daughter.  The
fiction is derived from Homer's Circe; but we never can refuse to any modern
the liberty of borrowing from Homer:

          "- a quo ceu fonte perenni
     Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis."

     His next production was "Lycidas," an elegy, written in 1637, on the
death of Mr. King, the son of Sir John King, secretary for Ireland in the time
of Elizabeth, James, and Charles.  King was much a favorite at Cambridge, and
many of the wits joined to do honor to his memory.  Milton's acquaintance with
the Italian writers may be discovered by a mixture of longer and shorter
verses, according to the rules of Tuscan poetry, and his malignity to the
church by some lines which are interpreted as threatening its extermination.

     He is supposed about this time to have written his "Arcades;" for, while
he lived at Horton, he used sometimes to steal from his studies a few days,
which he spent at Harefield, the house of the Countess Dowager of Derby, where
the "Arcades" made part of a dramatic entertainment.

     He began now to grow weary of the country, and had some purpose of taking
chambers in the Inns of Court, when the death of his mother set him at liberty
to travel, for which he obtained his father's consent, and Sir Henry Wotton's
directions; with the celebrated precept of prudence, I pensieri stretti, ed il
viso sciolto, "Thoughts close, and looks loose."

     In 1638 he left England, and went first to Paris; where, by the favor of
Lord Scudamore, he had the opportunity of visiting Grotius, then residing at
the French court as ambassador from Christina of Sweden.  From Paris he hasted
into Italy, of which he had with particular diligence studied the language and
literature; and though he seems to have intended a very quick perambulation of
the country, stayed two months at Florence; where he found his way into the
academies, and produced his compositions with such applause as appears to have
exalted him in his own opinion, and confirmed him in the hope that, "by labor
and intense study, which," says he, "I take to be my portion in this life,
joined with a strong propensity of nature," he might "leave something so
written to aftertimes as they should not willingly let it die."

[See John Milton: Labor and intense study I take to be my portion in this
life.]

     It appears in all his writings that he had the usual concomitant of great
abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not without some
contempt of others; for scarcely any man ever wrote so much, and praised so
few.  Of his praise he was very frugal, as he set its value high, and
considered his mention of a name as a security against the waste of time, and
a certain preservative from oblivion.

     At Florence he could not, indeed, complain that his merit wanted
distinction.  Carlo Dati presented him with an encomiastic inscription, in the
tumid lapidary style; and Francini wrote him an ode, of which the first stanza
is only empty noise; the rest are perhaps too diffuse on common topics: but
the last is natural and beautiful.

     From Florence he went to Sienna, and from Sienna to Rome, where he was
again received with kindness by the learned and the great.  Holstenius, the
keeper of the Vatican Library, who had resided three years at Oxford,
introduced him to Cardinal Barberini; and he, at a musical entertainment,
waited for him at the door, and led him by the hand into the assembly.  Here
Selvaggi praised him in a distich, and Salsilli in a tetrastic; neither of
them of much value.  The Italians were gainers by this literary commerce; for
the encomiums with which Milton repaid Salsilli, though not secure against a
stern grammarian, turn the balance indisputably in Milton's favor.

     Of these Italian testimonies, poor as they are, he was proud enough to
publish them before his poems; though he says he cannot be suspected but to
have known that they were said non tam de se, quam supra se.

     At Rome, as at Florence, he stayed only two months - a time indeed
sufficient, if he desired only to ramble with an explainer of its antiquities,
or to view palaces and count pictures; but certainly too short for the
contemplation of learning, policy, or manners.

     From Rome he passed on to Naples, in company of a hermit, a companion
from whom little could be expected; yet to him Milton owed his introduction to
Manso, Marquis of Villa, who had been before the patron of Tasso.  Manso was
enough delighted with his accomplishments to honor him with a sorry distich,
in which he commends him for every thing but his religion; and Milton, in
return, addressed him in a Latin poem, which must have raised a high opinion
of English elegance and literature.

     His purpose was now to have visited Sicily and Greece; but, hearing of
the differences between the king and parliament, he thought it proper to
hasten home, rather than pass his life in foreign amusements while his
countrymen were contending for their rights.  He therefore came back to Rome,
though the merchants informed him of plots laid against him by the Jesuits,
for the liberty of his conversations on religion.  He had sense enough to
judge that there was no danger, and therefore kept on his way, and acted as
before, neither obtruding nor shunning controversy.  He had perhaps given some
offence by visiting Galileo, then a prisoner in the Inquisition for
philosophical heresy; and at Naples he was told by Manso that, by his
declarations on religious questions, he had excluded himself from some
distinctions which he should otherwise have paid him.  But such conduct,
though it did not please, was yet sufficiently safe; and Milton stayed two
months more at Rome, and went on to Florence without molestation.

     From Florence he visited Lucca.  He afterwards went to Venice; and,
having sent away a collection of music and other books, travelled to Geneva,
which he probably considered as the metropolis of orthodoxy.

     Here he reposed as in a congenial element, and became acquainted with
John Diodati and Frederick Spanheim, two learned professors of divinity.  From
Geneva he passed through France; and came home, after an absence of a year and
three months.

     At his return he heard of the death of his friend Charles Diodati, a man
whom it is reasonable to suppose of great merit, since he was thought by
Milton worthy of a poem, entitled "Epitaphium Damonis," written with the
common but childish imitation of pastoral life.

     He now hired a lodging at the house of one Russel, a tailor in St.
Bride's Churchyard, and undertook the education of John and Edward Philips,
his sister's sons.  Finding his rooms too little, he took a house and garden
in Aldersgate Street, which was not then so much out of the world as it is
now; and chose his dwelling at the upper end of a passage, that he might avoid
the noise of the street.  Here he received more boys, to be boarded and
instructed.

     Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree of
merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who hastens
home, because his countrymen are contending for their liberty, and, when he
reaches the scene of action, vapors away his patriotism in a private
boarding-school.  This is the period of his life from which all his
biographers seem inclined to shrink.  They are unwilling that Milton should be
degraded to a schoolmaster; but, since it cannot be denied that he taught
boys, one finds out that he taught for nothing, and another that his motive
was only zeal for the propagation of learning and virtue; and all tell what
they do not know to be true, only to excuse an act which no wise man will
consider as in itself disgraceful.  His father was alive; his allowance was
not ample; and he supplied its deficiencies by an honest and useful
employment.

     It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a
formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read in
Aldersgate Street by youths between ten and fifteen or sixteen years of age.
Those who tell or receive these stories should consider that nobody can be
taught faster than he can learn.  The speed of the horseman must be limited by
the power of the horse.  Every man that has ever undertaken to instruct others
can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it
requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference,
and to rectify absurd misapprehension.

     The purpose of Milton, as it seems, was to teach something more solid
than the common literature of schools, by reading those authors that treat of
physical subjects: such as the Georgics, and astronomical treatises of the
ancients.  This was a scheme of improvement which seems to have busied many
literary projectors of that age.  Cowley, who had more means than Milton of
knowing what was wanting to the embellishments of life, formed the same plan
of education in his imaginary college.

     But the truth is, that the knowledge of external nature, and the sciences
which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the frequent
business of the human mind.  Whether we provide for action or conversation,
whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious
and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the
history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth,
and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions.  Prudence and justice are
virtues and excellences of all times and of all places; we are perpetually
moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance.  Our intercourse with
intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary,
and at leisure.  Physiological learning is of such rare emergence, that one
may know another half his life without being able to estimate his skill in
hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately
appears.

     Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most
axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for
conversation; and those purposes are best served by poets, orators, and
historians.

     Let me not be censured for this digression as pedantic or paradoxical;
for, if I have Milton against me, I have Socrates on my side.  It was his
labor to turn philosophy from the study of nature to speculations upon life;
but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off attention from life to
nature.  They seem to think that we are placed here to watch the growth of
plants, or the motions of the stars: Socrates was rather of opinion that what
we had to learn was, how to do good and avoid evil.

     Of institutions we may judge by their effects.  From this wonder-working
academy I do not know that there ever proceeded any man very eminent for
knowledge: its only genuine product, I believe, is a small history of poetry,
written in Latin by his nephew Philips, of which perhaps none of my readers
has ever heard.

     That in his school, as in every thing else which he undertook, he labored
with great diligence, there is no reason for doubting.  One part of his method
deserves general imitation.  He was careful to instruct his scholars in
religion.  Every Sunday was spent upon theology; of which he dictated a short
system, gathered from the writers that were then fashionable in the Dutch
universities.

     He set his pupils an example of hard study and spare diet: only now and
then he allowed himself to pass a day of festivity and indulgence with some
gay gentlemen of Gray's Inn.

     He now began to engage in the controversies of the times, and lent his
breath to blow the flames of contention.  In 1641 he published a treatise of
Reformation, in two books, against the established church; being willing to
help the Puritans, who were, he says, "inferior to the prelates in learning."

     Hall, Bishop of Norwich, had published an Humble Remonstrance, in defence
of episcopacy; to which, in 1641, five ministers, of whose names the first
letters made the celebrated word Smectymnuus, gave their Answer.  Of this
Answer a Confutation was attempted by the learned Usher; and to the
Confutation Milton published a reply, entitled, "Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and
whether it may be deduced from the Apostolical Times, by virtue of those
Testimonies which are alleged to that purpose in some late Treatises, one
whereof goes under the Name of James, Lord Bishop of Armagh."

     I have transcribed this title to show, by his contemptuous mention of
Usher, that he had now adopted the puritanical savageness of manners.  His
next work was, "The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy, by Mr.
John Milton, 1642." In this book he discovers, not with ostentatious
exultation, but with calm confidence, his high opinion of his own powers; and
promises to undertake something, he yet knows not what, that may be of use and
honor to his country.  "This," says he, "is not to be obtained but by devout
prayer to that eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and
knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to
touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases.  To this must be added,
industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all
seemly and generous arts and affairs; till which in some measure be compassed,
I refuse not to sustain this expectation." From a promise like this, at once
fervid, pious, and rational, might be expected the "Paradise Lost."

     He published the same year two more pamphlets, upon the same question. To
one of his antagonists, who affirms that he was "vomited out of the
University," he answers in general terms.  "The fellows of the college wherein
I spent some years, at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the
manner is, signified many times how much better it would content them that I
should stay.  As for the common approbation or dislike of that place as now it
is, that I should esteem or disesteem myself the more for that, too simple is
the answerer, if he think to obtain with me.  Of small practice were the
physician who could not judge, by what she and her sister have of long time
vomited, that the worser stuff she strongly keeps in her stomach, but the
better she is ever kecking at, and is queasy; she vomits now out of sickness;
but before it will be well with her she must vomit by strong physic.  The
University, in the time of her better health, and my younger judgment, I never
greatly admired, but now much less."

     This is surely the language of a man who thinks that he has been injured.
He proceeds to describe the course of his conduct and the train of his
thoughts, and, because he has been suspected of incontinence, gives an account
of his own purity: "That if I be justly charged," says he, "with this crime,
it may come upon me with tenfold shame."

     The style of his piece is rough, and such perhaps was that of his
antagonist.  This roughness he justifies by great examples in a long
digression.  Sometimes he tries to be humorous: "Lest I should take him for
some chaplain in hand, some squire of the body to his prelate, one who serves
not at the altar only, but at the court-cupboard, he will bestow on us a
pretty model of himself; and sets me out half a dozen phthisical mottoes,
wherever he had them, hopping short in the measure of convulsion fits; in
which labor the agony of his wit having escaped narrowly, instead of
well-sized periods, he greets us with a quantity of thumb-ring poesies.  And
thus ends this section, or rather dissection, of himself." Such is the
controversial merriment of Milton; his gloomy seriousness is yet more
offensive.  Such is his malignity, that hell grows darker at his frown.

     His father, after Reading was taken by Essex, came to reside in his
house; and his school increased.  At Whitsuntide, in his thirty-fifth year, he
married Mary, the daughter of Mr. Powel, a justice of the peace in
Oxfordshire.  He brought her to town with him, and expected all the advantages
of a conjugal life.  The lady, however, seems not much to have delighted in
the pleasures of spare diet and hard study; for, as Philips relates, "having
for a month led a philosophic life, after having been used at home to a great
house, and much company and joviality, her friends, possibly by her own
desire, made earnest suit to have her company the remaining part of the
summer; which was granted, upon a promise of her return at Michaelmas."

     Milton was too busy to much miss his wife; he pursued his studies; and
now and then visited the Lady Margaret Leigh, whom he has mentioned in one of
his sonnets.  At last Michaelmas arrived; but the lady had no inclination to
return to the sullen gloom of her husband's habitation, and therefore very
willingly forgot her promise.  He sent her a letter, but had no answer; he
sent more, with the same success.  It could be alleged that letters miscarry;
he therefore despatched a messenger, being by this time too angry to go
himself.  His messenger was sent back with some contempt.  The family of the
lady were cavaliers.

     In a man whose opinion of his own merit was like Milton's, less
provocation than this might have raised violent resentment.  Milton soon
determined to repudiate her for disobedience; and, being one of those who
could easily find arguments to justify inclination, published (in 1644) "The
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce;" which was followed by "The Judgment of
Martin Bucer concerning Divorce;" and the next year, his Tetrachordon,
"Expositions upon the four chief Places of Scripture which treat of Marriage."

     This innovation was opposed, as might be expected, by the clergy, who,
then holding their famous assembly at Westminster, procured that the author
should be called before the Lords; "but that House," says Wood, "whether
approving the doctrine, or not favoring his accusers, did soon dismiss him."

     There seems not to have been much written against him, nor any thing by
any writer of eminence.  The antagonist that appeared is styled by him, A
serving-man turned solicitor - Howel, in his Letters, mentions the new
doctrine with contempt; and it was, I suppose, thought more worthy of derision
than of confutation.  He complains of this neglect in two sonnets, of which
the first is contemptible, and the second not excellent.

     From this time it is observed that he became an enemy to the
Presbyterians, whom he had favored before.  He that changes his party by his
humor is not more virtuous than he that changes it by his interest; he loves
himself rather than truth.

     His wife and her relations now found that Milton was not an unresisting
sufferer of injuries; and perceiving that he had begun to put his doctrine in
practice, by courting a young woman of great accomplishments, the daughter of
one Doctor Davis, who was, however, not ready to comply, they resolved to
endeavor a reunion.  He went sometimes to the house of one Blackborough, his
relation, in the lane of St. Martin's-le-Grand, and at one of his usual visits
was surprised to see his wife come from another room, and implore forgiveness
on her knees.  He resisted her entreaties for a while; "but partly," says
Philips, "his own generous nature, more inclinable to reconciliation than to
perseverance in anger or revenge, and partly the strong intercession of
friends on both sides, soon brought him to an act of oblivion and a firm
league of peace." It were injurious to omit that Milton afterwards received
her father and her brothers in his own house, when they were distressed, with
other royalists.

     He published about the same time his "Areopagitica, a Speech of Mr. John
Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing." The danger of such unbounded
liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science
of government which human understanding seems hitherto unable to solve.  If
nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously
approved, power must always be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of
innovations may propagate his projects, there can be no settlement; if every
murmurer at government may diffuse discontent, there can be no peace; and if
every sceptic in theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The
remedy against these evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed
that every society may punish, though not prevent, the publication of opinions
which that society shall think pernicious; but this punishment, though it may
crush the author, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to leave
the right of printing unrestrained because writers may be afterwards censured,
than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted because by our laws we can hang
a thief.

     But whatever were his engagements, civil or domestic, poetry was never
long out of his thoughts.

     About this time (1645) a collection of his Latin and English poems
appeared, in which the Allegro and Penseroso, with some others, were first
published.

     He had taken a larger house in Barbican for the reception of scholars;
but the numerous relations of his wife, to whom he generously granted refuge
for a while, occupied his rooms.  In time, however, they went away; "and the
house again," says Philips, "now looked like a house of the muses only, though
the accession of scholars was not great.  Possibly his having proceeded so far
in the education of youth may have been the occasion of his adversaries
calling him pedagogue and schoolmaster; whereas it is well known he never set
up for a public school, to teach all the young fry of a parish; but only was
willing to impart his learning and knowledge to his relations, and the sons of
gentlemen who were his intimate friends, and that neither his writings nor his
way of teaching ever savored in the least of pedantry,"

     Thus laboriously does his nephew extenuate what cannot be denied, and
what might be confessed without disgrace.  Milton was not a man who could
become mean by a mean employment.  This, however, his warmest friends seem not
to have found; they therefore shift and palliate.  He did not sell literature
to all comers at an open shop; he was a chamber-milliner, and measured his
commodities only to his friends.

     Philips, evidently impatient of viewing him in this state of degradation,
tells us that it was not long continued; and, to raise his character again,
has a mind to invest him with military splendor: "He is much mistaken," he
says, "if there was not about this time a design of making him an
adjutant-general in Sir William Waller's army.  But the new-modelling of the
army proved an obstruction to the design." An event cannot be set at a much
greater distance than by having been only designed about some time, if a man
be not much mistaken.  Milton shall be a pedagogue no longer; for, if Philips
be not much mistaken, somebody at some time designed him for a soldier.