his own verfes to Diodati, that he had incurred Ruftication; a temporary dismission into the country, with perhaps the lofs of a term: Me tenet urbs refluâ quam Thamesis alluit undâ, Non ego vel profugi nomen fortemve recufo, Lætus et exilii conditione fruor. I cannot find any meaning but this, which even kindness and reverence can give to the term, vetiti laris, "a habitation from which "he is exclueded;" or how exile can be otherwife interpreted. He declares He declares yet more, that he is weary of enduring the threats of a rigorous mafler, and fomething 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 refolution of returning fome time to Cambridge. 6 · bridge. And it may be conjectured from the willingness with which he has perpetuated the memory of his exile, that its caufe was. fuch as gave him no fhame. He took both the ufual degrees; that of Batchelor in 1628, and that of Master in 1632; but he left the univerfity with no kindness for its inftitution, alienated either by the injudicious feverity of his governors, or his own captious perverfenefs. The caufe cannot now be known, but the effect appears in his writings. His fcheme of education, infcribed to Hartlib, fuperfedes all academical inftruction, 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, mafters of arts. And in his Discourse on the likelieft Way to remove Hirelings out of the Church, he ingeniously proposes, that the profits of the lands forfeited by the act for fuperftitious uses, should be applied to fuch academies all over the land, where languages and arts may be taught together; fo that youth may be at once brought up to a competency of learning and an honeft trade, by which means fuch of them as had the gift, being enabled to fupport themselves (without tithes) by the latter, may, by the help of the former, become worthy preachers. One of his objections to academical education, as it was then conducted, is, that men defigned for orders in the Church were permitted to act plays, writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antick and disbonest geftures of Trincalos, buffoons and bawds, proftituting the fame of that miniftry which they had, or were near having, to the eyes of cour tiers and court-ladies, their grooms and mademoifelles. This is fufficiently peevish in a man, who, when he mentions his exile from the college, relates, with great luxuriance, the compenfation which the pleasures of the theatre afford him. Plays were therefore only criminal when they were acted by academicks. He went to the university with a design of entering into the church, but in time altered his mind; for he declared, that whoever be came a clergyman must " subscribe slave, and “take an oath withal, which, unless he took "with a conscience that could retch, he must ftraight perjure himself. He thought it "better to prefer a blameless silence before "the office of fpeaking, bought and begun "with fervitude and forfwearing." Thefe expreffions are, I find, applied to the fubfcription 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, raifed his indignation. His unwillingness to engage in the miniftry, perhaps not yet advanced to a fettled refolution of declining it, appears in a letter to one of his friends, who had reproved his fufpended and dilatory life, which he seems to have imputed to an infatiable curiofity, and fantastick 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 defultory study, but from the defire of obtaining more fitnefs for his tafk; and that he goes I goes on, not taking thought of being late, fo it give advantage to be more fit. When he left the univerfity, he returned to his father, then refiding at Horton in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years; in which time he fs faid to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what limitations this univerfality is to be understood, who shall inform us ? It might be supposed that he who read fo much should have done nothing else; but Milton found time to write the Masque of Comus, which was prefented at Ludlow, then the refidence of the Lord Prefident of Wales, in 1634; and had the honour of being acted by the Earl of Bridgewater's fons and daughThe fiction is derived from Homer's Circe; but we never can refufe to any modern the liberty of borrowing from Homer: ter. -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 |
