MILTON, Jorm This ornament of English poetry, and champion of English principles, was born in Bread Street, London, on the 9th or December, 1608. Few particulars are known respecting his family, except that it was respectable and ancient, that it had been long resident in Oxfordshire, and had once possessed considerable property, which was forfeited during the wars of the Roses. John Milton, the poet's grandfa ther, who was under•ranger of the Forest of Shotover, had disinherited the poet's father, whose name also was John, for becoming a Protestant. The young convert, who was then at Oxford, left the University in conse quence of this misfortune, and applied himself to the profession of a scrivener in London, which, at that time, united the two businesses of law and money agency. It appears, from several circumstances, that he was no ordinary man—at least lie was so considerable a pro ficient in music as to hold a considerable rank among the composers of the age. The poet's mother was, according to the testimony of her son, an exemplary women, and highly esteemed in the neighbourtood for her acts of charity. Her name was Caxton. Her family was originally from Wales. Our Milton was her eldest son. His younger brother, a lawyer and a royalist, was saved, during the republican government, by the interest of the poet, and after the Restoration was knighted, and made a Baron of the Exchequer, and a Judge of the Common Pleas, by James the Second. A sister, whose name was Anne, married E:lward Phillips, a secondary in the Crown Office in Chancery. From this marriage sprung John and Edward Phillips. Both of them were the pupils of Milton, and one of them was his biographer.
The early genius of our immortal poet was fostered with such marks of judicious partiality as denoted his father's pride in the possession of so extraordinary a son. Aubrey relates, that the portrait of the :iouthful genius was taken by Cornelius Jansen in 1618, when Ile was only ten years of age, and that he was then a poet ; and Dr. Symmons, in his life nl Milton, notices this portrait being at present in possession of the family of Air. Hollis. We presume that Dr. Symmons is
accurate with regard to the date of the picture, though we have never heard of any print of Milton represent ing him earlier than apparently about his 19th year, and wonder that so curious a portrait should not have been made more known by engraving.
Some part of Milton's early education was commit ted to the care of Thomas Young, a puritan clergy man, who was compelled, by the persecution nuked against the sectaries, to retire to the Continent, and was for some time chaplain to the British merchants at Hamburgh. it is not known at what particular time Young was the domestic tutor of Alilton, but it is cer tain, that before his going to the University, our poet passed an interval of study at St. Paul's school, under the direction of Alexander Gill. The son and assist ant of this schoolmaster was the intimate friend of Milton, as we find by three of the poet's familiar let ters. He succeeded his father as master of St. Paul's school, but, what is disagreeable to relate of one ho noured by such a friendship, was removed from his situation for excessive severity to the boys.
In his 16th year Milton was entered a pensioner at Christ's College, Cambridge, (Feb, 12. 1624 ) and was committed to the tuition of the Rev. William Chapel, the reputed author of the whole Duty of Man, and after wards Bishop of Cork and Ross. Milton had at this time exercised himself in the composition both of Latin and in English verses. At 15, he translated and para phrased two psalins, which he thought in maturer life worthy of the public eye. Dr. Synnnons conceives, that in the highly poetical epithets of these boyish compositions, we may discover the fit st shootings of the infant oak which in later times was to overshadow the forest. We are rather inclined to think, with Dr. Johnson, that these productions excite no expecta tions—the boy Milton seems at that period not much greater than other boys, when he indites such a cou plet as the following : " The high huge-bellied mountains skip like rams Amongst their ewes—the little hills like Iambs." The treatment and conduct of Milton at the Uni versity has been a fruitful subject of controversy. Dr.