Johnson good-naturedly fears that he was one of the last students in either University who suffered the public indignity of corporal punishment. The barba rous custom of public corporal corrections was no doubt retained at English Universities till about as late as the time of Milton, and from the savageness of the custom, and the utter ignorance of the science of education which it betrays, may easily he conceived to have been often dispensed by brutal tempers for acts of mere juvenile indiscretion. " C'est Ia crime fait Ia honte, et non pas l'echaufaud." So that, supposing Milton had been punished, unless the turpitude of his offence were proved, the anecdote needed not to have stirred up the pious concern of either his friendly or inimical biographers. It would only excite the dis gust of a reflecting mind, to think that the barbarism of the monkish ages came so far down into the system of modern education ; and if Milton was flagellated at college, and if the guardian spirits of human improve ment have any thing to do with schools and colleges, they assuredly looked with an evil eye on Cambridge, in that hour when the spirit and pride of genius were exposed to the danger of extinction by a treatment so degrading both to the teacher and the taught. But Cambridge and Milton may both be easily acquitted of the suspicion of this occurrence. The story is a mere exhalation from the calumnies which were heaped upon his name by those who dreaded and felt his po litical eloquence—such as the son of Bishop Hall, and the Du Moulins and Moruses of his own day. His contemporaries believed not a word of the younger Ilan assertion, when he accused Milton of having been vomited forth from his university for disgraceful crimes ; for Milton had unanswerable documents to produce at the moment, to show that he had been an 'object of regard and partiality among his superiors at Cambridge. But Aubrey, nevertheless, had heard of a rumour of Milton's having been punished at col lege—a rumour, however, which even Wood, ill-dis posed as he was to the poet's memory, rejected as scandal—a rumour distinctly falsified by Milton's ap peal in the face of the world to the members of his university, against the charge of ill-behaviour at col lege—and one which he could not have made without instantaneous detection, if he had ever been the object of ignominious punishment. But Thomas Warton would not let Aubrey's rumour drop, and Dr. John son, taking it up, and translating out of Milton's verses to Deodati, the Latin word et cetera (meaning some thing else by "SOMEWHAT MORE," which it does not mean,) endeavoured to torture out of those verses the evidence of a fact which they will not yield. On Aubrey's rumour, and on Dr. Johnson's false transla tion, the story rests, and let it there rest in peace.
Early in the period of his college residence, we dis cover his progress as a writer both of English and Latin poetry. Perhaps the first of his English poems which can be fixed upon as au important date in the history of his genius, is his ode on the death of a fair infant, (his sister's child.) written at 17. He there manages with facility and effect a stanza similar to the Spenserian, though shorter, and evidently formed on Spenser's style. The thoughts rise to tenderness and sublimity, though sometimes blemished by conceit. His Ode on the Nativity, written at 22, discloses still greater beauties, and perhaps still deeper defects. The " Verses at a Solemn Music" have something peculiarly Miltonic ; and his vacation exercise, on the subject of his native language, is pregnant with the first stirring-spirit of Paradise Lost, where he speaks of a subject of poetry.
"Such, where the deep-transported mind may soar Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven's door Look in and see each blissful deity," &c. &c.
Many of his Latin elegies were written as early as his 18th year. Ovid was his model in elegy. It has been regretted that he had not a model of greater strength, but to find power united with tenderness in classical elegy is not an easy task. Among his Latin verses it is interesting to meet with his description of a tender passion which he cherished at the age of 19. The object of it was a lady whom he saw in a public walk near the metropolis. She suddenly disappeared from him among the crowd, and he could never after wards obtain any intelligence respecting her.
He took the degree of A. M. in 1632, and being now 24 years of age, left Cambridge to reside at Horton in Buckinghamshire, where his father lived alter retir ing from business. The five subsequent years which he passed under his father's roof may justly be regarded as the happiest of his life. To this lavoured period we are indebted for some of the most exquisite productions of his genius. Comus and Lycidas were certainly written here, the former in 1634, the latter in 1637—and most probably the Arcades, L'Allegro, and II Penseroso. The composition of the Arcades probably preceded that of Comus. The piece was written for the Countess Dowager of Derby, who resided at Harefield, in the vicinity of Horton. She was of the same family with Spenser the poet, and had been his patroness and his theme of praise before she was celebrated by Milton.
The Arcades is e‘idently nothing more than the poetical part of an entertainment, the bulk of which was formed of prose dialogue; and the attraction of which, to its spectators, probably depended much upon the spectacular show produced by machinery. But the poem, which was Milton's part of the entertainment, discovers a kindred, though inferior lustre of fancy to Comus. The Mask of Counts was acted before the Earl of Bridgewater, the President of Wales, in 1634, at Ludlow Castle, and the character of the lady and the brothers were played by the Lady Alice Egerton and her two brothers, the sons of the Earl of Bridgewater. The story of the piece is said to have been suggested by the accident of the Lady Alice having one night lost herself in the forest of Haywood. Dr. Johnson ascribes the origin of Comus to Homer's story of Circe; Hayley, however, has made it appear probable that it was de rived from the Comus of Erycius Patcanus, which was republished at Oxford in the very year in which Milton's Comus was wi ittcn. The elegy Lycidas was written in 1637, on the death of Edward King, one of the fellows of Cambridge, and the son of Sir John King, secretary for Ireland, in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles. The vessel in which he sailed from Chester fur Ireland was lost in a calm sea, and not far from land. His memory was so highly esteemed by his uni versity, that almost all the versifiers of Cambridge paid him a tribute. This was the last of Milton's works written w hilst he resided at Horton with his father. L'Allegro and 71 Penseroso were pi obably wtitten but a short ume earlier. Notwithstanding their Italian titles, they afford genuine English landscapes. They seem the works of a mind happy in every sense of the word.