ture from England is stated to have taken place in 1623, when his pupil is supposed to have been placed, in his fifteenth year, at St. Paul's school. But this statement seems to be inaccurate, as his pupil, in a letter dated from Cambridge in 1628, promises him a visit at his country house in Suffolk, and compliments him on the independency of mind with which he maintained himself, like a Grecian sage or an old Roman consul, on the profits of a small farm."

m" Rus tuum accersitus, simul ac ver adoleverit, libenter adve. niam ad capessendas anni tuique non minus colloquii delicias: et ab urbano strepitu subducam me paulisper ad Stoam tuam Iceporum, tanquam ad celeberrimam illam Zenonis porticum aut Ciceronis Tusculanum, ubi tu, in re modicâ regio sanè animo, yeluti Serranus aliquis aut Curius, in agello tuo placide regnas."

*..

Mr. Warton imagines that Young returned in or before this year (1628) but Laud's persecution of the puritans was now at its height; and if Young formerly fled from this persecution, he must at the time in question have returned by stealth, and could hardly have resided openly upon his Suffolk living of Stow-Market. As the Iceni are supposed to have inhabited the counties of Norfolk and Cambridge as well as that of Suffolk, the expression of" Stoam tuam Icenorum," can be confined to Suffolk only by a reference to Young's living of Stow-Market. When Milton used the word "Stoa," on this occasion, and forced it from its proper station next to "Zenonis," could he playfully intend an allusion to his tutor's Stow? I suspect that he did. It is probable that Young did not return from the continent till about the end of 1640 or the beginning of the following year, when the Long Parliament offered to him and to his brother exiles protection from the tyranny of the High Commission and the Star-Chamber courts. Soon Epis. Thomæ Junio Jul. 2. 1628. P. W. vi. 112.

*

"Availing myself" (Milton writes to his late tutor) "of your invitation to your country house, I will with pleasure come to you as soon as the spring is further advanced, that I may at once enjoy the delightfulness of the season and that of your conversation, I will then retire for a short time, as I would to the celebrated porch of Zeno or to the Tusculan villa of Cicero, from the tumult of the town to your Suffolk Stoa, where you, like another Serranus or Curius, in moderate circumstances but with a princely soul, reign tranquilly in the midst of your little farm."In the same year however, we find him on the continent, and followed by the affection. and gratitude of his pupil in a Latin elegy of much beauty and poetic merit.

after this period, we find him engaged in controversy, as one of the writers of the pamphlet called Smectymnuus, against bishop Hall and archbishop Usher. He was a preacher at Duke's Place, and was nominated one of the famous Assembly of Divines, whom the Parliament appointed in 1643 for the management of religion. On the visitation of the University of Cambridge by the earl of Manchester, he was established, on the ejection of Dr. Richard Stern, in the Mastership of Jesus College, and retained it, with much credit to himself and advantage to the college, till his refusal of subscription to THE ENGAGEMENT Occasioned his expulsion from the office. He died, and was buried, as Mr. Warton in one of his notes in his edition of Milton's ju venile poems informs us, at Stow-Market, of which parish he had been Vicar during thirty years.

But at whatever period Young retired to the continent or resigned his charge in Mr. Milton's house, it is certain that before his removal to the University the youthful Milton passed some interval of study at St. Paul's school, under the direction at that time of Mr. Alexander Gill. Three of our author's familiar letters are addressed to Alexander Gill, his master's son and assistant in the school, with whom he seems to have contracted a warm and lasting friendship. Their correspondence principally respects the communication of some pieces of composition, and strongly attests the mutual respect of the parties, founded, as we cannot reasonably doubt, on their mutual conviction of great literary attainments."

A powerful intellect, exerted with unwearied industry and undiverted attention, must necessarily possess itself of its object; and we know that our author, when he left

P Alexander Gill was Usher to his father, and afterwards promoted to the place of upper master. He was so rigid a discipli narian that he was removed for extreme severity from his office. He wrote both in verse and prose with considerable taste; and Mr. Warton mentions a Latin epitaph from his pen, which bears testimony to the uncommon purity of his Latin composition. Having exposed himself, by means of which we are now ignorant, to the resentment of B. Jonson, he was made by that coarse writer the subject of a virulent and brutal satire.

this school in his seventeenth year for the University, was already an accomplished scholar. Ardent in his love of knowledge, he was regardless, as we have observed, of pleasure and even of health when they came into competition with the prevailing passion of his soul, and we are consequently not much surprised by the extraordinary and brilliant result which soon flashed upon the world.

It was at this early period of his life, as we may confidently conjecture, that he imbibed that spirit of devotion which actuated his bosom to his latest moment upon earth: and we need not extend our search beyond the limits of his own house for the fourtain from which the living influence was derived. Great must have been that sense of religious duty, and considerable that degree of theological knowledge which could induce the father to abjure those errors in which he had been educated, sanctioned as they were by paternal authority and powerfully enforced by the persuasion of temporal interest. The important concessions which he was compelled to make to religious principle would necessarily attach it the more closely to his heart; and he would naturally be solicitous to stamp upon the tender bosom of his

son that conviction and feeling of duty which were impressed so deeply on his own. He intended indeed to consecrate his son to the ministry of the church, and for this reason also he would be the more anxious decidedly to incline him with the bias of devotion. The sentiments and the warmth, thus communicated to the mind of the young Milton, would, no doubt, be strengthened by the lessons and the example of his preceptor, Young; in whom religion seems to have been exalted to enthusiasm, and who submitted, as we know, to some very trying privations on the imperious requisition of his conscience. But from whatever source the fervid spirit proceeded, it seems in its action on our author's mind to have increased the power as well as to have given the direction; to have invigorated the strong, enlarged the capacious, and elevated the lofty. We are unquestionably indebted to it not merely for the subject but for a great part also of the sublimity of the Paradise Lost.

On the 12th of February 1624-5, he was entered a pensioner at Christ's college,' Cam

The entry of Milton's admission, in Christ's College, is in the following words: "Johannes Milton, Londinensis, filius Johannis, institutus fuit in literarum elementis sub Mro Gill, Gymnasii Paulini præfecto. Admissus est Pensionarius minor, Feb. 12, 1624, sub Mo Chappell, solvitque pro ingressu 10s."