obedience to that command in the gospel set out by the terrible seizing of him that hid the talent. It is more probable therefore, that not the endless delight of speculation, but this very consideration of that great commandment does not press forward, as soon as many do, to undergo, but keeps off with a sacred reverence and religious advisement how best to undergo; not taking thought of being late, so it give advantage to be more fit; for those that were latest lost nothing, when the master of the vineyard came to give each one his hire. And here I am come to a stream-head, copious enough to disburden itself like Nilus at seven mouths into an ocean. But then I should also run into a reciprocal contradiction of ebbing and flowing at once, and do that, which I excuse myself for not doing, 'preach and not preach.' Yet that you may see that I am something suspicious of myself and do take notice of a certain belatedness in me, I am the bolder to send you some of my nightward thoughts some while since, because they come in not altogether unfitly, made up in a Petrarchian stanza, which I told you of

"How soon hath time, the subtle thief of youth,

Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career;

But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, That I to manhood am arrived so near,

And inward ripeness doth much less appear,

That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,

It shall be still in strictest measure even

To that same lot, however mean or high,

Towards which time leads me, and the will of Heaven.
All is, if I have grace to use it so,

As ever in my great task-master's eye."

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By this I believe you may well repent of having made mention at all of this matter; for if I have not all this while won you to this, I have certainly wearied you of it. This therefore alone may be a sufficient reason for me to keep me as I am, lest, having thus tired you singly, I should deal worse with a whole congregation and spoil all the patience of a parish: for I myself do not only see my own tediousness, but now grow offended with it that has hindered me thus long from coming to the last and best period of my letter, and that which must now chiefly work my pardon, that I am your true and unfeigned friend."

On his taking the degree of master of arts in 1632," having taken that of bachelor, as we

"In a little poem "De Idea Platonica," written by our author while he was at the University, there is a most striking personification of Eternity

have already observed, in 1628-9, he left Cambridge to reside at Horton in Buckinghamshire, where his father lived on a competent fortune which he had acquired by his bu

siness.

That Milton quitted the University without obtaining a fellowship has been gested as a proof of the disapprobation of

Quæque in immenso procul

Antro recumbis otiosa Æternitas

Monumenta servans et ratas leges Jovis, &c.

And thou Eternity, who dost diffuse

O'er all the enormous cave thy giant limbs
In grand repose, and guard'st the laws of Jove,
And the high structures of his glorious hand.

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In our author's poem to his father there is also a very noble line in which he speaks with equal sublimity of Eternity:

Æternæque moræ stabunt immobilis ævi.

The eternal pause of age for ever fix'd.

The poem which he wrote about this time, (1628,) for one of the Fellows of his college, on the subject of the unimpaired vigour of nature," Naturam non pati senium," possesses the merit, in a most uncommon degree, of poetic fancy and of poetic diction. See his letter to Alexander Gill, July 2, 1628.

He incepted, (to speak the academic language of Cambridge,) A. M. at the end of the Lent term in 1632; and he took his former degree, as we have before stated in Jan. 1628-9.

In the ordo senioritatis Baccalaureis reservatæ, among twentyfour, he occupies the fourth place. Of his own college, he was one of thirty who became B. A. at the same time; and one of twenty-seven who were made M. A. Among the M.A's his name in the subscription-book stands the first.

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his college. But let it be recollected that. in his time there was only one fellowship in his college tenable by a layman, and that, as he had now determined against entering into the church for reasons which, hallowed by conscience, are entitled to our respect, the attainment of a common fellowship, to be held only for a very limited term, could not be among the objects of his life. The competence also, of which he was assured from his father, would place him above the wish of any thing to be obtained by solicitation; and it is not impossible that, associating the idea of a fellow of a college, as the governor of a community, with that of some duty to be discharged by residence, he would decline a situation which must preclude him from the range of the world.

The five years, which he passed under his father's roof, may justly be regarded as the

Founded by Edward VI. Two other lay-fellowships have since been founded by sir John Finch, and sir Thomas Baines. P-"perceiving, that he who would take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withall, which unless he took with a conscience that could retch, he must either strain perforce or split his faith; I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing." Reasons of Church Gov. P. W. i. 123.

This house, as Mr. Todd says on the authority of the rector of Horton, was pulled down about fourteen years ago.

happiest of his life. In literary leisure and the company of an intelligent and beloved father; with a select correspondence and an occasional intercourse with the society, the sciences and the arts of the metropolis, the temperance of his enjoyment must have been completely satisfied; and the fruition of the tranquil present was not disturbed by any alarming prescience of the dark and stormy future. In a passage of his spirited poem to his father, written, as it is probable, about this time, he seems conscious of his high destiny, and magnanimously exults over those evils which he knew, by the experience of all ages, to be inseparably attached to it.

Este procul vigiles cura! procul este querela,
Invidiæque acies transverso tortilis hirquo:
Sæva nec anguiferos extende calumnia rictus:

* Paterno rure, quo is transigendæ senectutis causâ concesserat, evolvendis Græcis Latinisque scriptoribus summum per otium totus vacavi; ità tamen ut nonnunquam rus urbe mutarem, aut cöemendorum gratiâ librorum, aut novum quidpiam in Mathematicis vel in Musicîs, quibus tum oblectabar, addiscendi.

Defen. secund. P. W. v. 230.

Anguiferos rictûs," is certainly an inaccurate expression. Vipereos rictus, if the verse had permitted it, would have been unexceptionable. "Calumnia" is, I fear, the property of prose rather than of poetry. It occurs frequently in Cicero, and sometimes as a forensic word; but never in Virgil, nor, as I believe, in any of the Augustan poets. Many of Milton's expressions in his Latin poems are not supported by high classical authority.