had gathered from · the “ Animadversions;" and Milton says, “ He blunders at me for the

Nor always do I lose, 'mid walls and streets,
Spring's painted blossoins, and refreshing sweets.
Sometimes beneath my suburb grove stray,
Where blending elms dispense a chequer'd day:
Where passing beauties often strike my sight,
Diurnal stars, that shoot a genial light,
With raptured gaze, ah! often have I hung
On forms of power to make old Saturn young:
Ah! often have I seen the radiant eye
Outblaze the gem, or Zembla's nightly sky;
The neck, more white than Pelops' ivory arm;
The nectar'd lip, with dewy rapture warm;
The front's resplendent grace; the playful hairs,
Compell'd by Love to weave his golden snares;
And the sweet power of cheek, where dimples wreath,
And tints, beyond the blush of Flora breathe.
Yield, famed Heroides! yield nymphs, who strove
With heaven's great empress for the heart of Jove!
Stoop, Persian dames! your structured foreheads low!
Ye Grecian, Dardan, Roman damsels, bow!
And thou, Tarpeian poet,* cease to boast
Thy Pompey's porch, and theatre's bright host.
Let foreigo nymphs the fruitless strife forbear:
Beauty's first prize belongs to Britain's fair.
Imperial London! built by Trojan hands,
With towery head illustrious o'er the lands,
Happy-thrice happy!-what the sun beholds
Of female charms, thy favour'd wall infolds,
Not more the stars, whose beams illume thy night,
(Gay homagers of Luna's regent light)
Than lovely maids, of faultless form and face,
Who o'er thy crowded paths diffuse a golden grace.

* Ovid.

· Apol. for Smectymnus, P.W. v.i. 213.

rest, and flings out stray' crimes at a venture, which he could never, though he be a serpent, suck from any thing that I have written.”

Notwithstanding this strong assertion, the hostility of the present generation has again brought the evidence of Milton to convict Milton, and to establish the charges of his calumniator. In opposition to this pretended evidence stand the register of our author's college, and his own positive assertions. By the first of these we are satisfied that Milton lost no term, having been entered in 1624-5, and having taken his bachelor's degree in 1628; and by the latter we are assured, that he was not only exempted from punishment at the University,

Hither, 'tis thought, came wafted by her doves,
With all her smiles and war, the Queen of loves :
For this her Gnidos, Paphos, Ida scorn'd,
And Cyprus, with her rosy blush adorn'd.
But I, ere yet her sovereign power enthralls,
Prepare to fly these fascinating walls :
To shun with moly's aid, divine and chaste,
The courts hy Circe's faithless sway disgraced;
And, (fix'd ny visit to Cam's rushy pools,)
To bear once more the murmur of the schools.
But thou accept, to cheat the present time,
My pledge of love, these lines constrain'd to rhyme.

From the “ Animadversions" no suspicion of a charge against their writer could by any process be extracted.

but, in that seat of learning, was an object
of affection and respect. The passage, which
I shall cite as worthy of the reader's atten,
tion, is in the “ Apology for Smectymnuus."
After mentioning the charge which we have
already noticed, our author proceeds:-
“ ' For which commodious lie, that he may
be encouraged in the trade another time, I
thank him; for it hath given me an apt
occasion to acknowledge publicly with all
grateful mind, that more than ordinary fa-
vour and respect, which I found above any
of my equals at the hands of those courteous
and learned men, the follows of that college
wherein I spent some years: who at my part-
ing, after I had taken two degrees, as the
manner is, signified many ways how much
better it would content them that I would
ştay: as by many letters full of kindness and
loving respect, both before that time and
long after, I was assured of their singular
good affection towards me, Which, being
likewise propense to all such as were for
their studious and civil life worthy of esteem,
I could not wrong their judgments and up-
right intentions so much as to think I had
that regard from them, for other cause than
that I might be still encouraged to proceed in

• P.W. y. i. 219.

the honest and laudable courses, of whichi they apprehended I had given good proof.”

The evidence now before us seems to be conclusive; for I know not to what tribunal an appeal can be carried from the authority of a college register, and from that of assertions, publicly made and uncontradicted at a time when their falsehood would be jealously watched and might easily be detected. What interpretation then are we to assign to those expressions in the elegy to Deodati, which certainly refer to some compulsive absence of the young student from his college, and which discover no fondness in the poet for the society or the country of Cambridge? As we find, from some lines in the conclusion of the same elegy, that it was his intention to return to his college, we may fairly, as I think, impute the banishment, of which he speaks, to the want of pecuniary supplies for his maintenance at the University; and the example of Gray may instract us, that it is possible for a man of genius and of taste to

The slander was repeated, with some additional circumstaness, by Du Moulin in bis "Clamor Regii sanguinis ad calum," " Aiunt hominem Cantabrigiensi academia ob fagitia pulsum, dedecus et flagitium fugisse, et in Italiam commigrasse," &c. This is the vague and baseless echo of the author of the “ Modest Confutation.” We may soon have occasion to site our author's reply to this revived calumng.

dislike the conversation of a college, or the naked vicinity of the Cam, without being impelled to that dislike by unpopularity or injurious treatment.

The absurd story of the corporal punishment, which Milton is asserted to have suffered, may be regarded as undeserving of notice. It was told, as we are informed, with the pretence that it came from himself or from some of his near relations, by Aubrey to Wood; but with Wood, ill-disposed as he is known to have been to the fame of Milton, it obtained so little credit as not to find admission into his page. Can the authority, then, of Aubrey be received in this instance as possessing any weight? On the value of that confirmation of this tale, which Mr. Warton, with dry positiveness, and Dr. Johnson, with the insult of affected concern, have pretended to discover in that expression of the last cited verses,

" Cæteraque," &c.

)

and other things besides threats, I shall leave to the reader to determine; suggesting only that Dr. Johnson, for the purpose of concealing the weakness of his inference, has intimated a false translation of the

# Warton's Life of Dean Bathurst.