(From a miniature of the same size, by Faithorne, anno 1667, in possession of William Falconer, Esq.)

and an intensity of thought, such as the world has rarely seen in one so young. We have his own unquestioned testimony to the fact of his great industry. He tells us that, from the age of twelve to thirty, he seldom left his books before midnight.

His bodily appearance at leaving the University was of almost ideal perfection. He was a little below the medium stature; his hair was light brown, and, parted in the middle, it hung in rich curling locks down to his shoulders; his complexion a delicate pink and white, rose blending with lily; his eyes clear and of a dark gray; his voice cheery and musical; his form of wondrous symmetry; his movements manly, graceful, and bold. So beautiful and so refined had he been, that he was commonly called "the Lady of Christ's College;" yet his contemporary, Anthony Wood, tells us that, with all his elegance, "his gait was erect and manly, bespeaking courage and undauntedness."

His father had removed his residence from London to Horton, Buckinghamshire. Thither our handsome scholar, now about twenty-four years of age, went from Cambridge, and there he made his home for nearly six years. His father and mother would have been glad to see their brilliant son become a minister of the established church. But to his bold and independent spirit, the condition of the church seemed such that he who would take orders must write himself down a slave, and conscientious scruples arose. "I thought," says he, "to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing." He engaged at Horton in an almost ceaseless round of reading and study, occasionally dashing off a letter or a poem, or running down to London for books or a visit with friends. Comus, Lycidas, L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso, poems that "wear the stamp.of immortality" as much as anything in the English language, are among the fruits of these six years of toil.

Upon his mother's death, about the beginning of the year 1638, he determined to go abroad. His father furnished him ample funds, and the young man set out, accompanied by a servant, and bearing letters from and to distinguished men. At Paris he saw the great Grotius; at Florence, the greater Galileo, "a prisoner to the Inquisition," says Milton, "for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought." At Rome he attended parties given by the famous Cardinal Barberini. Here he saw and heard Leonora Baroni, a sweet singer, whose melody fascinated him, and to whom he wrote three Latin sonnets. He was preparing to cross over into Sicily, and then to Greece; but on learning that civil war was breaking forth in England, he hastened to return. "I thought it base," he says, "to be travelling for amusement abroad, while my fellow-citizens were fighting for liberty at home."

He arrived in 1639, after an absence of fifteen months. He was eager to join in the great struggle that had already begun, which was destined to shake off the heavy prelatical and political yoke that Laud and Wentworth had so long been fastening about the neck of the nation. In the great awakening of the English people, Milton thought he saw the way opening to a higher liberty, civil and religious, than England had yet seen, and he threw himself with all his might into the conflict. He was strongest with the pen, and he began those famous treatises on religious reformation, that are so much praised but so little read, of which Macaulay says, "They contain passages compared with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth of gold. The style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery."

But he must have an income. He opens a private school, takes a few pupils, and enters heartily into the work of their education. This subject commands his attention; he becomes sensible of its vast importance, and writes his famous letter to Samuel Hartlib, delineating with care the plan of "a complete and generous education, to fit a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, public and private, of peace and war." This treatise is remarkable for its recommendation