Life of John Milton | Page 5

gold medal by a Polish prince (Aubrey
says the Landgrave of Hesse), and he appears among the contributors to
The Triumphs of Oriana, a set of twenty-five madrigals composed in
honour of Queen Elizabeth. "The Teares and Lamentations of a
Sorrowful Soule"--dolorous sacred songs, Professor Masson calls
them--were, according to their editor, the production of "famous
artists," among whom Byrd, Bull, Dowland, Orlando Gibbons,
certainly figure, and three of them were composed by the elder Milton.
He also harmonized the Norwich and York psalm tunes, which were
adapted to six of the Psalms in Ravenscroft's Collection. Such
performance bespeaks not only musical accomplishment, but a refined
nature; and we may well believe that Milton's love of learning, as well
as his love of music, was hereditary in its origin, and fostered by his
contact with his father. Aubrey distinctly affirms that Milton's skill on

the organ was directly imparted to him by his father, and there would
be nothing surprising if the first rudiments of knowledge were also
instilled by him. Poetry he may have taught by precept, but the one
extant specimen of his Muse is enough to prove that he could never
have taught it by example.
We have therefore to picture Milton growing up in a narrow street amid
a strict Puritan household, but not secluded from the influences of
nature or uncheered by melodious recreations; and tenderly watched
over by exemplary parents--a mother noted, he tells us, for her charities
among her neighbours, and a father who had discerned his promise
from the very first. Given this perception in the head of a religious
household, it almost followed in that age that the future poet should
receive the education of a divine. Happily, the sacerdotal caste had
ceased to exist, and the education of a clergyman meant not that of a
priest, but that of a scholar. Milton was instructed daily, he says, both
at grammar schools and under private masters, "as my age would
suffer," he adds, in acknowledgment of his father's considerateness.
Like Disraeli two centuries afterwards (perhaps the single point of
resemblance), he went for schooling to a Nonconformist in Essex,
"who," says Aubrey, "cut his hair short." His own hair? or his pupil's?
queries Biography. We boldly reply, Both. Undoubtedly Milton's hair is
short in the miniature painted of him at the age of ten by, as is believed,
Cornelius Jansen. A thoughtful little face, that of a well-nurtured,
towardly boy; lacking the poetry and spirituality of the portrait of
eleven years later, where the long hair flows down upon the ruff.
After leaving his Essex pedagogue, Milton came under the private
tuition of Thomas Young, a Scotchman from St. Andrews, who
afterwards rose to be master of Jesus College, Cambridge. It would
appear from the elegies subsequently addressed to him by his pupil that
he first taught Milton to write Latin verse. This instruction was no
doubt intended to be preliminary to the youth's entrance at St. Paul's
School, where he must have been admitted by 1620 at the latest.
At the time of Milton's entry, St. Paul's stood high among the schools
of the metropolis, competing with Merchant Taylors', Westminster, and

the now extinct St. Anthony's. The headmaster, Dr. Gill, was an
admirable scholar, though, as Aubrey records, "he had his whipping
fits." His fitful severity was probably more tolerable than the
systematic cruelty of his predecessor Mulcaster (Spenser's
schoolmaster when he presided over Merchant Taylors'), of whom
Fuller approvingly records: "Atropos might be persuaded to pity as
soon as he to pardon where he found just fault. The prayers of
cockering mothers prevailed with him as much as the requests of
indulgent fathers, rather increasing than mitigating his severity on their
offending children." Milton's father, though by no means "cockering,"
would not have tolerated such discipline, and the passionate ardour
with which Milton threw himself into the studious life of the school is
the best proof that he was exempt from tyranny. "From the twelfth year
of my age," he says, "I scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed
before midnight." The ordinary school tasks cannot have exacted so
much time from so gifted a boy: he must have read largely outside the
regular curriculum, and probably he practised himself diligently in
Latin verse. For this he would have the prompting, and perhaps the aid,
of the younger Gill, assistant to his father, who, while at the University,
had especially distinguished himself by his skill in versification. Gill
must also have been a man of letters, affable and communicative, for
Milton in after-years reminds him of their "almost constant
conversations," and declares that he had never left his company without
a manifest accession of literary knowledge. The Latin school exercises
have perished, but two English productions of the period, paraphrases