general applause, spite of a disposition to severity, induced by his sturdy opposition to them in opinion, on a plan of academical studies then under discussion.
Milton here, it appears, on the testimony of Aubrey, suffered an indignity from his tutor, which it was not in his high and independent nature to endure with impunity. He refers to the fact in his first elegy. He mentions threats and other things, which his disposition could not tolerate; that he was absent in a state of rustication, and felt no desire to revisit the reedy banks of the Cam. Aubrey says, from the information of our author's brother Christopher, that Milton's first tutor at Cambridge was Mr. Chappell, from whom receiving some unkindness (he whipped him), he was afterward, though it seemed against the rules of the college, transferred to the tuition of one Mr. Tovell. This information stands in the MS. Mus. Ashmol. Oxon., No. 10, p. iii. Warton, remarking on the fact, adds, that Milton "hated the place. He was not only offended at the college discipline, but had even conceived a dislike to the face of the country—the fields about Cambridge. He peevishly complains that the fields have no soft shades to attract the Muses, and there is something pointed in his exclamation, that Cambridge was a place quite incompatible with the votaries of Phœbus."
It was not very likely that a youth of perhaps eighteen, who was writing the elegies and epistles in Latin which drew upon him so much notice, would submit quietly to so degrading a treatment. This treatment, it appears from Warton, was common enough, nevertheless, at both Cambridge and Oxford, among the tutors at that time. But Milton spurned it, as became his great spirit and noble nature, and was in consequence, probably, rusticated for a time. But this could not have been long, nor could it have been accordant to the wishes of the fellows of his college. The offense was against the tutor, not against the heads of the college, in the poet's mind. In his Apology for Smeotymnus, he thanks an enemy for the opportunity of expressing his grateful sense of the kindness of the fellows, in these words: "I thank him; for it hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge publicly, with all grateful mind, that more than ordinary favor and respect which I found above any of my equals, at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the fellows of the college wherein I spent some years; who at my parting, after I had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much better it would content them if I would stay; as by many letters full of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I was assured of their good affection to me."
Leaving Cambridge, Milton went to reside some time at Horton, near Colnbrook, in Buckinghamshire. His father had retired from his practice, on a competent fortune, to this village. This portion of his life was, probably, one of the most delightful periods of it. He had acquired great reputation for talent and learning at college; he had taken his degree of M.A., and in this agreeable retirement he not only indulged himself, as he tells us, in a deep and thorough reading of the Greek and Latin authors, but probably then contemplating his visit to Italy, made himself master of its language and well acquainted with its literature. To such perfection did he carry this accomplishment, that in Italy he not only spoke the language with perfect fluency, but wrote in it so as to astonish the most learned natives. Five years he devoted to these classical and modern studies, but not to these alone. He was here actively at work in laying the foundation of that great poetical fame which he afterward achieved. Born in the city, he now made himself thoroughly familiar with nature. In the woods and parks, and on the pleasant hills of this pleasant country, he enjoyed the purest delights of contemplation and of poetry. Here he is supposed to have imbued himself with the allegoric romance of his favorite Spenser, and also to have written his own delightful Arcades, Comus, L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, and Lycidas. It is a fact which his biographers have not seemed to perceive, but which is really significant, that the very Italian titles, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, of themselves almost identify the productions of this period and place, where he was busy with the preparation for his visit to Italy. The county of Buckingham appeared always to be from this time a particular favorite with him; and no wonder, for it is full of poetical beauty, abounds with those solemn and woodland charms which are so welcome to a mind brooding over poetical subjects, and shunning all things and places that disturb. It abounds, being so near the metropolis, also with historic associations of deep interest.
"This pleasant retreat," says Todd, "excited his most poetical feelings; and he has proved himself, in his pictures of rural life, to rival the works of nature, which he contemplated with delight. In the neighborhood of Horton, the Countess Dowager of Derby resided; and the Arcades was performed by her grandchildren at this seat, called Harefield Place. It seems to me that Milton intended a compliment to his fair neighbor, for fair she was, in his L'Allegro:
'Towers and battlements it sees
Bosom'd high in tufted trees,
Where, perhaps, some beauty lies,
The cynosure of neighboring eyes.'
The woody scenery of Harefield, and the personal accomplishments of the countess, are not unfavorable to this supposition; which, if admitted, tends to confirm the opinion that L'Allegro and Il Penseroso were composed at Horton. The Masque of Comus, and Lycidas, were certainly produced under the roof of his father."
The whole of these poems breathe the spirit of youth, and of scenes like those in which he now dayly rambled. Whether L'Allegro and Il Penseroso were written, as Sir William Jones contends, at Forest Hill, in Oxfordshire, or here, need not be much contested. If they were written there, it must have been many years afterward, after his return from abroad, and after his first marriage; for it was at Forest Hill that he found his wife. But for the reason assigned, and for that of their general spirit, I incline to the belief that they were written at Horton, as there is plenty of evidence that Comus and the Arcades were. These latter poems overflow with the imagery and the feeling of the old wooded scenery of Buckinghamshire.
"Comus. I know each lane, and every alley green, Dingle, or bushy dell of this wild wood, And every bosky bourne from side to side, My dayly walks and ancient neighborhood."
How full of the old pastoral country are these lines:
"Sec. Bro. Might we but hear The folded flocks penned in their wattled cotes, Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock Count the night watches to his feathery dames, 'Twould be some solace yet, some little cheering, In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs."
There is no other poet who has been able to transfuse the very spirit of nature into words, as it is done in the following passages, except Shakspeare, on whose soul images of rural beauty and repose fell with equal felicity of effect.
"This evening late, by then the chewing flocks
Had ta'en their supper on the savory herb
Of knot-grass dew-besprent, and were in fold,
I sat me down to watch upon a bank
With ivy canopied, and interwove
With flaunting honey-suckle, and began,
Wrapped in a pleasing fit of melancholy,
To meditate my rural minstrelsy,
Till Fancy had her fill; but ere a close,
The wonted roar was up amid the woods," &c.
How exquisite is every image of this passage:
"Return, Sicilian Muse,
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast
Their bells, and flowerets of a thousand hues.
Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks;
Throw hither all your quaint enamel'd eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honey'd showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,
The glowing violet,