officially whipped in the Regent-walk for his insolence, p. 81.

"The anecdote of Milton's whipping at Cambridge, is told by Aubrey. MS. Mus. Ashm. Oxon. Num. x. P. iii. From which, by the way, Wood's Life of Milton in the Fasti Oxonienses, the first and the ground-work of all the lives of Milton, was compiled. Wood says, that he draws his account of Milton from his own mouth to my Friend, who was well acquainted with and had from him, and from his relations after his death, most of this account of his life and writings following.' Ath. Oxon. vol. i. Fasti, p. 262. This Friend is Aubrey; whom Wood, in another place, calls credulous, roving and magotie-headed, and sometimes little better than crased.' Life of A. Wood, p. 577. edit. Hearne, Th. Caii Vind. &c. vol. ii. This was after a quarrel. I know not that Aubrey is ever fantastical, except on the subjects of chemistry and ghosts. Nor do I remember that his veracity was ever impeached. I believe he had much less credulity than Wood. Aubrey's Monumenta Britannica is a very solid and rational work, and its judicious conjectures and observations have been approved and adopted by the best modern antiquaries. Aubrey's manuscript Life contains some anecdotes of Milton yet unpublished. [Since published in 1815 by Mr. Godwin in his Lives of Milton's Nephews.]

"But let us examine if the context will admit

some other interpretation. Cæteraque, the most indefinite and comprehensive of descriptions, may be thought to mean literary tasks called impositions, or frequent compulsive attendances on tedious and unimproving exercises in a college-hall. But cætera follows minas, and perferre seems to imply somewhat more than these inconveniences, something that was suffered, and severely felt. It has been suggested, that his father's economy prevented his constant residence at Cambridge; and that this made the college lar dudum vetitus, and his absence from the university an exilium. But it was no unpleasing or involuntary banishment. He 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 Muse; and there is something pointed in his exclamation, that Cambridge was a place quite incompatible with the votaries of Phoebus. Here a father's prohibition had nothing to do. He resolves, however, to forget all these disagreeable circumstances, and to return in due time. The dismission, if any, was not to be perpetual. In these lines, ingenium is to be rendered temper, nature, disposition, rather than genius.

66

Aubrey says, from the information of our author's brother Christopher, that Milton's first tutor there [at Christ's college] was Mr. Chappell, from whom receiving some unkindnesse, (he whipt him)

papers;

he was afterwards, though it seemed against the rules of the college, transferred to the tuition of one Mr. Tovell, who dyed parson of Lutterworth.' MS. Mus. Ashm. ut supr. This information, which stands detached from the body of Aubrey's narrative, seems to have been communicated to Aubrey, after Wood had seen his it therefore does not appear in Wood, who never would otherwise have suppressed an anecdote which contributed in the least degree to expose the character of Milton. I must here observe, that Mr. Chappell, from his original Letters, many of which I have seen, written while he was a fellow and tutor of Christ's College, and while Milton was there, and which are now in the possession of Mr. Moreton of Westerham in Kent, by whom they have been politely communicated, appears to have been a man of uncommon mildness and liberality of manners."

To the authority of the preceding remarks Dr. Johnson has implicitly subscribed; not without adding, however, that it may be conjectured, from the willingness with which the poet has perpetuated the memory of his exile, that its cause was such as gave him no shame.

That flagellation might be performed upon offenders at Cambridge, (as well as at Oxford,) the Statutes of that university will show: That Milton

* It should be Tovey. I have seen the signature of his name to some resolutions of his college.

suffered this publick indignity, rests solely upon the testimony of Aubrey, which I am unable to controvert: But it is remarkable that it never should have been noticed by those who would have rejoiced in such an opportunity of exposing Milton to a little ridicule. Yet further. It is related by Mr. Warton, that, "in the University Statutes at Oxford, compiled in 1635, ten years after Milton's admission at Cambridge, corporal punishment is to be inflicted on boys under sixteen. We are to recollect, that Milton, when he went to Cambridge, was only a boy of fifteen." This is a mistake. Milton was in his seventeenth year, when he was admitted at Christ's College. And if the same exemption was granted to boys of sixteen at Cambridge, as to those of the same age at Oxford, the flagellation of Milton becomes still less entitled to credit. One of the statutes of Christ's College, entitled Cap. 37. De Lectoris Authoritate in Discipulos, seems to countenance the supposition of similar exemption: After prescribing that they, who absent themselves from certain Lectures, shall be fined, the Statute subjoins the following reservation; "si tamen adultus fuerit ; alioquin, virga corrigatur.”

The application also of cætera may be perhaps more general than Mr. Warton and Dr. Johnson have been pleased to consider it; instead of corporal punishment, it may suggest the idea of academical

See the Extract from the College Register, p. 9.

restrictions, to which a youth of Milton's genius could not submit; or merely of threats perhaps, which he thought he did not deserve; and, if hẹ therefore acquiesced in a short exile from Cambridge, as some biographers suppose, it should seem that, by his admission to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1628, he had incurred no loss of terms; which rustication however must have occasioned, and which the Register of his College, or of the University, would probably have noticed. His reply to an enemy, who in the violence of controversy had asserted that he was expelled, may here be cited. 2❝ I must be thought if this libeller (for now he shews himself to be so) can find belief, after an inordinate and riotous youth spent at the University, to have been at length vomited out thence. For which commodious lye, that he may be encouraged in the trade another time, I thank him; for it hath given me an apt occasion to acknowledge publickly, with all gratefull mind, that more than ordinary favour 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 that 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 singular.

Apology for Smectymnuus. Prose-Works, vol. i. p. 174,

edit. 1698.

с