Hence appear the many mistakes which have made learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful; first, we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek, as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year. * And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities; partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled by long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit. Besides the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to be read, yet not to be avoided without a well-continued and judicious conversing among pure authors digested, which they scarce taste.+ Whereas, if after some preparatory grounds of speech by their certain forms got into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen short book lessoned thoroughly to them, they might then forthwith proceed to learn the substance of good things, and arts in due order, which would bring the whole language quickly into their power. This I take to be the most rational and most profitable way of learning languages, and whereby we may best hope to give account to God of our youth spent herein.

And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old error of universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of ⚫barous ages, that instead of be

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*On this subject, see Locke's Treatise on Education, § 162—177.Works, folio edition, vol. iii. p. 72, sqq.—ED.

+ Philips, a pupil of Milton, furnishes us with a list of the books which he himself made use of in teaching: these were, in Latin, the agricultural works of Cato, Columella, Varro, and Palladius, Celsus on Medicine, Pliny's Natural History, Vitruvius's Architecture, Frontinus's Stratagems, and the Philosophical Poems of Lucretius and Manilius: in Greek, Hesiod, Aratus, Dionysius Periegesis, Oppian's Cynegerica and Halieutics, Apollonius Rhodius, Quintus Calaber, certain of Plutarch's Philosophizi Works, Geminus's Astronomy, Xenophon's Cyropædia and Anabasis, lyænus's Stratagems, and Ælian's Tactics.-ED

VOL. III.

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ginning with arts most easy, (and those be such as are mo obvious to the sense,) they present their young unmatricu lated novices, at first coming, with the most intellective ahstractions of logic and metaphysics; so that they having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows, where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lameutable construction, and now on the sudden transported under another climate, to be tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this while with ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several ways, and hasten them, with the sway of friends, either to an ambitious and mercenary, or ignorantly zealous divinity: some allured to the trade of law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees; others betake them to state affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true generous breeding, that flattery and court-shifts and tyrannous aphorisms* appear to them the highest points of wisdom; instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery; if, as I rather think, it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy spirit, retire themselves (knowing no better) to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their days in feast and jollity; which indeed is the wisest and safest course of all these, unless they were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the errors, and these are the fruits of mispending our prime youth at the schools and universities as we do, either in learning mere words, or such things chiefly as were better unlearned.

I shall detain you now no longer in the demonstration of what we should not do, but straight conduct you to a hillside, where I will point you out the right path of a virtuous

*His hatred and contempt of tyranny everywhere break forth. Bacon, himself a lawyer, likewise notices the too common effect of a laborious study of the law, which appears to have a natural tendency to narrow and enfeeble the mind. Our history, however, furnishes some brilliant exceptions.-ED.

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and noble education; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect, and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.* I doubt not but ye shall have more ado to drive our dullest and laziest youth, our stocks and stubs, from the infinite desire of such a happy nurture, than we have now to hale and drag our choicest and hopefullest wits to that asinine feast of sowthistles and brambles, which is commonly set before them as all the food and entertainment of their tenderest and most docible age. I call therefore a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war. And how all this may be done between twelve and one and twenty, less time than is now bestowed in pure trifling at grammar and sophistry, is to be thus ordered.

First, to find out a spacious house and ground about it fit for an academy, and big enough to lodge a hundred and fifty persons, whereof twenty or thereabout may be attendants, all under the government of one, who shall be thought of desert sufficient, and ability either to do all, or wisely to direct and oversee it done. This place should be at once both school and university, not needing a remove to any other house of scholarship, except it be some peculiar college of law, or physic, where they mean to be practitioners; but as for those general studies which take up all our time from Lily to commencing, as they term it, master of art, it should be absolute. After this pattern, as many edifices may be converted to this use as shall be needful in every * He bad already, in Comus, described the delight derivable from the study of philosophy:

"How charming is divine philosophy!

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets

Where no crude surfeit reigns."-ED.

Nowhere has the material frame-work of Milton's system of education been more nearly approached than in the public schools of Egypt. The College of Kasserlyne, on the banks of the Nile, is such "a spacious house," with beautiful and ample grounds about it; but in the interior arrangements, the studies, and the results, we must not look for anything resembling what the poet proposed in this democratic establishment.-See Egypt and Mohammed Ali, vol. ii. p. 395, sqq.-ED.

city throughout this land, which would tend much to the increase of learning and civility everywhere. This number, less or more thus collected, to the convenience of a foot company, or interchangeably two troops of cavalry, should divide their day's work into three parts as it lies orderly: their studies, their exercise, and their diet.

For their studies: first, they should begin with the chief and necessary rules of some good grammar, either that now used, or any better; and while this is doing, their speech is to be fashioned to a distinct and clear pronunciation, as near as may be to the Italian, especially in the vowels. For we Englishmen being far northerly, do not open our mouths in the cold air wide enough to grace a southern tongue; but are observed by all other nations to speak exceeding close and inward, so that to smatter Latin with an English mouth, is as ill a hearing as law French. Next, to make them expert in the usefullest points of grammar, and withal to season them and win them early to the love of virtue and true labour, ere any flattering seducement or vain principle seize them wandering, some easy and delightful book of education would be read to them, whereof the Greeks have store, as Cebes, Plutarch, and other Socratic discourses. But in Latin we have none of classic authority extant, except the two or three first books of Quinctilian, and some select pieces elsewhere.

But here the main skill and groundwork will be, to temper them such lectures and explanations, upon every opportunity, as may lead and draw them in willing obedience, inflamed with the study of learning and the admiration of virtue; stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men, and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages. That they may despise and scorn all their childish and illtaught qualities, to delight in manly and liberal exercises, which he who hath the art and proper eloquence to catch them with, what with mild and effectual persuasions, what with the intimation of some fear, if need be, but chiefly by his own example, might in a short space gain them to an incredible diligence and courage, infusing into their young breasts such an ingenuous and noble ardour, as would not fail to make many of them renowned and matchless men.*

and

*He here alludes to the Socratic system of education, frequently glanced Rt in all the dialogues of Plato, but more fully developed in the Protagoras.

At the same time, some other hour of the day, might be taught them the rules of arithmetic; and soon after the elements of geometry, even playing, as the old manner was. After evening repast, till bedtime, their thoughts would be best taken up in the easy grounds of religion, and the story of scripture.

The next step would be to the authors of agriculture, Cato, Varro, and Columella, for the matter is most easy; and, if the language be difficult, so much the better, it is not a difficulty above their years. And here will be an occasion of inciting, and enabling them hereafter to improve the tillage of their country, to recover the bad soil, and to remedy the waste that is made of good ;* for this was one of Hercules' praises. Ere half these authors be read (which will soon be with plying hard and daily) they cannot choose but be masters of any ordinary prose. So that it will be then seasonable for them to learn in any modern author the use of the globes, and all the maps, first, with the old names, and then with the new ;t or they might be then capable to read any compendious method of natural philosophy.

And at the same time might be entering into the Greek tongue, after the same manner as was before prescribed in the Latin; whereby the difficulties of grammar being soon overcome, all the historical physiology ‡ of Aristotle and Theo

In pursuing a plan of this kind, the teacher would profit no less than the pupils-perhaps more. Adam Smith observes that almost all the great writers of Greece had been engaged in the business of education.-ED.

* Dr. Symmons remarks, that in agriculture no benefit could now be derived from the study of ancient authors. But Milton never intended that his pupils should seek to improve themselves in husbandry by reading Varro or Cato. His design extended no further than to render their boyish studies a means of awakening in their minds a love of rural pursuits, which age and experience might afterwards enable them to turn to good account. -ED.

+ This mode of studying geography has since been adopted, particularly at Eton, where, with the help of Arrowsmith's "Comparative Atlas," in which the ancient and modern maps of countries are bound up face to face, a lad may quickly acquire a knowledge at least of the elements of this useful science.-ED.

Milton here enters upon that part of his plan which more particularly provoked Dr. Johnson's animadversions. He thought it, in fact, a good opportunity to display his wisdom, which he considered superior to Milton's, and, by supporting his views with the seeming approbation of Socrates, to obtain the credit of being what, in the cant of the present day, is called “a