early as 1625, were confirmed by Chappell's subsequent career. As we shall meet with him again in the course of that career, we need not anticipate it here. Suffice it to say that, through Laud's interest, he was transferred from his Fellowship at Cambridge in 1633 (the year after Milton left Cambridge) to the Deanery of Cashel in Ireland; that, being found very efficient there in carrying out Laud's views of uniformity, he was promoted to the Provostship of Trinity College, Dublin, and in 1638, to the Bishopric of Cork, Cloyne and Ross; that, had Laud's power lasted much longer, he would probably have had an English Bishopric; but that, involved in Laud's ruin, he left Ireland in 1641, came over to England, and, after undergoing a short imprisonment and otherwise suffering during the civil war, died at Derby in 1649. As specimens of his authorship, there remain a little treatise entitled "The Preacher, or the Art and Method of Preaching," published originally in Latin in 1648 and afterwards in English in 1656, and another treatise, first published in 1653, entitled "The Use of Holy Scripture gravely and methodically discoursed;" in addition to which the authorship of the well-known "Whole Duty of Man" has been claimed for him. I have looked over his "Art of Preaching;" and the impression which it has left is that, though not a common-place man and probably an accurate tutor, he must have been a man of dry and meagre nature, not so genial by half as his friend Meade.1

Respecting Nathaniel Tovey, our information is more scanty than respecting Chappell. He was born at Coventry, the son of a Mr. Tovey, Master of the Grammar School there, who had been tutor to Lord Harrington of Exton. Left an orphan when quite young, he had been taken in charge by Lucy, Countess of Bedford, the only daughter of Lord Harrington; who, after maintaining him for some time in her household, had sent him to Christ's College in Cambridge, in order that "the excellent talent which she saw in him might not be wasted away in the idleness of a Court-life." Here, after graduating in Arts, he obtained a Fellowship. In 1621 he held the Logic Lectureship in the College. He subsequently took the degree of B. D.; which was his academic degree during or about the time when Milton was at Christ's. He gave up his

1 The foregoing particulars concerning Chappell have been derived from the British Biography, vol. IV. pp. 448-9, from Cole's MS. Athena Cantab.; from Fuller's Worthies -Nottingham, and from Cooper's Annals of Cambridge. The last-named work corrects some errors in the account in the British Biography. There the disputation in which

Chappell gained such a triumph is said to have occurred during the King's last visit to Cambridge, in 1624. Documents quoted by Mr. Cooper show that it was during the King's second visit in 1615. In these documents, also, it is not Roberts the Respondent, but Cecil the Moderator of the Act that faints.

Fellowship not long after Milton had left the College — apparently before the year 1637; being then appointed to the Rectory of Lutterworth in Leicestershire - the parish in which, two centuries and a half before, the Reformer Wycliffe had labored. While parson of this famous parish, Tovey married a niece of the mathematician Walter Warren, who was a Leicestershire man. He had for some time in his hands the papers which Warren left at his death, including certain Tables of Logarithms. Unlike his great predecessor, Tovey did not die parson of Lutterworth. He was ejected from the living in or prior to the year 1647 by the Parliamentary sequestrators. In 1656, however, he was inducted into the living of Ayleston, in the same county of Leicestershire, on the nomination of John Manners, Earl of Rutland. Entries in his handwriting are still to be seen in the Registry of this parish. He did not long hold the living. He and his wife were cut off together by an epidemic fever in September 1658, leaving one daughter. On the 9th of that month they were both buried in the Church of Ayleston, where the epitaph on his tombstone still is or recently was to be seen. Of his character or doings during that earlier portion of his life when he was a fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, we have no authentic account. His name occurs in some College documents of the period; but that is all. 1

1

Into the little world of Christ's College, presided over by such men as we have mentioned, forming a community by itself, when all the members were assembled, of some two hundred and fifty persons, and surrounded again by that larger world of the total University to which it was related as a part-we are to fancy Milton introduced in the month of February 1624-5, when he was precisely sixteen years and two months old. He was a little older perhaps than most youths then were on being sent to the University. Still it was the first time of his leaving home, and all must have seemed strange to him. To put on for the first time the gown and cap, and to move for the first time through unfamiliar streets, observing college after college, each different from the others in style and appearance, with the majestic King's conspicuous in the midst; to see for the first time the famous Cam, and to walk by its

2

1 These particulars respecting Tovey are derived chiefly from Nichols's "History and Antiquities of Leicestershire," where Tovey is noticed in connection both with Lutterworth (vol. IV. pp. 264 and 299) and Ayleston (Ibid. pp. 28-33). Nichols himself de

rives the facts chiefly from Tovey's epitaph in Ayleston Church, which he quotes. The other particulars are from Wood's Athena, II. 302; and Scott's account of Cambridge in 1621 (Add. MS. Brit. Mus. 11,720).

2 Fourteen or fifteen was a not unusual age.

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banks, these would be powerful sensations to a youth like Milton. Within the cloisters of his own College, he had matter enough for curiosity and speculation. Setting aside the Master and Fellows, respecting whom, and especially respecting his own tutor Chappell, his curiosity would naturally be strongest, the faces and figures of his fellow-students, collected from all the counties of England, and answering to names many of which he had never heard, could not but interest and amuse him. Which of these faces, some fair, some dark, some ruddy, were to be most familiar and the most dear to him in the end? In which of these bodies-tall, of mid-stature, or diminutive beat the manliest hearts? As all this was interesting to Milton then prospectively, so it is interesting to us now in the retrospect. Nor, with due search, would it be impossible, even at this distance of time, to present in one list the names, surnames, and scholastic antecedents of all the two hundred youths or thereby, whom, as they were congregated in the hall or chapel of Christ's in the spring of 1624-5, Milton may have surveyed with the feelings described. Of such of them as there is any peculiar reason for remembering we shall hear as we proceed.

at

A matter of some importance to the young freshman at College, after his choice of a tutor, is his choice of chambers. Tradition still points out at Christ's College the rooms which Milton occupied. 2 They are in the older part of the building, on the left side of the court, as you enter through the street-gate-the first floor rooms on the first stair on that side. The rooms consist at present of a small study with two windows looking into the court, and a very small bed-room adjoining. They do not seem to have been altered at all since Milton's time. When we hear of "Milton's rooms College, however, the imagination is apt to go wrong in one point. It was very rare in those days for any member of a College, even a Fellow, to have a chamber wholly to himself. Two or three generally occupied the same chamber; and, in full Colleges, there were all kinds of devices of truckle-beds and the like to multiply accommodation. In the original statutes of Christ's College, there is a chapter specially providing for the manner in which the chambers of the College should be allocated; "in which chambers,"

1 Without taxing the College-Register, I have myself counted (chiefly in Add. MS. Brit. Mus. 5885) the names and surnames of 189 students of Christ's who took their B. A. degree between the years 1625 and 1632 inclusive, and who were, therefore, among Milton's College contemporaries. I believe about five per cent. of these might be easily

traced as of some note in the subsequent history of Church and State.

2 The tradition comes to us through Wordsworth, who tells us in his Prelude, that the first and only time in his life when he drank too much was at a wine-party in Milton's rooms, in Christ's, to which he was invited when an under-graduate in St. John's (1786-89).

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says the founder, "our wish is that the Fellows sleep two and two, but the scholars four and four, and that no one have alone a single chamber for his proper use, unless perchance it be some Doctor, to whom, on account of the dignity of his degree, we grant the possession of a separate chamber." In the course of a century, doubtless, custom had become somewhat more dainty. Still, in all the Colleges, the practice was for the students to occupy rooms at least two together; and in all College biographies of the time, we hear of the chum or chamber-fellow of the hero as either assisting or retarding his studies. Milton's chamber-fellow, or one of his chamber-fellows, would naturally be Pory. But, in the course of seven years, there must have been changes.

The Terms of the University, then as now, were those fixed by the statutes of Elizabeth. The academic year began on the 10th of October, and the first, or Michaelmas or October Term, extended from that day to the 16th of December. Then followed the Christmas vacation. The second, or Lent or January Term, began on the 13th of January and extended to the second Friday before Easter. There then intervened the Easter vacation of three weeks. Finally, the third, or Easter or Midsummer Term, began on the 11th day (second Wednesday) after Easter-Day, and extended to the Friday after "Commencement Day"- that is, after the great terminating Assembly of the University, at which candidates for the higher degrees of the year were said to "commence" in those degrees; which "Commencement Day" was always the first Tuesday in July. The University then broke up for the "long vacation" of three months.

In those days of difficult travelling, and of the greater strictness of the statutes of the different Colleges in enforcing residence even out of term, it was more usual than it is now for students to remain in Cambridge during the short Christmas and Easter vacations; but few stayed in College through the whole of the long vacation. During part of this vacation at least, Milton would always be in London. But if he should wish at any other time to visit London, there were unusual facilities for the journey. The name of Thomas Hobson, the Cambridge carrier and job-master of that day, belongs to the history of England. Cambridge was proud of him; he was one of the noted characters of the place. Born in 1544, and now therefore exactly eighty years of age, he still every week took the

1 Statutes of Christ's Coll. cap. 7, from a MS. copy. In Dean Peacock's "Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge," (1841) it is stated that both in Trinity College and St. John's, four students

used originally to have one chamber in common, or one Fellow and two or three students. "Separate beds were provided for all scholars above the age of fourteen."

road with his wain and horses, as he had done sixty years before, when his father was alive; making the journey from Cambridge to the Bull Inn, in Bishopsgate-street, London, and thence back again; carrying letters and parcels, and sometimes stray passengers, and delivering them both ways. All through Shakspeare's life, Hobson's cart-bells had tinkled, Hobson himself riding in the cart or trudging by the side of it, along the London and Cambridge road. He had driven the team as a grown lad for his father before Shakspeare was born; and now, eight years after Shakspeare's bones had been laid under the pavement in Stratford Church, he was still hale in his old vocation. Nor, though only a carrier, driving his own wain, was he a person of slight consequence. There was many a squire round about Cambridge whom old Hobson could have bought and sold. Beginning life on his own account with a goodly property left him by his father, including the wain he used to drive, eight team-horses and a nag, he had by his prudence and honesty gradually increased this property, till, besides paying the expenses of a large family, he was one of the wealthiest citizens of Cambridge. He owned several houses in the town, and much land. round. This increase of fortune he owed in part to his judgment in combining other kinds of business, such as farming, malting, and inn-keeping, with his trade as a carrier. But his great stroke in life had been the idea of letting out horses on hire. "Being a man," says Steele, in the Spectator, "that saw where there might good profit arise though the duller men overlooked it," and "observing that the scholars of Cambridge rid hard," he had early begun to keep a large stable of horses, with boots, bridles, and whips, to furnish the gentlemen at once, without going from college to college to borrow." He was, in fact, according to all tradition, the very first man in this island who let out hackney horses. But, having no competition in the trade, he carried it on in his own way. He had a stable of forty good cattle always ready and fit for travelling; but, when any scholar or other customer, whosoever he might be, came for a horse, he was obliged to take the one that chanced to stand next the stable-door. Hence the well-known proverb, "Hobson's choice; this or nothing;" the honest carrier's principle being that every customer should be justly served, and every horse justly ridden in his turn. Some of Hobson's horses were let out to go as far as London; and on these occasions it was Hobson's habit, out of regard for his cattle, always to impress upon the scholars, when he saw them go off at a great pace, “that they would come time enough to London if they did not ride too fast." Milton, as we shall see, took a great fancy to Hobson.