Bleak Winter's force, that made thy blossom dry! For he, being amorous, on that lovely dye Continuing this fancy, the poet tells how Winter, first mounting up in his icy-pearled car through the middle empire of the freezing air, then descended from his snow-soft eminence, and all unawares unhoused the little soul of the virgin by his cold-kind touch. Then, after some stanzas in which he asks whether the fair young visitant had been a higher spirit sent hither on an errand, or some star fallen by mischance from “ the ruined roof of shak’t Olympus,” he concludes: “But oh! why didst thou not stay here below, h k To turn swift-rushing black Perdition hence, Or drive away the slaughtering pestilence ? “Then thou, the mother of so sweet a child, Her false imagined loss cease to lament, Think what a present thou to God hast sent, And render Him with patience what he lent. Think of the youth of seventeen who could so write going back into the midst of the Bainbrigges, the Chappells, and the rest of them, to sit beneath them at table, to be directed by them what he should read, and to be lectured by them in logic and in literature ! As we shall see, the College folks of Christ's did in the end come to appreciate the qualities of their young scholar. Chappell had lost a pupil that would have done him credit; and if Tovey did not now know what a pupil he had gained, he may have afterwards thought of him when he was parson of Lutterworth. 1 That the "fair infant” of this poem was ips's Life of Milton. The poem was written, the child of Milton's sister there is nothing says Philips,“ upon the death of one of his in the poem itself to prove; but the fact is sister's children (a daughter) who died in indecided by a reference to the poem in Phil- fancy.” (p. xix.) ACADEMIC YEAR 1626-7. MILTON, ætat. 18. Vice-Chancellor, Dr. HENRY SMITH, Master of Magdalen (in which office he had recently succeeded Dr. Barnaby Gooch). Proctors, SAMUEL HICKSON of Trinity College, and THOMAS WAKE of Caius. MICHAELMAS TERM. October 10, 1626, to December 16, 1626. LENT TERM. EASTER TERM .... January 13, 1626-7, to March 17, 1626-7. This being Milton's third academic year, there were now, of course, many students, both in his own College and in the rest of the University, whom he could regard as his juniors. During the vacation just past, for example, there had been the following admission at Caius : 66 Jeremy Tailor, son of Nathaniel Tailor, Barber, born at Cambridge, and there instructed for ten years in the public school under Mr. Lovering, was admitted into our College Aug. 18, 1626, in the fifteenth year of his age, in the capacity of a poor scholar (pauper scholaris) by Mr. Batchcroft; and paid entrance fee of 12d."1 Among the new names of the session at Milton's own College, we may mention those of a George Winstanley, a William More, a Christopher Bainbrigge (a relation of the Master), a Richard Meade (a relation, we presume, of the tutor), and a Christopher Shute (the son of an eminent parish clergyman in London). More important than any of these were the two names whose addition to the roll of students at Christ's is thus recorded in the admission-book: "Roger and Edward Kinge, sons of John, Knight of York [both born in Ireland; Roger near Dublin, Edward in the town of Boyle in Connaught], Roger aged 16, Edward 14; were educated under Mr. Farnabie; and were then admitted into this College as Lesser Pensioners, June 9, 1626, under the tutorship of Mr. Chappell." 2 Sir John King, the father of these two young men, filled the office of Secretary for Ireland under Queen Elizabeth and James I., 1 Wood's Athena, III. 781: note by Bliss. 2 Copy furnished me by Mr. Wolstenholme of Christ's College, who informs me that the part of the entry which I have placed within brackets, is in a different ink and handwriting from the rest-evidently an addition a few years later, when the brothers were better known at Christ's. and also during part of the reign of Charles I. The family was well connected in Ireland — two of the young men's sisters being now or soon afterwards married to Lord Charlemont and Sir George Loder, or Lowther, Chief Justice of Ireland; and their uncle, Edward King, holding the Irish bishopric of Elphin. According to the usage of the University, though the academic year opens on the 10th of October, and the Proctors are elected on that day, the election of the new Vice-Chancellor does not take place till the 3d of November. In the year now under notice, it happened that Dr. Gostlin died before the day on which he would have resigned the Vice-Chancellor's office. IIis death took place on the 21st of October, 1626. The Vice-Chancellorship was filled up by the appointment of Dr. Smith, of Magdalen; and, after a good deal of opposition, the vacant Mastership of Caius was given to the Dr. Batchcroft just mentioned as Jeremy Taylor's tutor. While these arrangements were in progress, there was another death of a University official — that of Richard Ridding, the senior Esquire Bedel, and Master of Arts of St. John's. As his will is proved Nov. 8, 1626, he must have died almost simultaneously with Gostlin. Both deaths were naturally topies of interest to the Cambridge muses; and among the copies of verses written, and perhaps circulated, in connection with them, were two by Milton. That on Gostlin is in Horatian stanzas, and is entitled “ In obitum Procancellarii medici;” that on Ridding is in elegiacs, and entitled " In obitum Præconis Academici Cantabrigiensis.” Abstracts of them will be enough: On the death of the medical Vice-Chancellor. Men of all conditions must submit to fate. Could strength and valor have given exemption from the general doom, Hercules and Hector would have escaped it. Could enchantments have stopped death, Circe and Medea had lived till now. Could the art of the physician and the knowl- edyc of herbs have saved from mortality, neither Machaon, the son of Æsculapius, nor Chiron, the son of Philyra, would have died. Above all, had this been the case, the distinguished man whom the gowned race are now mourning, would still have been discharging his office with his old reputation. But Proserpine, seeing him, by his art and his potent juices, save so many from death, has snatched him away in anger. May his body rest quietly under the turf, and may roses and hyacinths grow above him! May the judgment of Æacus upon him be light, and may he wander with the happy souls in the Elysian plain!1 1 Sylvarum Liber, 1. Milton, when he dates however, there is an error. The poem in the his poems, usually does so accurately, except original copies is headed “anno ætatis 16," that he gives himself the apparent advantage whereas, when Gostlin died, Milton had of a year by using the cardinal numbers in- nearly completed his eighteenth year. stead of the ordinal. In the present instance, On the death of the Cambridge University-Bedel. Death, the last beadle of all, has not even spared his fellow-officer- him who has so often, conspicuous with his shining staff, summoned the studious youth together. Though his locks were already white, he deserved to have lived forever. How gracefully, how like one of the classic heralds in Homer, he stood, when performing his office of convening the gowned multitudes! Why does not Death choose as his victims useless men who would not be missed? Let the whole University mourn for him, and let there be elegies on his death in all the schools !1 Within the same fortnight, Milton, who appears to have been in a verse-making humor, wrote a more elaborate poem in Latin hexameters on a political topic of annual interest. It was now oneand-twenty years since the Gunpowder Plot had filled the nation with horror; and regularly every year, as the 5th of November came round, there had been the usual prayers and thanksgivings on that day in all the churches, the usual bonfires in the streets, and the usual demonstrations of Protestant enthusiasm and virulence in sermons and verses. There were probably opportunities in the colleges of Cambridge for the public reading of compositions on the subject by the more ambitious of the students.” At all events, there are five distinct pieces on the “Gunpowder Treason ” among Milton's juvenile Latin poems. Four of them are short and somewhat harsh and ferocious epigrams, of a few lines each. In one of them the poet blames Guy Fawkes for not having blown the priests of Rome and the other “ cowled gentry” themselves to heaven, seeing that, but for some such physical explosion, there was little likelihood of their ever taking flight in that direction! These four epigrams are not dated; but they were probably written at Cambridge, as well as the fifth and much longer poem on the same subject, the date of the composition of which is fixed by the heading “ In quintum Novembris: Anno ætatis 17" — i. e., “ On the 5th of November, 1626." The following is a pretty full abstract of it: The pious James had just come into England from the north, uniting Scotland with his new dominion, and was reigning in peace, when the King of Hell, issuing forth from his dark realm, wandered through the air, and calling forth his allies, filled the earth with wars and mischiefs. As soon as he beheld this land of ours, happy in peace, and inhabited by a people worshipping God truly, he sighed in flames and sulphur; his eyes rolled fire; he gnashed his iron teeth. “Here alone,” he cried, "have I found a race rebel to me, contemptuous of my yoke, and too powerful for all my 1 Elegiarum Liber: "Elegia Secunda, anno should be a sermon in St. Mary's by one of ætatis 17.” the Heads in the morning, and, in the after2 By a decree of the Vice-Chancellor and noon, an oration in King's College Chapel by Heads, passed Oct. 20, 1606 (see Dyer's “Prive the Public Orator, or by some one appointed ileges,” I. 310), it was ordered that, on every in his stead. following 5th of November forever, there skin. This must not continue unpunished.” So saying he swims the air on pitchy wings, adverse winds preceding him, and clouds thickening and frequent lightnings glittering where he flies. Crossing the Alps, he bends his way to Central Italy, and reaches Rome on St. Peter's eve, when he of the triple crown is going in procession with his idolatrous relics of dead men's bones, and his train of bowing princes and begging friars. The gorgeous ceremony over, the Lord of Kings (i.e. the Pope) has just entered his couch, [“ neque enim,” insinuates the uncharitable young versifier, “ secretus adulter producit steriles molli sine pellice noctes”] when, cre sleep has closed his eyes, the black ruler of shadows stands by him in the disguise of a Franciscan monk, with white hair, a long beard, an ash-gray cloak, a cowl over his shaven crown, and a rope of hemp round his loins. "Dost thou sleep, my son," asks the Devil, “mindless of thy flocks, at a time when a barbarous nation, born under the north pole, is deriding thy chair and thy triple diadem? Arise, be up and doing! Avenge the scattered Spanish Armada, and the cruel deaths of so many of the saints in the time of that virgin queen! If not, that nation, be assured, will fill the Tuscan sea with her soldiery, and plant her standard on the Aventine hill, and trample thy sacred neck under her profane feet. Nor needst thou attempt the matter openly. Use cunning and fraud, as may justly be done with heretics. At this moment their king is assembling from all corners of the land his nobles to counsel - aged men and men of ancient pedigree: these thou mayest blow limb from limb into the air, and blast into ashes, by placing powder of nitre under the floor of the place where they are assembling. Forthwith forewarn the faithful in England of the design, that none of them gainsay thy orders. And, when the nation is shattered and stupified by the deed, let the fierce Gaul or the savage Spaniard invade them; and thus the Marian times will return in that land. Fear not; all the gods and goddesses of your worship are with you!” Having thus said, the Fiend vanished to his native Hell: and it remained for the Pope to execute the project. The scene accordingly changes. Calling Murder and Fear and Treason out of the horrid cave,'all strewn with dead men's bones, where they have their dwelling, the Babylonian priest gives them their instructions; and the fiendish agents fly on their errand. Meanwhile the Lord of Heaven looks down, and laughs their intentions to scorn. In the Temple of Fame, said to be situated in that distant region where Asia and Europe are disparted - that strange, lofty brazen temple, hundred-gated and hundred-windowed, whither converge the whispers from all the ends of the earth, and whence they issue again a thousandfold confounded - the bruit of the intended massacre is duly heard. Then does the wayward goddess prove herself England's friend. Putting on her wings and taking with her her trump, she speeds to the fated land; and there, according to her wont, she first scatters vague words and uncertain murmurs of the coming event through the crowds of cities. These assume shape, and the deed and its authors are brought to light. The guilty are punished; and there are grateful thanksgivings to God. But never shall that crime or that deliverance be forgotten; nor now in the whole year is there a day more celebrated than the fifth of November. Not a syllable respecting Milton or his verses have we from Meade. On the 25th of November he writes to Stuteville of the |