Nec tu perge, precor, sacras contemnere Musas;
Nec vanas inopesque puta, quarum ipse peritus
Munere, mille sonos numeros componis ad aptos;
Millibus et vocem modulis variare canoram
Doctus, Arionii merito sis nominis hæres.
Nunc tibi quid mirum si me genuisse poetam
Contigerit, charo si tam prope sanguine juncti
Cognatas artes, studiumque affine sequamur?
Ipse volens Phoebus se dispertire duobus,
Altera dona mihi, dedit altera dona parenti;
Dividuumque Deum genitorque puerque tenemus,

Nor you affect to scorn the Aonian quire,

Bless'd by their smiles and glowing with their fire.
You! who by them inspired, with art profound
Can wield the magic of proportion'd sound:
Through thousand tones can teach the voice to stray,
And wind to harmony its mazy way,—

Arion's tuneful heir:-then wonder not

A poet child should be by you begot.

My kindred blood is warm with kindred flame;
And the son treads his father's track to fame.
Phoebus controlls us with a common sway;

To you commends his lyre,-to me his lay:
Whole in each bosom makes his just abode,

With child and sire the same, though varied God.

This must have been most acceptable; and yet, perhaps, more gratifying to the heart of a parent would be that effusion of filial affection with which the poem concludes.

At tibi, chare pater, postquam non æqua merenti
Posse referre datur, nec dona rependere factis,
Sit memorasse satis, repetitaque munera grato
Percensere animo, fidæque reponere menti.

Et vos, O nostri, juvenilia carmina, lusus,
Si modo perpetuos sperare audebitis annos,
Et domini superesse rogo, lucemque tueri,
Nec spisso rapient oblivia nigra sub orco;
Forsitan has laudes, decantatumque parentis
Nomen, ad exemplum, sero servabitis ævo.

But since, dear sire, my gratitude can find
For all your gifts no gifts of equal kind:

-

Since my large heart my bounded fortunes wrong,-
Accept, for all, the record of my song:

O take the love, that strives to be express'd!
O take the thanks, that swell within my breast!
And you, sweet triflings of my youthful state,
If strains like you can hope a lasting date;
Unconscious of your mortal master's doom,
If ye maintain the day nor know the tomb,
From dark forgetfulness, as time rolls on,
Your power shall snatch the parent and the son:
And bid them live, to teach succeeding days
How one could merit, and how one could praise!!

Some part of our author's early education was committed to the care of Mr. Thomas Young, a puritan minister and a native, as Aubrey affirms, of Essex: but at what precise period this connexion began or ended is not now to be ascertained. It has been deemed probable that Young continued in his office till the time when, in consequence of his religious opinions, he was compelled to retire to the continent, where he obtained the appointment of minister to the British merchants at Hamburgh. Young's depar

The reader will find an entire translation of this poem at the end of the volume.

ture from England is stated to have taken place in 1623, when his pupil is supposed to have been placed, in his fifteenth year, at St. Paul's school. But this statement seems to be inaccurate, as his pupil, in a letter dated from Cambridge in 1628, promises him a visit at his country house in Suffolk, and compliments him on the independency of mind with which he maintained himself, like a Grecian sage or an old Roman consul, on the profits of a small farm,"

m" Rus tuum accersitus, simul ac ver adoleverit, libenter adve piam ad capessendas anni tuique non minus colloquii delicias: et ab urbano strepitu subducam me paulisper ad Stoam tuam Icenorum, tanquam ad celeberrimam illam Zenonis porticum aut Ciceronis Tusculanum, ubi tu, in re modicâ regio sanè animo, veluti Serranus aliquis aut Curius, in agello tuo placide regnas."*

Mr. Warton imagines that Young returned in or before this year (1628) but Laud's persecution of the puritans was now at its height; and if Young formerly fled from this persecution, he must at the time in question have returned by stealth, and could hardly have resided openly upon his Suffolk living of Stow-Market. As the Iceni are supposed to have inhabited the counties of Norfolk and Cambridge as well as that of Suffolk, the expression of " Stoam tuam Icenorum," can be confined to Suffolk only by a reference to Young's living of Stow-Market. When Milton used the word

Stoa," on this occasion, and forced it from its proper station next to "Zenonis," could he playfully intend an allusion to his tutor's Stow? I suspect that he did. It is probable that Young did not return from the continent till about the end of 1640 or the beginning of the following year, when the Long Parliament of fered to him and to his brother exiles protection from the tyranny of the High Commission and the Star-Chamber courts. Soon * Epis. Thomæ Junio Jul. 2. 1628. P. W. vi. 112.

"Availing myself" (Milton writes to his late tutor)" of your invitation to your country house, I will with pleasure come to you as soon as the spring is further advanced, that I may at once enjoy the delightfulness of the season and that of your conversation. I will then retire for a short time, as I would to the celebrated porch of Zeno or to the Tusculan villa of Cicero, from the tumult of the town to your Suffolk Stoa, where you, like another Serranus or Curius, in moderate circumstances but with a princely soul, reign tranquilly in the midst of your little farm."In the same year however, we find him on the continent, and followed by the affection and gratitude of his pupil in a Latin elegy of much beauty and poetic merit.

after this period, we find him engaged in controversy, as one of the writers of the pamphlet called Smectymnuus, against bishop Hall and archbishop Usher. He was a preacher at Duke's Place, and was nominated one of the famous Assembly of Divines, whom the Parliament appointed in 1643 for the management of religion. On the visitation of the University of Cambridge by the earl of Manchester, he was established, on the ejection of Dr. Richard Stern, in the Mastership of Jesus College, and retained it, with much credit to himself and advantage to the college, till his refusal of subscription to THE ENGAGEMENT Occasioned his expulsion from the office. He died, and was buried, as Mr. Warton in one of his notes in his edition of Milton's ju- · venile poems informs us, at Stow-Market, of which parish he had been Vicar during thirty years.

But at whatever period Young retired to the continent or resigned his charge in Mr. Milton's house, it is certain that before his removal to the University the youthful Milton passed some interval of study at St. Paul's school, under the direction at that time of Mr. Alexander Gill. Three of our author's familiar letters are addressed to Alexander Gill, his master's son and assistant in the school, with whom he seems to have contracted a warm and lasting friendship. Their correspondence principally respects the communication of some pieces of composition, and strongly attests the mutual respect of the partics, founded, as we cannot reasonably doubt, on their mutual conviction of great literary attainments."

A powerful intellect, exerted with unwearied industry and undiverted attention, must necessarily possess itself of its object; and we know that our author, when he left

P Alexander Gill was Usher to his father, and afterwards promoted to the place of upper master. He was so rigid a disciplinarian that he was removed for extreme severity from his office. He wrote both in verse and prose with considerable taste; and Mr. Warton mentions a Latin epitaph from his pen, which bears testimony to the uncommon purity of his Latin composition. Having exposed himself, by means of which we are now ignorant, to the resentment of B. Jonson, he was made by that coarse writer the subject of a virulent and brutal satire.