Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/344

Rh 320 went through, he tells us, a systematic course of reading in the Greek and Latin classics, varied by mathematics, music, and the kind of physical science we should now call cosmography. It is an interesting fact that Milton s very first public appearance in the world of English authorship was in so j honourable a place as the second folio edition of Shakespeare in 1632. His enthusiastic eulogy on Shakespeare, written in 1630, was one of three anonymous pieces prefixed to that second folio, along with reprints of the commendatory verses that had appeared in the first folio, one of them Ben Jonson s immortal tribute to Shakespeare s memory. Among the poems actually written by Milton at Horton the first, in all probability, after the Latin hexameters Ad Patrem, were the exquisite companion pieces L Allegro and 77 Penseroso. There followed, in or about 1633, the fragment called Arcades. It was part of a pastoral masque got up by the young people of the noble family of Egerton in honour of their venerable relative the countess-dowager of Derby, and performed before that lady at her mansion of Harefield, near Uxbridge, about 10 miles from Horton. That Milton contributed the words for the entertainment was, almost certainly, owing to his friendship with Henry Lawes, one of the chief court musicians of that time, whose known connexion with the Egerton family points him out as the probable manager of the Harefield masque. Next in order among the compositions at Horton may be mentioned the three short pieces, At a Solemn Music, On Time, and Upon the Circumcision ; after which comes Comns, the largest and most important of all Milton s minor poems. The name by which that beautiful drama is now universally known was not given to it by Milton himself. He entitled it, more simply and vaguely, &quot; A Masque presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634, before the Earl of Bridge water, Lord President of Wales.&quot; The existence of this poem is certainly due to Milton s intimacy with Lawes. The earl of Bridgewater, the head of the Egerton family, had been appointed to the high office of the presidency or viceroyalty of Wales, the official seat of which was Ludlow in Shropshire ; it had been determined that among the festivities on his assumption of the office there should be a great masque in the hall of Ludlow Castle, with Lawes for the stage manager and one of the actors ; Milton had been applied to by Lawes for the poetry ; and, actually, on Michaelmas night, September 29, 1634, the drama furnished by Milton was performed in Ludlow Castle before a great assemblage of the nobility and gentry of the Welsh principality, Lawes taking the part of &quot; the attendant spirit,&quot; while the parts of &quot; first brother,&quot; &quot; second brother,&quot; and &quot; the lady &quot; were taken by the earl s three youngest children, Viscount Brackley, Mr Thomas Egerton, and Lady Alice Egerton. From September 1634 to the beginning of 1637 is a comparative blank in our records. Straggling incidents in this blank are a Latin letter of date December 4, 1634, to Alexander Gill the younger, a Greek Translation of Psalm CXIV., a visit to Oxford in 1635 for the purpose of incorporation in the degree of M.A. in that university, and the beginning in May 1636 of a troublesome laAvsuit against his now aged and infirm father. The lawsuit, which was instituted by a certain Sir Thomas Cotton, baronet, nephew and executor of a deceased John Cotton, Esq., accused the elder Milton and his partner Bower, or both, of having, in their capacity as scriveners, misappropriated divers large sums of money that had been entrusted to them by the deceased Cotton to be let out at interest. The lawsuit was still in progress when, on the 3d of April 1637, Milton s mother died, at the age of about sixty-five. A flat blue stone, with a brief inscription, visible on the chancel-pavement of Horton church, still marks the place of her burial. Milton s testimony to her character is that she was a &quot; a most excellent mother and particularly known for her charities through the neighbourhood.&quot; The year 1637 was other wise eventful in his biography. It was in that year that his Comus, after lying in manuscript for more than two years, was published by itself, in the form of a small quarto of thirty-five pages. The author s name was withheld, and the entire responsibility of the publication was assumed by Henry Lawes. Milton seems to have been in London when the little volume appeared. He was a good deal in London, at all events, during the summer and autumn months immediately following his mother s death. The plague, which had been on one of its periodical visits of ravage through England since early in the preceding year, was then especially severe in the Horton neighbourhood, while London was comparatively free. It was probably in London that Milton heard of the death of young Edward King of Christ s College, whom he had left as one of the most popular of the fellows of the college, and one of the clerical hopes of the university. King had sailed from Chester for a vacation visit to his relatives in Ireland, when, on the 10th of August, the ship, in perfectly calm water, struck on a rock and went down, he and nearly all the other passengers going down with her. There is no mention of the sad accident in two otherwise very in teresting Latin Familiar Ejnstles of Milton, of September 1637, both addressed to his medical friend Charles Diodati, and both dated from London ; but how deeply the death of King had affected him appears from his occupation shortly afterwards. In November 1637, and probably at Horton, whence the plague had by that time vanished, he wrote his matchless pastoral monody of Lycidas. It was his con tribution to a collection of obituary verses, Greek, Latin, and English, which King s numerous friends, at Cambridge and elsewhere, were getting up in lamentation for his sad fate. The collection did not appear till early in 1638, when it was published in two parts, with black-bordered title-pages, from the Cambridge University press, one consisting of twenty-three Latin and Greek pieces, the other of thirteen English pieces, the last of which was Milton s monody, signed only with his initials &quot; J. M.&quot; It was therefore early in 1638, when Milton was in his thirtieth year, that copies of his Lycidas may have been in circulation among those who had already become acquainted with his Comus. Milton was then on the wing for a foreign tour. He had long set his heart on a visit to Italy, and circum stances now favoured his wish. The vexatious Cotton lawsuit, after hanging on for nearly two years, was at an end, as far as the elder Milton was concerned, with the most absolute and honourable vindication of his character for probity, though with some continuation of the case against his partner, Bower. Moreover, Milton s younger brother, Christopher, though but twenty-two years of age, and just about to be called to the bar of the Inner Temple, had married a wife ; and the young couple had gone to reside at Horton to keep the old man company. There being nothing then to detain Milton, all was arranged for his journey. Before the end of April 1638 he was on his way across the Channel, taking one English man-servant with him. At the time of his departure the last great news in England was that of the National Scottish Covenant, or solemn oath and band of all ranks and classes of the Scottish people to stand by each other to the death in resisting the ecclesiastical innovations which Laud and Charles had been forcing upon Scotland. To Charles the news of this &quot; damnable Covenant,&quot; as he called it, was enraging beyond measure ; but to the mass of the English Puritans it was far from unwelcome, promising, as it seemed to do, for England herself, the subversion at last of that system of &quot; Thorough,&quot; or despotic