chancel lie the bones of Richard Pernham, B. D., Young's predecessor in the vicarage. Young was to be connected with Stowmarket during the whole remainder of his life, and was also to leave his bones in the church, and his memory in the traditions of the place."

ACADEMIC YEAR 1627-8.

MILTON ætat. 19.
Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Thomas BAINBRIGGE, Master of Christ's College.
Proctors, Thomas Love of Peterhouse, and EDWARD LLOYD of St. John's.

MICHAELMAS TERM . October 10, 1627, to December 16, 1627.
LENT TERM

January 13, 1627-8, to April 4, 1628.
EASTER TERM April 23, 1628, to July 4, 1628.

Among the newly-admitted students whom Milton found on his return to College, was the one whose admission is thus recorded in the entry-book:

“ September 4, 1627.- John Cleveland, native of Loughborough in Leicestershire, son of Thomas, instructed in letters at Hinckley under Mr. Vines, aged fifteen years, was admitted a lesser pensioner under Mr. Siddall.” 2

This was Cleveland or Clieveland, afterwards so celebrated as a satirist. His father was vicar of the parish in Leicestershire, in which he had been born (June 1613), and he was the second of eleven children, and the eldest son. Of all Milton's college-fellows in Christ's, none attained to greater reputation during his life; and it is well, therefore, to keep in mind the fact that he and Milton were college-fellows, and must have known each other very familiarly.

The Michaelmas Term of the session passed by, so far as Meade's letters inform us, without any incident of note. The Lent Term was more eventful. On the 17th of January, 1627–8, Meade writes to Sir Martin that one of the fellowships of Christ's, vacant by the resignation of Mr. Simpson, has been filled up by the election of a Mr. Fenwicke. His letters of the following month speak of “two comedies” in preparation for performance at Trinity College at Shrovetide, and also of an approaching event of more than ordinary interest, — to wit, a visit of his Majesty to Cambridge. The Court was then at the royal hunting-station of Newmarket, about thirteen miles from Cambridge, so that the visit could easily be made. The royal intention was talked of in the end of February; but, as the visit was to be somewhat of a private nature, Meade, writing to Stuteville on the 24th of that month, is unable to say when it will take place. He mentions, however, another honor which the University had received from his Majesty - an invitation to the leading doctors to preach, in turn, that season, the usual Lent sermons at Court. Dr. Bainbrigge, as Vice-Chancellor, was to preach first, greatly to the chagrin of Wren, Master of Peterhouse, who intrigued for the honor. What with this visit to Court at the head of a retinue of Doctors, and what with the return visit of the King to Cambridge (which took place some time before the 29th of April)' Dr. Bainbrigge was unusnally blessed. A royal visit to the University did not happen often; and the Head, in whose ViceChancellorship such an event occurred, might hope for something from it.

The courtesies of the King to the University were not without a motive. Driven to desperation by the resistance to his attempts to raise supplies, Charles, by the advice of Buckingham, had resolved on a third Parliament. This Parliament - the first in which Oliver Cromwell sat — met on the 17th of March, 1627–8. The discontent of the country found vent through it. First, there was the famous Petition of Right. Then, the King hesitating, there was the memorable resolution of the Commons that “supplies and grievances” should go together. Then, during April and May, there were threats of the King and counter-messages of the Parliament, and a mutual trial of firmness. The struggle lasted till the end of the first week in June; when, the Commons becoming terrible in their excitement, the King found it necessary to yield. He did so, as it was thought, most handsomely; pronouncing, on the 7th of June, as his fully considered answer to the Petition of Right, the regal formula, Soit fait comme il est desiré. All being thus seemingly well, subsidies were passed, and on the 26th of June Parliament was prorogued till the 20th of October.

Though it was term-time, Milton was, for some reason or other, a good deal in London during that month of May 1628, in which the strife between the Parliament and the King was hottest. This is proved by two documents under his own hand — the one his seventh Latin Elegy, dated 1628, and referring, in poetic language, to an incident which befel him in London on the 1st or 2d of May in that year; the other a Latin prose Epistle to young Gill, dated “London, May 20, 1628.” We take the documents in the order of time.

Every one has heard or read the romantic story of the young foreign lady, who, passing in a carriage, with her elder companion, the spot near Cambridge where Milton lay asleep under a tree, was so struck with his beauty, that, after alighting to look at him, she wrote in pencil some Italian lines, and placed them, unperceived as she thought (but there were laughing students near), in the sleeper's hand; and how Milton, when he awoke, read the lines, and, being told how they came there, conceived such a passion for the fair unknown, that he went afterwards to Italy in quest of her, and thought of her to the end of his days as his Lost Paradise. The story is a myth, belonging to the lives of other poets besides Milton. But, in compensation for the loss of it, the reader may have, on Milton's own testimony in the above-named Elegy, an incident not dissimilar, and, if less romantic, at least authentic as to place and date.? The following is a translation of the Elegy, literal in the important passages :

face also betrayed him, and his sweetly threatening eyes, and whatever else was comely in a boy and in Love. (Here follows a farther description of him.] “Better," he said, “hadst thou been wise by the example of others; now thou shalt thyself be a witness what my right hand can do.” [Cupid then enumerates some of his victories over the heroes of antiquity.) He said, and shaking at me a gold-pointed arrow, flew off to the warm bosom of his Cyprian mother. I was on the point of laughing at his threats, nor was I at all in fear of the boy. Anon I am taking my pleasure, now in those places in the city where our citizens walk ("qua nostri spatiantur in urbe Quirites "), and now in the rural neighborhoods of the hamlets round. A frequent crowd - in appearance, as it might seem, a crowd of goddesses — is going and coming splendidly along the middle of the ways; and the growing day shines with two-fold brightness. I do not austerely shun those agreeable sights, but am whirled along wherever my youthful impulse carries me. Too imprudent, I let my eyes meet their eyes, and am unable to master them. One by chance I beheld preëminent over the rest, and that glance was the beginning of my malady. Such as she, would Venus wish herself to be seen by mortals; such as she was the queen of gods to be beheld of old. This fair one mischievous Cupid, remembering his threat, had thrown in my way; he alone wove the snare for me. Not far off was the sly god himself lurking, his many arrows and the great weight of his torch hanging from his back. And without delay he clings first to the maiden's eyebrows and then to her mouth; now he nestles in her lips and then he settles on her cheeks; and whatever parts the nimble archer wanders over, he wounds my unarmed heart, alas! in a thousand places. Immediately unaccustomed pains were felt in my heart. Being in love, I inly burn; I am all one flame. Meanwhile she who alone pleased me was snatched away from my eyes, never to return. I walk on silently, full of complaint and desponding, and often in hesitation I wish to retrace my steps. I am divided into two; one part remains, and the other follows the object of love; and it is my solace to weep for the joys so suddenly rest from me. What shall I, unfortunate, do? Overcome with grief, I can neither desist from my begun love, nor follow it out. O, would it were given me once to behold the beloved countenance, and to speak a sad word or two in her presence! Perchance she is not made of adamant; perchance she might not be deaf to my prayers ! Believe me, no one ever burned so unhappily; I may be set up as the first and only instance of a chance so hard. Spare me, I pray, thou winged god of love; let not thine acts contradict thine office! Now truly is thy bow formidable to me, 0 goddessborn, and its darts nothing less powerful than fire. Thy altars shall smoke with our gifts, and thou alone amongst the celestials shall be supreme with me. But take away, at length, and yet take not away my pains: I know not why, but every lover is sweetly miserable. But do thou kindly grant that, if ever hereafter I and my love meet, one arrow may transfix the two and make us lovers. 1

Literally interpreted, this is a statement by Milton that, in the month of May 1628, he was, for the first time in his life, conscious of

love's wound — his conqueress being some beauty who had been seen by chance in a public place in London, on the 1st or 2d of that month, and was never likely to be seen again. Such things are and have been, in other centuries besides the seventeenth, as the disturbing vision of a lovely face thus shot by chance everlastingly, even from the streets and highways, into the current of a young man's dreams!

In the letter to Gill, dated the 20th of the same month, when the recollection of the vanished fair one must have been still vivid, Milton says nothing of the incident, but is rough and rational enough:

TO ALEXANDER GILL.

I received your letter, and, what wonderfully delighted me, your truly great verses, breathing everywhere a genuine poetical majesty, and a Virgilian genius. I knew, indeed, how impossible it would be for you and your genius to keep away from poetry, and to discharge out of the depths of your breast those heaven-inspired furies and the sacred and ethereal fire, seeing that (as Claudian says of himself) “ Totum spirent præcordia Phæbum.” Therefore, if you have broken the promises made to yourself, I here praise your (as you call it) inconstancy; I praise the sin, if there be any; and that I should have been made by you the judge of so excellent a poem, I no less glory in and regard as an honor than if the contending musical gods themselves came to me for judgment, as they fable happened of old to Timolus, the popular god of the Lydian mountain. I know not truly whether I should more congratulate Henry of Nassau on the capture of the city or on your verses; for I think the victory he has obtained nothing more illustrious or more celebrated than this poetical tribute of yours. But, as we hear you sing the prosperous successes of the Allies in so sonorous and triumphal a strain, how great a poet we shall hope to have in you, if by chance our own affairs, turning at last more fortunate, should demand your congratulatory muses! Farewell, learned Sir, and believe that you have my best thanks for your verses.

London, May 20, 1628. 1

There is something like an allusion here to the state of public affairs at the time. The letter, indeed, was written at the very crisis of the controversy between Parliament and the King, when the eyes of all Englishmen were turned towards London in expectation of an issue prosperous or disastrous. Meade, who seldom came to London, was attracted thither by the unusual interest