BISHOP BRAMHALL AND MILTON.
Perhaps I am convicting myself of the most benighted ignorance by asking some of your learned correspondents to elucidate for me a letter of Bramhall's, which I extract from his works. It was written to his son from Antwerp, and relates to the early years of our great Milton at Cambridge, dated:
"Antwerpe, May. 9/19, 1654.
"That lying abusive book [viz., the Def. Pop. Ang.] was written by Milton himself, one who was sometime Bishopp Chappell's pupil in Christ Church in Cambridge, but turned away by him, as he well deserved to have been, out of the University, and out of the society of men. If Salmasius his friends knew as much of him as I, they would make him go near to hang himself. But I desire not to wound the nation through his sides, yet I have written to him long since about it roundly. It seems he desires not to touch upon this subject."—Works, vol. i. p. 94, Oxford, 1842.
That Milton was rusticated from Cambridge, and besides flogged by Dr. Chappell, there seems little reason to doubt, but it is equally clear that the punishment was only a temporary one, as he again went into residence, and took the degrees of bachelor and master of arts in due course. Whence, then, this sweeping accusation of the great and good Bramhall's, whose character is a sufficient safeguard that he at all events believed what he said? Aubrey relates the story of Milton's being whipped by Dr. Chappell, and afterwards being "transferred to the tuition of one Dr. Tovell, who dyed parson of Lutterworth."[2] Milton himself (Elegiarum Liber, Eleg. I. ad Carolum Deodatum) speaks of his residence in London, and alludes, rather gratefully, to his "exilium" from Cambridge, which he heartily disliked. He also alludes to his being flogged, as there seems a whole world of meaning in Cæteraque:
"Nec duri libet usque minas perferre magistri,
Cæteraque ingenio non subeunda meo.
Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates,
Et vacuum curis otia grata sequi,
Non ego vel profugi nomen, sortemve recuso,
Lætus et exilii conditione fruor."—Ver. 15. &c.
[2] Dr. Warton has given a long note on the word Cæteraque in his edition of Milton's Poems, 1791, p. 421. He suggests that probably "Dr. Tovell" should read "Dr. Tovey, parson of Kegworth, in Leicestershire."
We then get a short sketch of his employments and amusements in London; and his return to Cambridge is mentioned in the palinode to the last of his elegies:
"Donec Socraticos umbrosa academia rivos
Præbuit, admissum dedocuitque jugum.
Protinus extinctis ex illo tempore flammis,
Cincta rigent multo pectora nostra gelu."
Having now cleared my way in as brief a manner as possible, I must profess my utter disbelief in the enormities of Milton's life at Cambridge. He was certainly flogged, but then he was only eighteen years old at the time, and we know that flogging was permitted by the statutes of many colleges, and was a favorite recreation amongst the deans, tutors, and censors of the day. Bramhall's letter has indeed been a marvellous stumbling-block in my way, ever since the appearance of the last edition of his works; but I do hope that some of your learned correspondents will dispel the clouds and shadows that surround me, and prove that, at all events, Milton was not worse than his neighbours.
Dr. South and Cowley were never flogged at college, but certainly they were often flogged at school, or they could not speak so feelingly on the subject:
"Those 'plagosi Orbilii' (writes South), those executioners, rather than instructors of youth; persons fitted to lay about them in a coach or cart, or to discipline boys before a Spartan altar, or rather upon it, than to have anything to do in a Christian school. I would give these pedagogical Jehus, those furious school-drivers, the same advice which the poet says Phœbus gave his son Phaëton (just such another driver as themselves), that he should parcere stimulis (the stimulus in driving being of the same use formerly that the lash is now). Stripes and blows are the last and basest remedy, and scarce ever fit to be used but upon such as carry their brains in their backs, and have souls so dull and stupid as to serve for little else but to keep their bodies from putrefaction."—Sermon upon Proverbs, xxii. 6.
And Cowley, in describing the Betula (Angl. birch-tree), how he does paint from nature!
"Mollis et alba cutim, formosam vertice fundens
Cæsariem, sed mens tetrica est, sed nulla nec arbor
Nec fera sylvarum crudelior incolit umbras:
Nam simul atque urbes concessum intrare domosque
Plagosum Orbilium sævumque imitata Draconem
Illa furit, non ulla viris delicta, nec ullum
Indulgens ludum pueris; inscribere membra
Discentum, teneroque rubescere sanguine gaudet."
Plantarum, lib. vi. pag. 323. Londini, 1668.
That Milton's character was notorious or infamous at Cambridge has never, to my knowledge, been proved; and there is in his favour this most overwhelming testimony, that he never forfeited the esteem and friendship of the great and good. Was Sir Henry Wotton writing to a man of blighted and blasted reputation when he sent the kind and complimentary letter prefixed to Comus? In that he not merely eulogises the "Dorique delicacy" of Milton's songs and odes, but gives him much kind and considerate advice upon the course he was to pursue in his travels, as well as some introductions to his own friends, and promises to keep up a regular correspondence with him during his absence. Milton was very proud of this letter, and speaks of it in his Defensio Secunda. Again, Milton's associates at Cambridge must have known all about the misdemeanour (whatever it was) that caused his rustication, and yet they permitted him to take a part in, and perhaps to write the preface of, the ever memorable volume which contained the first edition of Lycidas.
The person commemorated was Edward King, a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge (Milton's own college); and I need not adduce Milton's affecting allusions to their close and intimate friendship. It was for another of the Fellows of Christ's College that Milton at the age of nineteen (the very year after his rustication) wrote the academic exercise Naturam non pati Senium, found amongst his Latin poems. But I will omit a great many arguments of a similar kind, and ask this question, Why has Milton's college career escaped the lash of three of the most sarcastic of writers, Cleveland, Butler, and South, who were his contemporaries? Cleveland must have known him well, as he, as well as Milton, had contributed some memorial verses to King, and party feeling would perhaps have overcome collegiate associations. Nor could their mutual connexion with Golden Grove have saved him from the aspersions of Butler. After the Restoration, Richard Lord Vaughan, Earl of Carbery, appointed the author of Hudibras to the stewardship of Ludlow Castle; and his second wife was the Lady Alice Egerton, who, at the age of thirteen, had acted the Lady in Milton's Comus. It was to her likewise that Bishop Jeremy Taylor dedicated the third edition of the third part of the Life of Christ, as he had dedicated the first edition to Lord Carbery's former wife, whose funeral sermon he preached. I do not remember that Cleveland or Butler have on any occasion satirised Milton; but I do remember that Dr. South has done so, and I cannot understand his silence on the matter if Milton's private character had been notorious. Of course I do not believe the anonymous invective ascribed to a son of Bishop Hall's. Dr. South was not the man to "mince matters," and yet Milton's college life has escaped his sarcasms. What his opinion of Milton was we may learn from his sermon preached before King Charles II. upon Judges xix. 30.
"The Latin advocate (Mr. Milton) who, like a blind adder, has spit so much poison upon the king's person and cause," &c.
"In præfat. ad defensionem pro populo Anglicano (as his Latin is)."—Vol. ii. pp. 201-2. Dublin, 1720. fol.
Any one who can help me out of my difficulty will much oblige me, as Bramhall's letter is a painful mystery, and truth of any kind is always less distressing than vague and shadowy surmises.
RT.
Warmington, Oct. 16, 1851.