The acquaintanceship may have begun some years before that. It may have begun in 1639 when Milton, on his return from abroad, took lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard, or in 1640, when he first set up house in Aldersgate Street. At all events, when Milton's Anti-Episcopal pamphlets of the next two years made him a public man, he is not likely to have escaped the cognisance of Hartlib. I should not wonder if Milton were one of those "more forward spirits" whom Hartlib wanted to enlist in the great scheme of a Pansophic University of London to be organized by Comenius, and whom he tried to bring round Comenius personally during the stay of that theorist in London in 1641-2, when the experiment of some such University was really in contemplation by friends in Parliament, and Chelsea had been almost fixed on as the site. But, if so, I rather guess, for reasons which will appear, that Milton gave the whole scheme the cold shoulder, and did not take to the great Comenius. Quite possibly, however, it was not till Comenius was gone, and was fixed down at Elbing in Prussia, that there was any intimacy between Milton and Hartlib. It may have come about after Milton had been deserted by his wife in July 1643, and when a few pupils, besides the two nephews he had till then had charge of, were received into his wifeless household. Would not this in itself be an attraction to Hartlib? Was not Milton pursuing a new method with his pupils, between which and the method of Comenius there were points in common? Might not Comenius himself, in his retirement at Elbing, be interested in hearing of an eminent English scholar and poet who had views about a Reform of Education akin to his own?
This is very much fancy, but it is the exact kind of fancy that fits the certainty. That certainty is that, before the middle of 1644, Milton and Hartlib were well acquainted with each other, had met pretty frequently at Milton's house in Aldersgate Street, or at Hartlib's in Duke's Place, and had conversed freely on many subjects, and especially on that of Education. Nay more, Hartlib, trying to indoctrinate Milton with the Comenian views on this subject, had found that Milton had already certain most positive views of his own upon it, in some things agreeing with the Comenian, but in others vigorously differing. Hence, after various colloquies, he had made a request to Milton. Would he put a sketch of his views upon paper—no elaborate treatise, but merely a sketch, such as one could read in half-an-hour or so, and, if permitted, show to a friend, or print for more general use? Urged more and more pressingly, Milton complied; and the result was the appearance, on June 5, 1644, on some booksellers' counters, of a thin little quarto tract, of eight pages in rather small type, with no author's name, and no title-page at all, but simply this heading atop of the text on the first page, "OF EDUCATION: TO MASTER SAMUEL HARTLIB." The publication had been duly registered, and the publisher was the same Thomas Underhill, of Wood Street, who had published Milton's first three Anti-Episcopal pamphlets. The inference is that the thing was printed by Milton himself, and not by Hartlib. It would be handier for Hartlib to have it in print than in manuscript. [Footnote: "June 4, 1644: Tho. Underhill entered for his copy under the hands of Mr. Cranford [the licenser] and Mr. Man, warden, a little tract touching Education of Youth," is the entry in the Stationers' books; without which we should not have known the publisher's name. The date of the publication is fixed, and the fact that the authorship was known at the time is proved, by this MS. note of Thomason on the copy among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum (Press mark 12. F. e. 12./160) "By Mr. John Milton: 5 June, 1644."—Milton reprinted the tract in 1673, at the end of the second edition of his Minor Poems, with the words "Written above twenty years since" added to the original title.]
Hartlib must have been pleased, and yet not altogether pleased, with the opening of the Tract. Here it is:—
"MR. HARTLIB,
"I am long since persuaded that to say or do aught worth memory and imitation no purpose or respect should sooner move us than simply the love of God and of Mankind. Nevertheless, to write now the Reforming of Education, though it be one of the greatest and noblest designs that can be thought on, and for the want whereof this Nation perishes, I had not yet at this time been induced, but by your earnest entreaties and serious conjurements; as having my mind for the present half diverted in the pursuance of some other assertions, the knowledge and the use of which cannot but be a great furtherance both to the enlargement of Truth and honest living with much more peace. [Footnote: This passage, the wording of which clearly implies that Milton was prosecuting his Divorce speculation, with whatever else in addition, sets aside a hypothesis (which may have occurred to the reader as well as to myself) that the Tract on Education, though not published till June 1644, may have been written, and in Hartlib's hands, as early as 1641-2, when Comenius was in London. The hypothesis, which might have been otherwise plausible, will not accord with the particular words of the tract now presented; and the conclusion is that, whether Milton knew Hartlib or not as early as 1641- 2, when Comenius was with him, the tract was not written till shortly before its publication in June 1644, when Comenius had been two years in Elbing.] Nor should the laws of any private friendship have prevailed with me to divide thus, or to transpose, my former thoughts, but that I see those aims, those actions, which have won you with me the esteem of a person sent hither by some good providence from a far country to be the occasion and the incitement of great good to this Island. And, as I hear, you have obtained the same repute with men of most approved wisdom, and some of highest authority among us; not to mention the learned correspondence which you hold in foreign parts, and the extraordinary pains and diligence which you have used in this matter both here and beyond the seas, either by the definite will of God so ruling, or the peculiar sway of nature, which also is God's working, Neither can I think that, so reputed and so valued as you are, you would, to the forfeit of your own discerning ability, impose upon me an unfit and over-ponderous argument, but that the satisfaction which you profess to have received from those incidental discourses which we have wandered into hath pressed, and almost constrained, you into a persuasion that what you require from me in this point I neither ought nor can in conscience defer beyond this time, both of so much need at once and of so much opportunity to try what God hath determined. I will not resist, therefore, whatever it is either of divine or human obligement that you lay upon me; but will forthwith set down in writing, as you request me, that voluntary Idea which hath long in silence presented itself to me of a better Education, in extent and comprehension far more large, and yet of time far shorter and of attainment far more certain, than hath been yet in practice. Brief I shall endeavour to be; for that which I have to say assuredly this Nation hath extreme need should be done sooner than spoken. To tell you, therefore, what I have benefited herein among old renowned authors, I shall spare; and to search what many modern JANUAS and DIDACTICS, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not. But, if you can accept of these few observations, which have flowered off, and are as it were the burnishing of, many studious and contemplative years altogether spent in the search of religious and civil knowledge, and such as pleased you so well in the relating, I here give you them to dispose of."
What must have pleased Hartlib in this was the tone of respectful compliment to himself; what may have pleased him less was the slighting way in which Comenius is passed over. "To search what many modern JANUAS and DIDACTICS, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not," says Milton, quoting in brief the titles of the two best-known works of Comenius. It is as if he had said, "I know your enthusiasm for your Pansophic friend; but I have not read his books on Education, and do not mean to do so." This was barely polite; [Footnote: The manner of the allusion to Comenius rather forbids the idea that Milton had met him during his London visit. Like most high-natured men, Milton had a kindly side to the merits of those whom he personally knew.] but Hartlib was a man of sense: and he would be glad, in reading on, to find that, with whatever independence Milton had formed his views, not even Comenius had outgone him in denunciations of the existing system of Education. Thus:—
"Seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kind of learning, therefore we are taught chiefly the languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom; so that Language is but the instrument conveying to us Things worthy to be known. And, though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them as well as the words and Lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother-dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have made Learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful. First, we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek as might be learnt otherwise easily and delightfully in one year. And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind is our time lost, partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to Schools and Universities, partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled, by long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit: besides the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to read, yet not to be avoided without a well-continued and judicious conversing among pure authors digested, which they scarce taste; whereas, if, after some preparatory grounds of speech by their certain forms got into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen short book lessoned thoroughly to them, they might then forthwith proceed to learn the substance of good Things and Arts in due order, which would bring the whole language quickly into their power. This I take to be the most rational and most profitable way of learning Languages, and whereby we may best hope to give account to God of our youth spent herein. And, for the usual method of teaching Arts, I deem it to be an old error of Universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that, instead of beginning with Arts most easy (and these be such as are most obvious to the sense), they present their young unmatriculated novices at first coming with the most intellective abstractions of Logic and Metaphysics; so that they, having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction, and now on the sudden transported under another climate to be tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of Learning, mocked and deluded ail the while with ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several ways, and hasten them, with the sway of friends, either to an ambitious and mercenary or ignorantly zealous Divinity: some allured to the trade of Law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions and flowing fees. Others betake themselves to State affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true generous breeding that flattery and court-shifts and tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the highest points of wisdom; instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery, if (as I rather think) it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy spirit, retire themselves, knowing no better, to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their days in feasts and jollity; which indeed is the wisest and the safest course of all these, unless they were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the errors, and these are the fruits of mis- spending our prime youth at the Schools and Universities as we do, either in learning mere Words, or such Things chiefly as were better unlearnt."
Having thus denounced the existing system of Schools and Universities, Milton goes on to explain what he would substitute. As he poetically expresses it, he will detain his readers no longer in the wretched survey of things as they are, but will conduct them to a hill-side where he will point out to them "the right path of a virtuous and noble education, laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side, that the Harp of Orpheus was not more charming." The rest of the tract is a redemption of this promise. To represent it by mere continued quotation would be of small use, and is perhaps unnecessary. We will, therefore, try a stricter method.
Milton does not formally concern himself in this tract with the complete problem of National Education. In this respect the passion and the projects of Comenius were a world wider than Milton's. Comenius aimed at, and passionately dreamt of, a system of Education that should, in every country where it was established, comprehend all born in that country, of both sexes, and of every rank or class, and take charge of them from their merest infancy on as far as they could go, from the first or Mother's School through the subsequent routine of the Public Vernacular School, the Latin School or Ludus Literarius, and the University. This last stage of the complete routine might extend to the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year of life; and, though few could proceed to that stage, and the majority must, from sheer social necessity, drop off in the earlier stages, yet all were to be carried through the stage of the Vernacular Public School, and progress beyond that, where possible, was not to be denied to girls any more than to boys. Compared with this, what Milton contemplates, or at least discusses, is but an important fragment struck off from the total mass. True, he gives a tolerably broad definition of Education at the outset. "I call therefore a complete and generous Education," he says, "that which fits a man to perform, justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of Peace and War." This definition, if meant as verbally perfect, would not have been satisfactory to Comenius, whose express notion of Education, as we know, was that it included preparation for the life to come as well as for that which now is. But, if he had known Milton, he might have let the omission pass as certainly and most solemnly implied, and might even have liked, for the sake of effect, the practical and straightforward utilitarianism of the definition. But then, when Milton's precise phrasing of the definition was examined, one could not but guess limits in his mind. "That which fits a man to perform" are the words of the definition; and to perform what? "All the offices, both private and public, of Peace and War," are the words that follow. And, as one reads on, the conjecture suggested by this phrasing is confirmed. By man Milton did not mean Homo, but Vir. When he framed his definition of Education, only one of the sexes was present to his mind; and throughout the whole tract, from first to last, there is not a single recognition of girl, woman, or anything in female shape, as coming within the scheme proposed. But more than that. Not only is it the education of one sex only that Is discussed in the tract, but it is the education only of a portion of that sex, and of that portion only at a particular period of life. There is nothing about the Infant Education, or what we should now call the Primary Education, of male children; and there is nothing about ways and means for the secondary or higher education of any others than those whose parents could pay for such education out of their own resources. In short, the tract is a proposal of a new method for the education of English gentlemen's sons between the ages of twelve and twenty-one. It is this, and nothing more, except in so far as hints in the general philosophy of education may be implied in the particular exposition. Milton himself was careful, ere the close of the tract, to avow that he had so restricted himself. It was a "general view," he said, such as Mr. Hartlib had desired, and meant also "for light and direction" to "such as have the worth in them to make trial," but "not beginning as some have done [e.g. Comenius] at the cradle, which might yet be worth many considerations," and omitting also "many other circumstances" that might have been mentioned had not brevity been the scope. All this it is necessary to remember in justice to the tract. It is a tract on the education of gentlemen's sons, or of such boys and youths as had hitherto been accustomed to go to the English Public Schools and Universities.
Within his avowed limits, Milton is very like himself, i.e. very grand and very bold. At the first start, for example, he tells us that he would abolish Universities altogether, or roll Public Schools and Universities into one. Here is his recipe: "First to find out a spacious house and ground about it fit for an ACADEMY, and big enough to lodge 150 persons (whereof 20 or thereabout maybe attendants), all under the government of one who shall be thought of desert sufficient, and ability either to do all or wisely to direct and oversee it done. This place should be at once both School and University, not needing a remove to any other house of Scholarship, except it be some peculiar College of Law or Physic, where they mean to be practitioners; but, as for those general studies which take up all our time from Lilly to the commencing (as they term it) Master of Art, it should be absolute. After this pattern, as many edifices may be converted to this use as shall be needful in every city throughout this land; which would tend much to the increase of learning and civility everywhere." Milton clearly did not like the deputation of all the higher education of England to two seats of learning, like Oxford and Cambridge, but wanted his Academies to be distributed all over England, in numbers proportionate to the population, and chiefly in cities.