LYCIDAS
The poem of Lycidas was occasioned by the death of Milton's College friend, Edward King, son of Sir John King, Knight, Privy Councillor for Ireland, and Secretary to the Irish Government. King was admitted on the 9th of June, 1626, at the age of fourteen, to Christ's College, Cambridge, about sixteen months after Milton's admission. Milton left College after receiving his Master's degree in July, 1632; so that at this date, he and King had been at College together about six years. King was made a Fellow of his College in June, 1630, in conformity with a royal mandate, secured, it may have been, through Sir John's influence at court, due to his official position. He had also been Privy Councillor for the Kingdom of Ireland, to their majesties, Elizabeth and James.
Milton's claim, as a scholar, to the Fellowship must have been far superior to King's, and he was ahead of him in his College course. But Fellowships went a good deal by political and ecclesiastical influence; and, furthermore, it is not likely that Milton would have accepted a Fellowship at the time, if it had been offered to him, involving, as it did, the taking of orders, against which Milton's mind must already at that time have been decided, though he had been sent to the University with the Church in view.
King received his Master's degree in July, 1633, and continued his connection with the College as fellow, tutor, and, in 1634-35, as 'prælector.' He was noted for his amiability and purity of character and genuine piety; and Milton was probably drawn to him more by these qualities than by his
intellectual and poetical abilities. He left numerous Latin compositions (published in various collections), which, according to Masson, have no remarkable poetical merit. But their subjects, all, with one exception, royal occasions, did not afford opportunities for the display of poetic genius,—the birth of the Princess Mary, the king's recovery from the smallpox, the king's safe return from Scotland, July, 1633, commendatory iambics prefixed to a Latin comedy, Senile Odium, performed in Queen's College, the birth of Prince James, Duke of York, the birth of the Princess Elizabeth, and the birth of the Princess Anne.
King was preparing himself for the Church; and it may be inferred from Milton's poem that he regarded him as worthy, in an eminent degree, to discharge the responsible duties of a Christian minister.
In the Long Vacation of 1637, King set out to visit his family and friends in Ireland. He embarked at Chester for Dublin. When but a short distance from the Welsh coast, the weather being at the time, as appears from Milton's poem, perfectly calm, the ship (it is alluded to as a 'fatal and perfidious bark') struck on a rock and soon went down, only a few of the passengers being rescued.
A volume of 'In Memoriam' poems, by members of different Colleges of the University, and others, twenty in Latin, three in Greek, and thirteen in English, was printed at the University Press and published early in the following year (1638). The Latin and Greek part of the volume bore the title, 'Justa Edovardo King naufrago, ab amicis mœrentibus, amoris et μνείας χάριν. Si recte calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est. Petron. Arb. Cantabrigiæ, apud Thomam Buck et Rogerum Daniel, celeberrimæ Academiæ typographos. 1638.'