W. FRASER.
Queries.
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,