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.