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travelling for his own pleasure should not merely speak fluently in general company, but should also, as presently appeared, have mastered many of the subtleties of the language, and not only talk, but write passable verses in it, was a most unwonted phenomenon. It was a homage to the genius loci' that kindled universal gratitude and applause in all hearers. Nor was this the only tribute which Milton paid to Italian glory. Next to the language of Dante and Tasso, the Florentines held in esteem that of Virgil and Cicero, and almost put on a level with the Gerusalemme, the Latin verses of Sadolet and Fracastorius. In Latin, Milton's proficiency was even more conspicuous than in Italian. His college declamations, which he touched up for the academicians, sounded in Italian ears like fragments of Tully, and his Latin verses were scarcely inferior in grace and purity to the Elegia and Tristia of the poet of Sulmo. Here was a new Ennius bilinguis,' a barbarian of the North versed in Cisalpine arts, one worthy of admission into any academy, poet, musician, critic, orator, perfect in all things excepting his faith! Milton's visit to Galileo, then a prisoner of the Inquisition, has often been celebrated, but never more genially than by his present biographer. Insensibly to either, their interview was typical of the time at which they met and discoursed the Florentine had laid his axe to the root of fallacious science; the Englishman would shortly aid with his pen the strong arms of those who were to strike down the divine right of kings. The one was suffering, the other was eventually to suffer, in the cause of freedom and truth: both attained an everlasting renown, and at that brief interview their names, until that moment so far apart from each other, were blended inseparably. The ruins of ancient Rome were more congenial to Milton's spirit than the mingled splendour and meanness of the ecclesiastical capital of Christendom. In the one he beheld the shadow of republican greatness, the substance of which England might one day emulate could she but substitute an enlightened senate, and a free assembly of the people, for her weak king and her silenced parliament. In the other he looked upon a forcible and fraudulent invasion of the liberties of a Christian people, more intolerable to be borne than the yoke of the Jewish sanhedrin, or the traditions of the Rabbinical schools. Yet his visit to Rome was made at a period of great literary activity, affording a painful contrast with the supine and sensual Rome of the nineteenth century. Urban the Eighth and his cardinals were zealous and discriminating patrons of learning and genius, and would gladly have showered honours on the Transalpine poet, had he been as orthodox as he

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was accomplished. Again as at Florence there was an interchange of complimentary verses, in which the Italians had the fortune of Diomed in his barter of arms with Glaucus. At Rome, Milton's most valuable acquaintance seems to have been the keeper of the Vatican Library, Lucas Holsten, who could converse on English affairs, since he had been three years at Oxford, and on Greek literature, since he was an excellent scholar and editor. But perhaps the most agreeable circumstance of his visit was the singing of Leonora Baroni, who, with her mother Adriana, and her sister Catarina, made such 'a musical triad, as moved Italy to very madness wherever they 'went.' The impression made upon Milton by the beauty and voice of Leonora, he has recorded in three short Latin poems; and it is interesting to contemplate the handsome Puritan enthralled by a southern Jenny Lind.

If there were a work on the felicities, as there is on the calamities of literature, Manso, Marquis of Villa, would claim a high place in it, at least if companionship with men of genius be an element of happiness. Manso, in his youth, had been the friend of Tasso and Marini; and now in advanced age he welcomed one poet more, destined to surpass them both in the melody and sublimity of his verse. Milton repaid the hospitality and the praises of Manso in a Latin epistle, of which Mæcenas himself might have been justly proud. It is remarkable that even the courtly Lord of Villa thought himself obliged to hint at the English traveller's freedom of speech on matters of faith. Milton, indeed, did not attempt to make converts, but he resented or replied to all attacks or insinuations against his own faith with a manly openness that alarmed his friends and enraged the Jesuits. His, indeed, was not a temper to comply easily with Sir Henry Wotton's prudential saw, 'pensieri stretti—volto 'sciolto,' and he was more than once warned that he was making Italy too hot to hold him. Could its rulers have looked forward only two years, they would probably not have limited their anger to empty threats. Samson was in the toils, but the Philistines knew it not. He came forth from these real or imaginary perils unscathed, and years afterwards was enabled to revert to his foreign journey in the following noble passage, with which Mr. Masson appropriately closes his volume.

'I again take God to witness that in all those places, where so many things are considered lawful, I lived sound and untouched from all profligacy and vice, having this thought perpetually with me, that though I might escape the eyes of men, I certainly could not the eyes of God.'

With his return to England closes for ever the repose of

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Milton's life. He had not intended that Naples should be the term of his journey southward. He had proposed to visit Sicily and Greece. He has himself told us why he thus curtailed his travels, and, though Johnson deemed his change of purpose deserving a sneer, it at least stands in honourable contrast with the selfish conduct of the learned virtuoso Lord Arundel, who quitted his native land at the first muttering of the storm. While I was desirous,' he says, 'to cross into Sicily and 'Greece, the sad news of civil war coming from England called 'me back; for I considered it disgraceful that while my fellow'countrymen were fighting at home for liberty, I should be travelling abroad at ease for intellectual purposes.' Nearly three years indeed elapsed between Milton's actual return to England in 1639, and the raising of the standard at Nottingham in the autumn of 1642. But when he received the letter which led to his change of purpose, the signs of the times were unmistakeable; the patience of England was nearly worn out, and Scotland was in open rebellion. It was therefore the use of the pen rather than of the sword which Milton had in view, when he spoke of his countrymen fighting at home for freedom.' In either case the barriers of his seclusion were now broken down. Hitherto he had felt but little of the fever and the fret, the burden and the contradiction, of life. He had been hitherto exempt, in a remarkable degree, from those tasks and cares which the world lays on her darling, as well as on her less favoured sons. Henceforward, like the common parents of mankind, he must go forth into the wilderness and till the ground for himself, uncertain whether it would yield him thorns and thistles, or fruit pleasant to sight and good for food. His retired leisure had reached its bourne; and though no flaming 'brand' or 'dreadful faces' barred access to his suburban ' retreat,' Horton was impenetrably sealed against him. His reading must now become, in some measure, the reminiscence of former delights. The shady recesses of philosophy must be invaded by crude or thorny theological debate, the laureate fraternity of poets' give place to patristic and scholastic disputants. And in these controversies, though he poured into them golden streams of eloquence, and learning little inferior to that of Hooker or Taylor, he admits that he had the use of his left hand only.' His true home was on Horeb or Sinai, on the heights of Parnassus, or beside the pleasant streams of Aganippe; but he was constrained to dwell for many tedious years in Mesech, and to have his habitation in the tents of Kedar. A like burden lay also upon his father-land; it too had long reposed peacefully, and nurtured its strength in

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silence and security. The storm began to lower; the first flashes from the dark and pregnant clouds were visible on the northern horizon; rumour and doubt, fear and jealousy, secret plots and open resistance, and all the heralds of war, were rife on every side, and ancient citizens' were laying aside their grave beseeming ornaments to wield old partisans in hands as 'old.' Coolness was growing up between the Davids and Jonathans of those days; houses were divided against themselves; and the hour was at hand for the cruel sabre to part those who had met in peace and sat at the same tables, and to wash out in blood the memory of ancient friendship. In the year with which Mr. Masson's present volume closes, the preluding symphony of the Great Rebellion had scarcely begun. But soon after the opening of the next section of his work, the protagonists of the Long Parliament will strike down the noble quarry Wentworth, and cage or expel the meaner foxes and jackals that had so long been preying on the vitals of English liberty. And then the passion, like a chorus, will deepen; the trumpet will proclaim and the sword will plead a cause of even deeper moment than any involved in the Great Remonstrance or the Petition of Right. Meanwhile, farewell, a long farewell, so far as Milton is concerned, to cherished hopes and to congenial studies. A land bristling with pike and halbert has no ears for the remote wars of Arthur and his British knights; an age of sharp and swift vicissitudes cannot dally with Charlemagne and his peerage. Doubtless this baffling of his early projects sat heavily for a time on the poet's soul. He had been born, he thought, an age too late- he had fallen on evil days and evil tongues; nor could he, at the moment, discern that these tribulations also were a school, no less salutary in its severe discipline than the seclusion and self-tuition of his earlier days. Yet it was this stern and tedious preparation that, in the end, nerved him for his excursions into the upper, middle, and nether worlds, and enabled him, after long debating and late choosing, to leave far below him both the wanderings of Æneas and the Tale of Troy, and even to surpass the vision of the great Florentine in the universal interest and sublime mythology of his Christian Epos.

ART. III.-The Report of the Committee of Council on Education, 1858-9. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty.

THE probability that the Royal Commission of inquiry into

the state of Education in England will soon produce a report, and the certainty that the grants of the Committee of Council, and the manner of administering them, will again be earnestly discussed, suggest the propriety of ascertaining the actual facts and figures which mainly affect this last-named branch of the matter. We shall reserve our general opinion on this important subject until the report of the Commission is before us; but we wish to offer a few brief remarks on some misapprehensions, which appear to have been widely circulated, as to the amount of popular education really required.

At the very threshold of any useful provision stands the disputed premiss, what is the actual deficiency of school instruc tion ? It is strange that such wide disparity of opinion should exist on so simple and essential a datum.

The Lords of the Committee of Council, in their last able report to the Queen, dated 24th May 1859, state (p. xxx.) that the number of children for whom instruction may be required is probably 3,000,000, and the number of scholars in the schools actually under the inspection of the Government is 934,000. This calculation of 3,000,000 is arrived at by taking the total number of children between the ages of three and fifteen (who amounted to 4,908,696 in 1851), and eliminating those who belong to the upper and middle classes, those who are 'occupied,' taught at home,' or sick, and then assuming that all the remainder ought at this time to be in schools of the same class 'as those which are under inspection.' In other words that

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every working class child, not at work, taught at home, or positively disabled, ought always to be at school: for these are identical propositions. Not a single child of this number, from the age of three to fifteen, can absent itself from attendance be it but for a day, without diminishing the 3,000,000 for as the span of age extends over twelve years, so must the duration of school attendance. Each child must remain twelve years at school. We confess that this bears the aspect of an exaction, which the feelings and incomes of the parents render imprac ticable, which the industrial economy of the country could not endure, and the educational requirements of the poor do not need.

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