The news that caused Milton to turn back from his longer travel into Greece was news of trouble with the Scots which clearly boded the civil war that soon came on, and that continued to occupy all Englishmen for many years. Soon after his return to England, John Milton settled in London, by taking lodgings for a short time at the house of a tailor in St. Bride's Churchyard, and there he undertook the teaching of his sister Anne's two boys, Edward and John Phillips, aged nine and eight. While teaching his nephews, Milton, in 1640, was sketching plans of sacred dramas, dwelling especially upon "Paradise Lost" as the subject of a drama; suggesting also as themes," Abram from Morea; or, Isaac redeemed, "The Deluge," "Sodom," "Baptistes," noting subjects also from British history. Milton "made no long stay," his nephew tells us, in his lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard: "necessity of having a place to dispose his books in, and other goods fit for the furnishing of a good handsome house, hastening him to take one; and, accordingly, a pretty garden-house he took, in Aldersgate Street, at the end of an entry, and therefore the fitter for his turn, besides that there are few streets in London more free from noise than that." There he worked hard, and had his two nephews to board with him. There also he began, in 1641, the second part of his literary life; put aside, at the age of thirty-two, his high ambition as a poet; and, devoting himself to the duty that lay nearest to his hand, gave the best years of his manhood, the twenty years from thirty-two to fiftytwo, to those questions of his day that touched, as he thought, the essentials of English liberty. CHAPTER VI. FIRST HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: SCHOLARS, HISTORIANS, AND MEN OF SCIENCE. 1. Learned Men; James I.-2. Cotton and Bodley.-3. Robert Burton.-4. Lancelot Andrewes.-5. James Usher.-6. John Selden.-7. Sir Henry Wotton; John Hales.-8. John Lightfoot.-9. Sir Henry Spelman.-10. John Hayward.-11. William Camden.-12. Historians; John Speed.-13. Samuel Purchas.-14. Sir Walter Raleigh.-15. Richard Knolles; Alexander Ross. — 16. Lord Herbert of Cherbury.-17. Spottiswoode; Calderwood.-18. Thomas Fuller.-19. Men of Science; Francis Bacon.-20. John Napier; William Harvey.-21. John Wilkins. 22. Samuel Hartlib.-23. John Wallis. of 1. THE First Half of the Seventeenth Century was an age learned men in England; and at the head of them, it may be appropriate to mention King James I. He had received in early life the best possible instruction from Buchanan and others. He was a clumsy boy, with ungainliness produced by physical defect, a tongue too large for his mouth, and a mind in which all depths that there could ever be must be made artificially. Good workmen dug and shaped; the boy was goodtempered, picked up some shrewdness, lived a creditable life, had respect for knowledge, and good appetite for it, though bad digestion. He had a pleasant type of it before him in cheery, impressible George Buchanan; a Presbyterian, austere but half way through, with a face like a Scotch Socrates, although more apt than Socrates to take offence, familiar with Latin as with his native tongue, full of anecdote and good talk, familiar also with languages and people round about, and liking Scotland all the better for experience in other lands. But for James the horizon did not widen as he climbed the hill of knowledge, his heart did not swell as he rose to higher sense of harmony and beauty; he hammered at the big lumps about him, and was proud of being so far up. In 1585, when his age was but nine teen, he published at Edinburgh "The Essayes of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie." In preliminary sonnets of compliment, the Muses, through various courtly representations, sought to The " "Tell how he doeth in tender yearis essay Above his age with skill our arts to blaise, The crowne he wan for his deserved praise. The glorie and grace he hath proclaimed abrod." Essayes" opened with twelve sonnets of invocation to the gods, namely, Jove, Apollo, each of the four Seasons, Neptune, Tritons and their kind, Pluto, Mars, Mercury, and finally, for the twelfth sonnet: "In short, you all forenamed gods I pray For to concur with one accord and will I shall tread downe the grasse on Parnass hill After these twelve sonnets of invocation, the king placed a translation of "The Heavenly Muse" of Du Bartas; then a dim allegory, in Chaucer's stanza, "Ane Metaphoricall Invention of a Tragedie called Phoenix," with a preface of eighteen bad lines, arranged first as shaped verse, in the form of a lozenge upon a little pedestal, then as a compound acrostic. Then followed a short bit of translation out of the fifth book of Lucan; and then, lastly, "Ane Schort Treatise, containing some Reulis and Cautelis to be observit and eschewit in Scottis Poesie." In 1591, was published "His Majesties Poeticall Exercises at Vacant Houres;" and in 1616, appeared a collected edition, in folio, of his prose-writings, consisting of theological and metaphysical discussions, and containing his most famous production, "A Counterblaste to Tobacco." 2. Robert Bruce Cotton, born at Denton, Huntingdonshire, in 1570, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, was knighted by James I. In 1611, when his Majesty had invented the rank of baronet, and began to trade in the new article, Sir Robert Cotton became one of his first customers. King James was aided in his controversies by Sir Robert Cotton's learning; and the treasures of literature rescued by him from the scattered waste of the monasteries, were at the service of all who could make good use of them. It was in the reign of James I., that an older man, Sir Thomas Bodley, founded the Bodleian Library at Oxford. He was born at Exeter, in 1544, the son of that John Bodley who, in exile at Geneva, had been a chief promoter of the translation known as the Geneva Bible. Thomas Bodley had come to England at Elizabeth's accession, entered at Magdalene College, Oxford, became fellow of Merton, had been employed by the queen on embassies, was for nine years ambassador at the Hague; but in 1597 he retired from public life, and made it the work of his last years to give to the University of Oxford a library in place of that which it had lost. In 1602 he refitted the dismantled room which had been used for the library founded by Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, and furnished it with ten thousand pounds' worth of books. In July, 1610, he laid the foundation-stone of a new library building; and died in 1612, about a year before the building was completed. 3. Robert Burton became a clergyman, and had the livings of St. Thomas, Oxford, and Segrave, in Leicestershire; but he lived a quiet scholar's life at his college, Christ Church, Oxford; and in 1621, he published "The Anatomy of Melancholy, by Democritus Junior." This discussion of all forms of melancholy, and their remedies, is very quaint and ingenious in thought and expression, and so crammed with pleasant erudite quotations that the book has been to many later writers, who desired to affect knowledge of books they had never seen, the storehouse of their second-hand learning. Although an original book, its manner was in the fashion of the time; and it is said to have made the fortune of its Oxford publisher. It went through five editions before its author's death, in 1640. 4. Lancelot Andrewes was, in knowledge of church history and of patristic writings, the most learned churchman of the days of James I. He was born in London, in 1555, educated at Merchant-Tailors' School, sent for his ability to Pembroke Hall, Cambridge (Spenser's College), obtained a fellowship, studied and taught divinity with great success, and was consulted as a profound casuist. Henry, Earl of Huntingdon, took him to the North of England; and there he persuaded some Roman Catholics to change their faith. Sir Francis Wal singham gave him the parsonage of Alton, in Hampshire, and he was then successively vicar of St. Giles's, Cripplegate, Prebendary of St. Paul's- where he read divinity lectures three times a week in term time - Master of Pembroke Hall, Chaplain in Ordinary to Elizabeth, and Dean of Westminster. The queen would not raise him higher, because his ecclesiastical view of the rights of bishops forbade him to alienate episcopal revenues. James I. delighted in his preaching, which was that of a religious man strongly tinged with the pedantry of the time, and made him, in 1605, Bishop of Chichester. He was promoted afterwards through the bishopric of Ely to that of Winchester, in 1618, and he died in 1626, aged seventy-one. "Ninety-six Sermons" of his were published by command of Charles I., in 1631. 5. James Usher, twenty-five years younger than Bishop Andrewes, succeeded to his repute as a theologian, and excelled him in learning. Usher was born at Dublin, in 1580, son to one of the six clerks in chancery. He was taught to read by two aunts, who had been blind from their cradle, but who knew much of the Bible by heart. Trinity College, Dublin, owes its existence to a grant made by Queen Elizabeth, in 1591, of the Augustine monastery of All Saints. The first stone was laid on New-Year's Day, 1593. It began work in the same year, and James Usher was one of the first three students admitted. He had delight in history, made chronological tables as a boy, and, as a youth, when the church controversies became interesting to him, he resolved to read for himself the whole works of the Fathers whose authority was so continually cited. He began at the age of twenty, and, reading a portion daily, finished at the age of thirty-eight. His father died when Usher was about to be sent to London to study law. He then abandoned to his brothers and sisters his paternal inheritance, reserving only enough for his own support at college in a life of study, obtained a fellowship, at the age of twenty-one took holy orders, argued and preached against the Catholics, and opposed toleration of them. At the accession of James I. James Usher was twenty-three years old. He came |