ELEGIARUM LIBER. ELEGIA PRIMA : Ad Carolum Diodatum. The person addressed in this Elegy was Charles Diodati, the dearest and most intimate friend of Milton in his boyhood, and through his youth and early manhood, and for whose memory he entertained a singular affection in still later life, after he had lost him by death. He will be mentioned again in the course of these Introductions. At present we shall trace what is known of him as far as to the date of this Elegy, i.e. to the year 1626. The family of Diodati (pronounce it Diodăti) was Italian, belonging originally to Lucca. One of the family, who had migrated from Lucca to France on commercial business, and had turned Protestant, had been driven from France by the St. Bartholomew Massacre of 1572, and had settled in Geneva, where he lived to as late as 1625, and where, by his second wife, also of an Italian family of Protestant refugees, he was the father of four sons and three daughters. One of the sons, named Giovanni Diodati, born in 1576, had become very eminent in Geneva, as a scholar and theologian, and was Professor of Hebrew and one of the ministers of that city. He was the author of various Calvinistic writings, much esteemed in their day by foreign Protestants and by the Puritans of England; he took a leading part in the famous Synod of Dort in 1618-19; and he would be yet remembered, if for nothing else, at all events for his Italian Version of the Scriptures, published in 1607, and known as "Diodati's Version." An elder brother of his, named Theodore Diodati, born at Geneva in 1574, and educated for the medical profession, had made England his home, and, having married an English lady of some means, acquired a good practice and some celebrity as a physician, first at Brentford, and afterwards in London, where he resided in the parish of Little St. Bartholomew, not far from St. Paul's and Milton's native Bread Street. Of two sons of this naturalised London physician, by his English wife, one was called John, probably after his uncle, the Genevese divine, and the other Charles, after his Genevese grandfather. There was also, it seems, a daughter, named Philadelphia.1 Milton knew all the family, but young Charles Diodati He was almost exactly of Milton's He had been sent was his especial friend. own age, or but a few months younger. at a very early age to St. Paul's School, and it was there that Milton had become acquainted with him. He was probably somewhat in advance of Milton in the classes, for he left school for Trinity College, Oxford, in Feb. 1621-2, three years before Milton left the same school for Cambridge. The separation was no interruption of their friendship. The young Oxonian and the young Cantab corresponded with each other; and in the University vacations they were much together in London, or in excursions in its neighbourhood. Probably because Diodati was destined for his father's profession of medicine, and was preparing for it, we do not hear much of his career at Oxford; but he was well liked in his college there, and there is a copy of Latin Alcaics by him in a volume of Oxford Verses put forth in 1624 on the death of the great scholar Camden. He seems, however, to have been fond of writing his letters in Greek; and two Greek letters of his to Milton have been strangely preserved, and are now in the British Museum. In the second of these he writes from some place in the country, saying he is leading a most pleasant life on the whole, though he rather misses intellectual companionship, and he advises Milton not to "tie himself night and day to his books," but to take some relaxation. "I, in all things else your inferior," he concludes, "am superior to you in this, that I know a measure in my labours." It seems possible that in this Greek missive, now in the British Museum, we have that very letter of Diodati to which Milton's Latin Elegy is an avowed reply. It is, at all events, a reply to some letter of Diodati's sent from near Chester, and which reached Milton in London. The interest of Milton's Elegy in reply is, to a large extent, autobiographical; and there is one passage of particular moment to the commentators. It is that beginning line 9 and ending line 24. Milton is supposed to refer here (and the supposition seems 1 Some of the facts here stated about the Diodati family are from the recent researches of Colonel Chester, and from a genealogical essay by Professor Edward E. Salisbury, read before the Historical Society of Newhaven, U.S., in 1875. inevitable) to a fact in his life of which there is other evidence,-viz. a quarrel he had, in his undergraduateship, with the authorities of Christ's College, Cambridge, and his temporary retirement from the College in consequence. It is positively known that Milton, while he was an undergraduate at Christ's, had some disagreement with the tutor under whose charge he had been put at the time of his first admission: viz. William Chappell, afterwards Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and Bishop of Cloyne and Ross; and it is further known that, in consequence of this disagreement,-in the course of which Dr. Thomas Bainbrigge, the Master of the College, may have been called in, or may have interfered, Milton was transferred from the tutorship of Chappell to that of another of the Fellows of the College: viz. Nathaniel Tovey, afterwards parson of Lutterworth in Leicestershire. The probable date of this incident was the Lent or Easter term of Milton's second academic year, i.e. of the year 1625-6. The present elegy was probably written during Milton's absence or rustication from College that summer; and in the passage indicated he speaks of this absence or rustication (exilium is the word he uses) as not such a bad thing after all. Nevertheless, as he says in the end of the Elegy, it is arranged that he shall return to Cambridge. Actually, as we know, he did return, to finish his undergraduate course, under Tovey's tutorship. His temporary absence, we also know, counted for nothing against him; for he did not lose a term, but took his B. A. degree at exactly the proper time. ELEGIA SECUNDA. Anno ætatis 17. In obitum Præconis Academici Cantabrigiensis. Richard Ridding, M.A., of St. John's College, was Senior Esquire Bedel of the University when Milton went to Cambridge. Through two University sessions Milton had been familiar with his venerable figure; but about the beginning of Milton's third University session (1626-7) Ridding died. I have not ascertained the exact day, but the probate of his will is dated Nov. 8, 1626. The death of a University personage so conspicuous naturally gave occasion for versifying; and Milton's Elegy was one of the results. It ought to be noted that Milton's own dating of the Elegy, "Anno ætatis 17," is either wrong by a year, or must be translated laxly as meaning "at seventeen years of age." ELEGIA TERTIA. Anno ætatis 17. In obitum Præsulis Wintoniensis. On the 21st of September 1626, just before the beginning of Milton's third academic year at Cambridge, there died, at Winchester House, Southwark, the learned and eloquent Dr. Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, at the age of seventy-one. Milton's ecclesiastical opinions in his later life led him to be rather critical in his estimate of this famous Bishop, and indeed of Bishops generally; but in his Cambridge undergraduateship his anti-prelatic feelings were less pronounced, and he willingly joined in the chorus of regret over the loss of one of the brightest intellects in the English Church. The reader ought to note the historical allusions which the Elegy contains. The year of Bishop Andrewes's death had been one of great mortality by the Plague in England and of the deaths of several men of note abroad. ELEGIA QUARTA. Anno ætatis 18. Ad Thomam Junium, præceptorem suum, apud mercatores Anglicos Hamburgæ agentes Pastoris munere fungentem. Thomas Young, Milton's first preceptor, was a Scotchman. He was born at Luncarty in Perthshire in or about 1588, the son of William Young, parson of that parish; was educated at the University of St. Andrews; and took his M.A. degree there in 1606. Perhaps because the accession of James to the English throne in 1603 had opened up for many Scots prospects of a better livelihood in England than their own country afforded, Young had migrated thither while still a young man; and there are indistinct traces of him in the capacity of curate or assistant to Puritan parish ministers in London and its neighbourhood before 1618. He seems, however, to have employed himself chiefly in teaching; and, in the course of that employment, it was his good fortune to happen upon one pupil who was to be immortal. It is just possible that Milton had been boarded under Young's charge somewhere near London before he went to St. Paul's School; but it is more likely that Young had only been his first domestic preceptor, and continued to be his private preceptor while he was at St. Paul's School, adding to the education which he was receiving publicly from Mr. Alexander Gill, the head-master of the School, and his son and assistant, Mr. Alexander Gill the younger. In that case, however, Young's tutorship of Milton did not extend over the whole period of his training under the two Gills. Milton, so far as is known, went to St. Paul's School in 1620, when he was eleven years of age, and he remained there till the winter or spring of 1624-5, when he left for Cambridge at the age of sixteen. But Young had left England for his chaplaincy to the English merchants at Hamburg at least as early as 1622. He was then a married man, with children, and matters had not been so prosperous with him in England but that a foreign chaplaincy was acceptable. Milton, it appears, had cherished a warm recollection of Young in his exile, and occasional communications had passed between them. The first of Milton's Latin Familiar Epistles is addressed to Young (Thoma Junio, præceptori suo). It is dated " London, March 26, 1625," and was written, therefore, after Milton had been admitted at Christ's College, Cambridge, but before his residence at Cambridge had fairly commenced. It is expressed in terms of the most ardent affection and gratitude, with apologies for having been remiss in his correspondence, and especially for having allowed three years to elapse since his last letter; and there is an acknowledgment also of the gift of a Hebrew Bible which Young had sent to him. Two years more had passed since that Epistle was written, and Milton had again been remiss. The present Elegy is his atonement. He has been |