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was deep and comprehensive; it promised to teach science with language, or rather to make the study of languages subservient to the acquisition of scientific knowledge. Dr. Johnson has severely censured this method of instruction, but with arguments that might successfully be met. The plan recommended by the authority of Milton seems to be chiefly liable to objection from being too extensive.".

Milton commences by stating his own views of the great purpose of education, and of the inadequacy of existing institutions to fulfil it. "The end then of learning," he says, "is to repair the ruins of our first parents, by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection. But because our understanding cannot in this body found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature, the same method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching. And seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kinds of learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom; so that language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. And though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman competently wise in his mother dialect only.

"Hence appear the many mistakes which have made learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful. First, we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek, as might

be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year.* And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our time lost partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities; partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled, by long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit.

"And for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old error of universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with arts most easy, (and those be such as are most obvious to the sense,) they present their young unmatriculated novices, at first coming, with the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics; so that they, having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows, where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction, and now on the sudden transported under another climate, to be tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this while with ragged notions and babblement, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge."+

Having thus indicated the main defects of university education, Milton thus enters on the development of his projected reforms. "I shall detain you now no longer in the demonstration of what we should not do, but straight conduct you to a hill-side, where I will point you out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious indeed at

On this subject, see Locke's Treatise on Education, § 162—177. Works, folio edition, vol. iii. p. 72, seq.

+ Prose Works, vol. iii. pp. 464, 466.

the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect, and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.* I doubt not but ye shall have more ado to drive our dullest and laziest youth, our stocks and stubs, from the infinite desire of such a happy nurture, than we have now to hale and drag our choicest and hopefullest wits to that asinine feast of sowthistles and brambles, which is commonly set before them as all the food and entertainment of their tenderest and most docible age. I call, therefore, a complete and generous education, that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war. And how all this may be done between twelve and one and twenty, less time than is now bestowed in pure trifling at grammar and sophistry, is to be thus ordered."+

It is not surprising that Milton's plan should have been condemned as too extensive to be practicable, for it embraces nearly every branch of human knowledge. Commencing with grammar, it leads the student through the Latin classics, beginning with those which convey some kind of scientific or economical knowledge; at the same time acquiring the knowledge of the "principles of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and geography, with a general compact of physics, they may descend in mathematics to the instrumental science of trigonometry, and from thence to fortification, architecture, enginery, or navigation. in natural philosophy they may proceed leisurely from the history of meteors, minerals, plants, and living creatures, as far as anatomy." He continues his plan through the art of * He had already, in Comus, described the delight derivable from the study of philosophy:

"How charming is divine philosophy!

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,

And a perpetual feast of nectared sweets,

Where no crude surfeit reigns."

+ Prose Works, vol. iii. p. 467.

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medicine, and natural science generally, and those Latin poets who especially treat on similar subjects, and last come the highest departments of study,-ethics, politics, theology, and logic. This he connects throughout with a system of physical and military training, recommending as a principal relaxation, "the solemn and divine harmonies of music." In concluding his treatise, he himself seems to have been struck, on a retrospect, with the almost presumptuous yastness of his scheme. "I believe," he says, "that this is not a bow for every man to shoot in, that counts himself a teacher; but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave Ulysses; yet I am withal persuaded that it may prove much more easy in the assay, than it now seems at distance, and much more illustrious."

CHAPTER IX.

MILTON PUBLISHES HIS

SPEECH FOR THE LIBERTY OF UNLICENSED PRINTING"-ANALYSIS OF THE WORK-NOBLE PASSAGES OCCURRING IN IT-DISCHARGE OF MABBOT, THE LICENSER, AT HIS OWN REQUEST.

THE intolerance of the presbyterians, armed with the powers of a parliamentary majority, was now mimicking the most despotic acts of the prelacy: they attempted the forcible suppression of all opinions, political and religious, but their own, and even essayed the impossible task of damming up the great channel of mental communication by holding the press in control. Milton's enlightened mind was not slow to perceive that this course involved a fatuity analogous to that of the Eastern despot who lashed the waves, and threw fetters into the rebellious ocean. He further saw that the sufferings which this penal system inflicted on individuals were not to be compared with the evils of intellectual stagnation, political decay, and moral death which it shed on nations. To these sentiments we owe the masterpiece of Milton,-the "Address to the Parliament in favour of the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing," of which, in accordance with the plan of this volume, an analysis is now to be presented.

He commences with a stately eulogy upon the Parliament; he addresses himself to the recent order for the

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