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quently biased by his prejudices. This prevents that fairness of statement and charity of judgment which are so becoming in a biographer. Misled by this infirmity, he often seeks occasion for fault-finding where in reality none exists. Of this nature is his charge that Milton obtained no fellowship in the university, and that he was publicly flogged while there for infractions of discipline. This assertion, though it has never created much wonder, has stirred more recent biographers to a careful investigation of the facts. The result of these inquiries has gone to show that there was no truth whatever in the charge of public flogging, the rumor of which Milton himself earnestly denied but a few years after he quitted the University, when the facts must have been known to many persons, and when, surrounded as he then was by enemies, if such an allegation could have been made good, the ready pens of a score of adversaries would have attested it. Yet his denial was never questioned in his age, but it was reserved for the pen of Dr. Johnson to revive the exploded slander, and to insult the memory of John

Milton by the expression of an affected concern at its truth.

There is, however, no question that Milton had some difficulty with William Chappell, and that in consequence he changed his tutor.

His life in those days, while under the frown of the college authorities, was probably far from pleasant. He found consolation however in his literary pursuits, and in his correspondence. He addressed at this period several letters to Alexander Gill; to his old preceptor Thomas Young at Hamburg, in one of which he bewailed that worthy's exile, and predicted his speedy return, since the days were coming when England would need all such sons; and to Charles Déodati.

Déodati had been Milton's most intimate friend at St. Paul's school. The family was of Italian extraction, and had originally come from Lucca on account of its Protestant principles. Of two brothers born in Geneva, Giovanni, the younger, remained there, where he rose to be professor in the University of Geneva, and became an eminent theologian of the Reformation. The other brother, Theodore,

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came over to England in early life, adopted the medical profession, and attained considerable reputation; so that in 1609 he had a house in Brentford, and was physician to Henry, Prince of Wales, and Elizabeth, afterwards Queen of Bohemia. Charles, Milton's friend, was born about the year 1608, and was therefore near the same age as his great playfellow.

Young Déodati was a boy of more than ordinary ability, and in earnest devotion to study and purity of life, was a proper mate for Milton. He went to Oxford in 1621-2; but their old intimacy was still kept up. Milton's letters to this valued friend, usually written in the Latin or Italian languages, and dated from Cambridge, are very beautiful. They relate his studies, his accomplishments, his feelings, his amusements, giving an inside view of the man. They show him to have excelled as much in the amiable virtues as he did in the controversial and rhetorical ones.

It was during Milton's first year at Cambridge that the plague made its appearance, the tradition of whose horrors still lingers in English history. This scourge stalked through

the island, decimating the population of the larger towns. It carried off over thirty-five thousand people in London, where it first revelled in its ghastly carnival. The pestilence. did not break out in Cambridge, but it raged in many of the surrounding villages, and caused such a panic at the University as served to disturb the ordinary quiet routine, and send many of the collegians home. Milton passed the time with his family.

In this same year, 1625, king James died, not much regretted by any party, and was succeeded by Charles Stuart, then in his twenty-fifth year. The death of the old and the succession of the new king caused considerable commotion at the University. It was difficult for the "Dons" and scholars, accustomed as they had long been to the formula "Jacobum Regum" in their prayers and graces at meat, to bring their mouths all at once round to "Carolum Regum" instead. Meade, one of Milton's fellow-students, tells of one poor bachelor who was so bent on remembering that "Jacobus" had gone out and "Carolus" had come in, that when, in publicly reading the

Psalms, he came to the phrase, “Deus Jacobi," God of Jacob, he altered it before he was aware into "Deus Caroli," God of Charles, and then stood horror-struck at his mistake.

Public affairs were at this period very disordered. England was at war with France, and while disaster followed the national arms abroad, dissension reigned at home. An expensive expedition sent under Buckingham to the assistance of the city of Rochelle, the strong-hold of the French Calvinists, then closely besieged by Richelieu, had proved a total failure; and a second expedition, a twelvemonth later, proved equally unsuccessful, when led by Lord Denbigh. Such was the gloomy foreign aspect of affairs.

The domestic situation was still more threatening. Parliament, which had been prorogued in the preceding reign by the angry James, on account of its decided stand in defence of the popular rights, and its opposition to the arbitrary requisitions of the crown, met again in January, 1628-9, and at once "fell upon their grievances." These were of two classes: the tonnage and poundage ques

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