Chapter II (3)

It was a great chagrin to Hartlib when the London plan came to an abrupt end, and Comenius transferred himself to Sweden. Thither we must follow him, for yet one other passage of his history before we leave him:-- "Conveyed to Sweden in August of the year 1642," proceeds Comenius, "I found my new Mæcenas at his house at Nortcoping; and, having been kindly received by him, I was, after some days of deliberation, sent to Stockholm, to the most illustrious Oxenstiern, Chancellor of the Kingdom, and Dr. Johannes Skyte, Chancellor of the University of Upsal. These two exercised me in colloquy for four days; and chiefly the former, that Eagle of the North (_Aquila Aquilonius_). He inquired into the foundations of both my schemes, the Didactic and the Pansophic, so searchingly that it was unlike anything that had been done before by any of my learned critics. In the first two days he examined the Didactics, with at length this conclusion: 'From an early age,' said he, 'I perceived that our Method of Studies generally in use is a harsh and crude one [_violentum quiddam_]; but where the thing stuck I could not find out. At length, having been sent, by my King of glorious memory [Gustavus Adolphus], as ambassador into Germany, I conversed on the subject with various learned men. And, when I had heard that Wolfgang Ratich was toiling at an amended Method, I had no rest of mind till I had got that gentleman into my presence; who, however, instead of a talk on the subject, offered me a big volume in quarto to read. I swallowed that trouble; and, having turned over the whole book, I saw that he detected not badly the maladies of our schools, but the remedies he proposed did not seem sufficient. Yours, Mr. Comenius, rest on firmer foundations. Go on with the work.' I answered that I had done all I could in those matters, and must now go on to others. 'I know said he, 'that you are toiling at greater affairs, for I have read your _Prodromus Pansophiæ_. We will speak of that to-morrow: I must to public business now.' Next day, beginning to examine, but with greater severity, my Pansophic Attempts, he opened with this question, 'Are you a man, Mr. Comenius, that can bear contradiction? [_Potesne contradicentem ferre_?]' 'I can,' replied I, 'and therefore that _Prodromus_ or Preliminary Sketch was (not by me either, but by friends) sent out first, that it might meet with judgment and criticism. Which if we admit from all and sundry, why not from men of mature wisdom and heroic reason?' He began, accordingly, to discourse against the hope of a better state of things conceived as lying in a rightly instituted study of Pansophia, first objecting political reasons of deep import, and then the testimonies of the divine Scriptures, which seem to foretell for the latter days of the world rather darkness and a certain deterioration of things than light and amended institutions. To all which he had such answers from me that he closed with these words, 'Into no one's mind do I think such things have come before. Stand upon these grounds of yours: either so shall we come some time to agreement, or there will be no way at all left. My advice, however, is (added he) that you proceed first to do a good stroke in the School business, and to bring the study of the Latin tongue to a greater facility, and so prepare a broader and clearer way for those bigger matter.' The Chancellor of the University did not cease to urge the same; and he suggested this as well: that, if I were unwilling to remove with my family into Sweden, at all events I should come nearer to Sweden by taking up my abode in Prussia, say in Elbing. As my Mæcenas, to whom I returned at Nortcoping [Ludovicus de Geer], thought that both advices ought to be acquiesced in, and earnestly begged me that nothing should be done otherwise than had been advised, whether in respect of the place of my abode, or of priority to be given to any other task, I agreed at length, always with the hope that within a year or two there would be an end of the hack-work."--In fact, Comenius went to Elbing in Prussia (Hartlib's native place, as the reader may remember), to be supported there by the generosity of Ludovicus de Geer, with subsidies perhaps from Oxenstiern, and to labour on at a completion of his system of School Education, with a view to its application to Sweden.--"But this good- nature of mine in yielding to the Swedes vehemently displeased my English friends; and they sought to draw me back from any bargain by a long epistle, most full of reasons. 'A sufficient specimen,' they argued, 'had been given in Didactics; the path of farther rectification in that department was open enough: not yet so in Real Science. Others could act in the former department, and everywhere there were rising up Schoolmasters provoking each other to industry by mutual emulation; whereas the foundations of Pansophia were not yet sufficiently laid bare. Infinitely more profit would redound to the public from an explanation of the ways of true Wisdom than from little trifles about Latin.' Much more in the same strain; and S. H. [Samuel Hartlib] added, '_Quo, moriture, ruis? minoraque viribus audes_?' in this poetical _solecism_ [Comenius calls the hexameter a solecism, I suppose, on account of the false quantity it contains in the word _minora_], reproaching my inconsiderateness. Rejoiced by this recall into the road-royal, I sent on this letter to Sweden; and, nothing doubting that they would come round to the arguments there expressed, I gave myself up wholly to my Pansophics, whether to continue in them, or that, at all events (if the Swedish folk did wish me to dwell on in my Scholastics and it were my hap to die in that drudgery), the foundations of Pansophia, of the insufficient exposition of which I heard complaints, might be better dug down into, so that they might no longer be ignored. But from Sweden the answer that came was one ordering me to persevere in the proposal of first finishing the Didactics; backed by saws to this effect: 'One would rather the _better_, but the _earlier_ must be done first,' 'One doesn't go from the bigger to the smaller, but _wicey warsey_,' and all the rest of it. Nothing was left me but to obey, and plod on against my will in the clay of logomachies for eight whole years. Fortunately this was not till I had printed at Dantzic, in the year 1643, my already-made efforts at a better detection of the foundations of Pansophia, under the title of '_Pansophiæ Diatyposis Ichnographica et Orthographica_,' reprinted immediately at Amsterdam and Paris." [Footnote: Introd. to Part II. of _Opera Didactica_.]

Poor Comenius! He had a long life before him yet; but at this point we must throw him off, shunted into his siding at Elbing, to plod there for four years (1642-1646) at his Didactics, while he would fain have been soaring among his Pansophics. [Footnote: Though, as he has told us, his drudgery at the Didactics continued for _eight_ years in all, there was a break of these eight years in 1646 when he returned to Sweden to report proceedings to his employers.] Letters from his London friend, Hartlib, would reach him frequently in Elbing, and would doubtless encourage him in the humbler labour since he could not be at the higher. For Hartlib himself, we find, also laid aside the Pansophics for a time, seeing no hope for them in London without the presidency of Comenius, but continued to interest himself in the Didactics. In fact, however, he was never without interests of some kind or another. Thus, in Feb. 1642-3, or when Comenius may have been about a year at Elbing, Hartlib was again at the Durie business. "A Faithfull and Seasonable Advice, or the Necessity of a Correspondence for the Advancement of the Protestant Cause: humbly suggested to the Great Councill of England assembled in Parliament: Printed by John Hammond, 1643," is the title of a new tract, of a few pages, which we know to be Hartlib's. [Footnote: In the copy in the King's Library, British Museum, there is the MS. note "Ex dono Authoris, S. Hartlib" with the date "Feb. 6, 1642," (_i.e._ 1642-3).] Then, in July 1643, the Westminster Assembly met; and what an accession of topics of interest that brought to Hartlib may be easily imagined. There was the excitement of _The Solemn League and Covenant_ (Aug.-Sept.), with the arrival in London of the Scottish Commissioners, including Hartlib's friend Henderson, to take part in the Assembly; there was the beginning of the great debate between Independency and Presbyterianism; nay, in Nov. 1643, Durie was himself appointed a member of the Assembly by the Parliament (Vol. II. p. 517), and so drawn over from the Continent for a long period of service and residence in England.

That Hartlib _was_ interested in all this, and led into new positions and relationships by it, there is very varied proof.--For example, he was one of the witnesses in Laud's trial, which began Nov. 13,1643, and straggled on through the rest of that year and the next. His evidence was wanted by the prosecution in support of that one of the charges against Laud which alleged that he had "endeavoured to cause division and discord between the Church of England and other Reformed Churches." In proof of this it was proposed to show that he had discouraged and impeded Durie in his Conciliation scheme, on the ground that the Calvinistic Churches were alien from the true faith, and that, in particular, he had "caused letters-patent granted by the King for a collection for the Palatinate ministers to be revoked after they had passed the great seal"; and it was to the truth of both these statements that Hartlib, with others, was required to testify. He was, as we know, a most competent witness in that matter; and he gave his evidence duly, though, as I should fancy, with no real ill-will to Laud. [Footnote: See particulars in Prynne's _Canterburie's Doome_ (1646), pp.539-542. Laud, in this part of his defence, names both Durie and Hartlib. He says he did not discourage Durie, but rather encouraged him, as he could prove by letters of Durie's which he had; to which the prosecution replied that the contrary was notorious, and that Durie had "oft complained to his friends" of Land's coldness.]--Now that Episcopacy was done with, and it was to a Parliament and an Assembly mainly Presbyterian that England was looking for a new system of Church-government, Hartlib's anxiety was, as Durie's also was, to make the best of the new conditions, and to instil into them as much of the Durie idea as possible. Might it not even be that a Reformed Presbyterian Church of England would be a more effective leader in a movement for the union of the Protestant Churches of Europe than the Episcopal Church had been? This explains another short tract of Hartlib's, put forth Nov. 9, 1644, and entitled, "The Necessity of some nearer Conjunction and Correspondency amongst Evangelical Protestants, for the Advancement of the National Cause, and bringing to passe the effect of the Covenant." [Footnote: Though the tract, which consists of but eight small quarto pages, is anonymous, it is verified as Hartlib's by the inscription on the British Museum copy, "By Mr. Hartlib, Novemb. 9th." The tract itself bears only "London Printed 1644."]--Well, but how did Hartlib stand in the great controversy between the Independents and the Presbyterians? This too can be answered. As might be expected, he was in sympathy with the Independents, in as far as their claim for a Toleration was concerned. The reader will remember Edwards's famous _Antapologia_, published in July 1644, in answer to the _Apologetical Narration_ of the Five Independent Divines of the Assembly, and which all the Presbyterian world welcomed as an absolutely crushing blow to Independency and the Toleration principle. Here, then, is the title of a smaller publication which that big one provoked: "A Short Letter modestly entreating a Friend's judgment upon Mr. Edwards his Booke he calleth an Anti-Apologia: with a large but modest Answer thereunto: London, Printed according to order, 1644." Actually it was out on Sept. 14th, or about two months after Edwards's book. The title exactly indicates the structure of the publication. It consists of a short Letter and a longish Reply to that Letter. The Letter begins, "Worthy Sir, I have heard of Mr. Edwards's Anti-Apologeticall Book, as I needs must doe, for all the City and Parliament rings with it," and it goes on to request from the person addressed _his_ opinion of the hook. At the end of the letter we find the writer's name "Sam Hartlib": and the dating "from my house in Duke's Place in great haste, Aug. 5." And who was the friend addressed? He was a Hezekiah Woodward, B.A. (Oxon.), preacher in or near Aldermanbury, about fifty years of age, long a zealous Puritan, latterly a decided Parliamentarian and champion of the Solemn League and Covenant, and already known as an author by some Puritanic books, and one or two of a pedagogic kind, referable to an earlier period of his life when he had been a London schoolmaster. Hartlib had known him, he says in his letter, for sixteen years, that is to say from his first coming to London in 1628 or 1629. It is this long friendship that justifies him in asking Woodward's opinion of Edwards's book. The opinion is given in a reply to Hartlib, signed "Hezekiah Woodward," and dated "from my house in Aldermanbury, 13 Aug. 1644"; and it is, as far as I remember, quite against Edwards, and a real, though hazy and perplexed, reasoning for Toleration.[Footnote: The publication was duly registered, and has a long appended _Imprimatur_ by Joseph Caryl; and the exact date of the publication (Sept 14) is from a MS. note in the British Museum copy, For a sketch of Woodward and a list of his writings see Wood, Ath. III, 1034- 7.]

MILTON'S TRACT ON EDUCATION: HIS METHOD WITH HIS PUPILS.

It had been Hartlib's chance, he himself tells us, to be "familiarly acquainted with the best of Archbishops, Bishops, Earls, Viscounts, Barons, Knights, Esquires, Gentlemen, ministers, Professors of both Universities, Merchants, and all sorts of learned or in any kind useful men." This he wrote at a considerably later date in his life; [Footnote: In Aug. 1660, See Letter in Dircks's Memoir, p. 4.] but, from what we have already seen, we may vote it substantially true even in 1644. In that year, we know for certain, the circle of Hartlib's friends included Milton.

The acquaintanceship may have begun some years before that. It may have begun in 1639 when Milton, on his return from abroad, took lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard, or in 1640, when he first set up house in Aldersgate Street. At all events, when Milton's Anti-Episcopal pamphlets of the next two years made him a public man, he is not likely to have escaped the cognisance of Hartlib. I should not wonder if Milton were one of those "more forward spirits" whom Hartlib wanted to enlist in the great scheme of a Pansophic University of London to be organized by Comenius, and whom he tried to bring round Comenius personally during the stay of that theorist in London in 1641-2, when the experiment of some such University was really in contemplation by friends in Parliament, and Chelsea had been almost fixed on as the site. But, if so, I rather guess, for reasons which will appear, that Milton gave the whole scheme the cold shoulder, and did not take to the great Comenius. Quite possibly, however, it was not till Comenius was gone, and was fixed down at Elbing in Prussia, that there was any intimacy between Milton and Hartlib. It may have come about after Milton had been deserted by his wife in July 1643, and when a few pupils, besides the two nephews he had till then had charge of, were received into his wifeless household. Would not this in itself be an attraction to Hartlib? Was not Milton pursuing a new method with his pupils, between which and the method of Comenius there were points in common? Might not Comenius himself, in his retirement at Elbing, be interested in hearing of an eminent English scholar and poet who had views about a Reform of Education akin to his own?

This is very much fancy, but it is the exact kind of fancy that fits the certainty. That certainty is that, before the middle of 1644, Milton and Hartlib were well acquainted with each other, had met pretty frequently at Milton's house in Aldersgate Street, or at Hartlib's in Duke's Place, and had conversed freely on many subjects, and especially on that of Education. Nay more, Hartlib, trying to indoctrinate Milton with the Comenian views on this subject, had found that Milton had already certain most positive views of his own upon it, in some things agreeing with the Comenian, but in others vigorously differing. Hence, after various colloquies, he had made a request to Milton. Would he put a sketch of his views upon paper--no elaborate treatise, but merely a sketch, such as one could read in half-an-hour or so, and, if permitted, show to a friend, or print for more general use? Urged more and more pressingly, Milton complied; and the result was the appearance, on June 5, 1644, on some booksellers' counters, of a thin little quarto tract, of eight pages in rather small type, with no author's name, and no title-page at all, but simply this heading atop of the text on the first page, "OF EDUCATION: TO MASTER SAMUEL HARTLIB." The publication had been duly registered, and the publisher was the same Thomas Underhill, of Wood Street, who had published Milton's first three Anti-Episcopal pamphlets. The inference is that the thing was printed by Milton himself, and not by Hartlib. It would be handier for Hartlib to have it in print than in manuscript. [Footnote: "June 4, 1644: Tho. Underhill entered for his copy under the hands of Mr. Cranford [the licenser] and Mr. Man, warden, a little tract touching Education of Youth," is the entry in the Stationers' books; without which we should not have known the publisher's name. The date of the publication is fixed, and the fact that the authorship was known at the time is proved, by this MS. note of Thomason on the copy among the King's Pamphlets in the British Museum (Press mark 12. F. e. 12./160) "By Mr. John Milton: 5 June, 1644."--Milton reprinted the tract in 1673, at the end of the second edition of his Minor Poems, with the words "Written above twenty years since" added to the original title.]

Hartlib must have been pleased, and yet not altogether pleased, with the opening of the Tract. Here it is:--

"MR. HARTLIB,

"I am long since persuaded that to say or do aught worth memory and imitation no purpose or respect should sooner move us than simply the love of God and of Mankind. Nevertheless, to write now the Reforming of Education, though it be one of the greatest and noblest designs that can be thought on, and for the want whereof this Nation perishes, I had not yet at this time been induced, but by your earnest entreaties and serious conjurements; as having my mind for the present half diverted in the pursuance of some other assertions, the knowledge and the use of which cannot but be a great furtherance both to the enlargement of Truth and honest living with much more peace. [Footnote: This passage, the wording of which clearly implies that Milton was prosecuting his Divorce speculation, with whatever else in addition, sets aside a hypothesis (which may have occurred to the reader as well as to myself) that the Tract on Education, though not published till June 1644, may have been written, and in Hartlib's hands, as early as 1641-2, when Comenius was in London. The hypothesis, which might have been otherwise plausible, will not accord with the particular words of the tract now presented; and the conclusion is that, whether Milton knew Hartlib or not as early as 1641- 2, when Comenius was with him, the tract was not written till shortly before its publication in June 1644, when Comenius had been two years in Elbing.] Nor should the laws of any private friendship have prevailed with me to divide thus, or to transpose, my former thoughts, but that I see those aims, those actions, which have won you with me the esteem of a person sent hither by some good providence from a far country to be the occasion and the incitement of great good to this Island. And, as I hear, you have obtained the same repute with men of most approved wisdom, and some of highest authority among us; not to mention the learned correspondence which you hold in foreign parts, and the extraordinary pains and diligence which you have used in this matter both here and beyond the seas, either by the definite will of God so ruling, or the peculiar sway of nature, which also is God's working, Neither can I think that, so reputed and so valued as you are, you would, to the forfeit of your own discerning ability, impose upon me an unfit and over-ponderous argument, but that the satisfaction which you profess to have received from those incidental discourses which we have wandered into hath pressed, and almost constrained, you into a persuasion that what you require from me in this point I neither ought nor can in conscience defer beyond this time, both of so much need at once and of so much opportunity to try what God hath determined. I will not resist, therefore, whatever it is either of divine or human obligement that you lay upon me; but will forthwith set down in writing, as you request me, that voluntary Idea which hath long in silence presented itself to me of a better Education, in extent and comprehension far more large, and yet of time far shorter and of attainment far more certain, than hath been yet in practice. Brief I shall endeavour to be; for that which I have to say assuredly this Nation hath extreme need should be _done_ sooner than _spoken_. To tell you, therefore, what I have benefited herein among old renowned authors, I shall spare; and to search what many modern JANUAS and DIDACTICS, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not. But, if you can accept of these few observations, which have flowered off, and are as it were the burnishing of, many studious and contemplative years altogether spent in the search of religious and civil knowledge, and such as pleased you so well in the relating, I here give you them to dispose of."

What must have pleased Hartlib in this was the tone of respectful compliment to himself; what may have pleased him less was the slighting way in which Comenius is passed over. "To search what many modern JANUAS and DIDACTICS, more than ever I shall read, have projected, my inclination leads me not," says Milton, quoting in brief the titles of the two best-known works of Comenius. It is as if he had said, "I know your enthusiasm for your Pansophic friend; but I have not read his books on Education, and do not mean to do so." This was barely polite; [Footnote: The manner of the allusion to Comenius rather forbids the idea that Milton had met him during his London visit. Like most high-natured men, Milton had a kindly side to the merits of those whom he personally knew.] but Hartlib was a man of sense: and he would be glad, in reading on, to find that, with whatever independence Milton had formed his views, not even Comenius had outgone him in denunciations of the existing system of Education. Thus:--

"Seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kind of learning, therefore we are taught chiefly 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 worthy 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 learnt 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: besides the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to read, yet not to be avoided without a well-continued and judicious conversing among pure authors digested, which they scarce taste; whereas, if, after some preparatory grounds of speech by their certain forms got into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen short book lessoned thoroughly to them, they might then forthwith proceed to learn the substance of good Things and Arts in due order, which would bring the whole language quickly into their power. This I take to be the most rational and most profitable way of learning _Languages_, and whereby we may best hope to give account to God of our youth spent herein. 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 these 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 ail the while with ragged notions and babblements, while they expected worthy and delightful knowledge; till poverty or youthful years call them importunately their several ways, and hasten them, with the sway of friends, either to an ambitious and mercenary or ignorantly zealous Divinity: some allured to the trade of Law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions and flowing fees. Others betake themselves to State affairs, with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true generous breeding that flattery and court-shifts and tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the highest points of wisdom; instilling their barren hearts with a conscientious slavery, if (as I rather think) it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more delicious and airy spirit, retire themselves, knowing no better, to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, living out their days in feasts and jollity; which indeed is the wisest and the safest course of all these, unless they were with more integrity undertaken. And these are the errors, and these are the fruits of mis- spending our prime youth at the Schools and Universities as we do, either in learning mere Words, or such Things chiefly as were better unlearnt."

Having thus denounced the existing system of Schools and Universities, Milton goes on to explain what he would substitute. As he poetically expresses it, he will detain his readers no longer in the wretched survey of things as they are, but will conduct them to a hill-side where he will point out to them "the right path of a virtuous and noble education, laborious indeed at 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." The rest of the tract is a redemption of this promise. To represent it by mere continued quotation would be of small use, and is perhaps unnecessary. We will, therefore, try a stricter method.

Milton does not formally concern himself in this tract with the complete problem of National Education. In this respect the passion and the projects of Comenius were a world wider than Milton's. Comenius aimed at, and passionately dreamt of, a system of Education that should, in every country where it was established, comprehend all born in that country, of both sexes, and of every rank or class, and take charge of them from their merest infancy on as far as they could go, from the first or Mother's School through the subsequent routine of the Public Vernacular School, the Latin School or _Ludus Literarius_, and the University. This last stage of the complete routine might extend to the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth year of life; and, though few could proceed to that stage, and the majority must, from sheer social necessity, drop off in the earlier stages, yet all were to be carried through the stage of the Vernacular Public School, and progress beyond that, where possible, was not to be denied to girls any more than to boys. Compared with this, what Milton contemplates, or at least discusses, is but an important fragment struck off from the total mass. True, he gives a tolerably broad definition of Education at the outset. "I call therefore a complete and generous Education," he says, "that which fits a man to perform, justly, skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both private and public, of Peace and War." This definition, if meant as verbally perfect, would not have been satisfactory to Comenius, whose express notion of Education, as we know, was that it included preparation for the life to come as well as for that which now is. But, if he had known Milton, he might have let the omission pass as certainly and most solemnly implied, and might even have liked, for the sake of effect, the practical and straightforward utilitarianism of the definition. But then, when Milton's precise phrasing of the definition was examined, one could not but guess limits in his mind. "That which fits a _man_ to perform" are the words of the definition; and to perform what? "All the offices, both private and public, of _Peace and War_," are the words that follow. And, as one reads on, the conjecture suggested by this phrasing is confirmed. By _man_ Milton did not mean _Homo_, but _Vir_. When he framed his definition of Education, only one of the sexes was present to his mind; and throughout the whole tract, from first to last, there is not a single recognition of girl, woman, or anything in female shape, as coming within the scheme proposed. But more than that. Not only is it the education of one sex only that Is discussed in the tract, but it is the education only of a portion of that sex, and of that portion only at a particular period of life. There is nothing about the Infant Education, or what we should now call the Primary Education, of male children; and there is nothing about ways and means for the secondary or higher education of any others than those whose parents could pay for such education out of their own resources. In short, the tract is a proposal of a new method for the education of English gentlemen's sons between the ages of twelve and twenty-one. It is this, and nothing more, except in so far as hints in the general philosophy of education may be implied in the particular exposition. Milton himself was careful, ere the close of the tract, to avow that he had so restricted himself. It was a "general view," he said, such as Mr. Hartlib had desired, and meant also "for light and direction" to "such as have the worth in them to make trial," but "not beginning as some have done [_e.g._ Comenius] at the cradle, which might yet be worth many considerations," and omitting also "many other circumstances" that might have been mentioned had not brevity been the scope. All this it is necessary to remember in justice to the tract. It is a tract on the education of gentlemen's sons, or of such boys and youths as had hitherto been accustomed to go to the English Public Schools and Universities.

Within his avowed limits, Milton is very like himself, _i.e._ very grand and very bold. At the first start, for example, he tells us that he would abolish Universities altogether, or roll Public Schools and Universities into one. Here is his recipe: "First to find out a spacious house and ground about it fit for an ACADEMY, and big enough to lodge 150 persons (whereof 20 or thereabout maybe attendants), all under the government of one who shall be thought of desert sufficient, and ability either to do all or wisely to direct and oversee it done. This place should be at once both School and University, not needing a remove to any other house of Scholarship, except it be some peculiar College of Law or Physic, where they mean to be practitioners; but, as for those general studies which take up all our time from Lilly to the commencing (as they term it) Master of Art, it should be absolute. After this pattern, as many edifices may be converted to this use as shall be needful in every city throughout this land; which would tend much to the increase of learning and civility everywhere." Milton clearly did not like the deputation of all the higher education of England to two seats of learning, like Oxford and Cambridge, but wanted his Academies to be distributed all over England, in numbers proportionate to the population, and chiefly in cities.

He takes one of these imagined Academies as a model, and shows how it might be conducted. He divides the subject into the three heads of STUDIES, EXERCISES AND AMUSEMENTS, and DIET. On this last, however, he is extremely brief. "For their Diet there cannot be much to say, save only that it would be best in the same house; for much time else would be lost abroad, and many ill habits got; and that it should be plain, healthful, and moderate, I suppose is out of controversy:" _i.e._ Milton would prefer that all the pupils should be boarded in the Academy, and have their meals there at a common table. It is to the Studies and the Exercises and Amusements that most space is devoted.

I. THE STUDIES:--Here Milton appears decidedly as an innovator, but yet with a curious mixture of what would now be called rank Conservatism. The innovation consists in a total departure from the use and wont of his time, in respect of the nature of the studies to be pursued and the order in which they should be taken. There was to be an end of that wretched torture of Latin and Greek theme-making and versifying, and that dreary toiling amid obsolete subtleties of scholastic Logic and Metaphysics, which he had denounced in a previous passage, and which had made University Education, he says, nothing better than "an asinine feast of sow-thistles and brambles." Instead of these he would have studies useful in themselves and delightful to ingenuous young minds. Things rather than Words; the Facts of Nature and of Life; Real Science of every possible kind: this, together with a persistent training in virtuous and noble sentiment, and a final finish of the highest literary culture, was to compose the new Education. Here Milton and Comenius are very much at one; here Milton and the modern advocates of the Real or Physical Sciences in Education are very much at one. Given a lofty and varied idea of utility, no man has ever been more strenuously utilitarian than Milton was in this tract. The very novelty of the scheme it proposed consisted in the proclamation of utility as the test of the studies to be pursued and as ruling the order in which they should come.--What, then, was that "rank conservatism," as some might call it now, which accompanied the novelty? It was that the medium of liberal education should still be mainly Latin and Greek. A sentence in one of the passages of the tract already quoted has prepared us for this. Language, Milton had there admitted, is valuable in education only as an instrument of real knowledge, a vehicle of "things worthy to be known." But then all languages were not equally fitted for this function, inasmuch as every people could put into its language only what it had in its head or heart, and so different languages had come down freighted with very different weights and worths of matter. Now, what were the languages pointed out by this principle as apt for the purposes of education? They were Greek, Latin, and Italian, with (on religious grounds) Hebrew and one or two of its cognates. These were the tongues to be taught, and to be taught in, and mainly, of these, Latin and Greek. Of English there is not one word. This may partly be accounted for. The acquisition of useful information in all kinds of subjects was to be a great part of the education in each of the proposed Miltonic Academies; and at that time information on all kinds of subjects was locked up chiefly in Latin and Greek books. All modern or mediaeval books of information, all the standard text-books in the Sciences and Arts, that had been written by Englishmen themselves or by Continentals, were in the common Latin; the library of such books, original or translated, in the vernacular was yet but scanty. One could not be _learned_ by means of English alone. Well, but Milton recognised a culture of the feelings, the imagination, the sense of art and nobleness, as also something needed in education, and to be helped by books; and in this respect, if not in the other, were there not available materials and means in the native English Literature? That Literature contained, at all events, the poetry of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and not a few others, rated more or less highly by Milton himself. That Milton did not, on this account, include some teaching and reading of the vernacular in the curriculum of his Academy, may have arisen from the fact that the best in English Literature was then all recent, and of such small bulk collectively that acquaintance with it might be expected as a matter of mere chance and delicious odd hours in window-corners. Here he but followed the custom. All Public or Grammar Schools were Latin and Greek Schools: English at that stage was, by common consent, to shift for itself. And yet there were dissentients from the custom, and advocates of the claims of the vernacular. Comenius, as we have seen, had blown a blast on the subject for all lands; and in Milton's own school of St. Paul's there had been a rather remarkable tradition of English. Not only had the elder Gill, the Head-master of the school in Milton's time, been a purist in English, and an inventor of new methods for teaching in and through English (see Vol. I. pp. 60-64), but Gill's predecessor in the school, Mulcaster, had pleaded for English. "Is it not a marvellous bondage," he had written as early as 1582, "to become servants to one tongue, for learning's sake, the most part of our time, whereas we may have the very same treasure in our own tongue with the gain of most time: our own bearing the joyful title of our liberty and freedom; the Latin tongue remembering us of our thraldom and bondage? I love Rome, but London better; I favour Italy, but England more; I honour the Latin, but I worship the English." [Footnote: Richard Mulcaster's "First Part of the Elementarie; which entreateth chiefelie of the Right Writing of our English Ton.," (1582). My quotation, however, is not directly from the book itself, but from an extract in the Appendix to Mr. Quick's "Essays on Educational Reformers" (1868), pp. 301-2.] After this and the tradition of English in St. Paul's, Milton's total omission of English from the curriculum of his Academy is rather remarkable. There are proofs that, when he wrote his Tract on Education, he had settled in a lower estimate of the worth of all the previous English Literature than is common now, and that he thought the greatness of English still to come. This may have had something to do with the omission. Possibly, however, he reserved a large daily use of English in his Academy which does not appear in the programme.

What does appear in the programme is that the curriculum of eight years or so was to be arranged, not rigidly but in a general way, in four classes or stages, thus:--

(1) _First Class or Stage_ (ætat. l2-l3?):--The business here was to be Latin, Arithmetic, and Elementary Geometry. The Latin rudiments and rules were to be learnt from "some good Grammar, either that now used [Lilly's], or any better," and the Italian or Continental mode of pronouncing Latin, instead of the customary English, was to be carefully taught from the first; but as to the first reading-books to be used along with the Grammar, or any method for simplifying and accelerating entrance into Latin, whether that of Comenius or any other, there is no hint as yet. Neither is there any hint as to the manner of learning Arithmetic and the Elements of Geometry, save that the latter might be picked up "even playing, as the old manner was." On another part of the training of this First Class, however, Milton is more specific. Most especially at this stage, the boys were to be inured to noble and hardy sentiments and a sense of the importance of the education they were beginning; they were to be "inflamed with the study of Learning and the admiration of Virtue"; nay, they were to be "stirred up with high hopes of living to be brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God, and famous to all ages." This might be done by reading to them aloud, from Greek or Latin, "some easy and delightful Book of Education" not yet accessible to themselves. "CEBES, [Footnote: The Pinax (Table) of CEBES of Thebes, a disciple of Socrates. "This Pinax is a philosophical explanation of a table on which the whole of human life, with its dangers and temptations, was symbolically represented, and which is said to have been dedicated by some one to the temple of Cronos at Athens or Thebes. The author introduces some youths contemplating the table, and an old man who steps among them undertakes to explain its meaning. The whole drift of the book is to show that only the proper development of the mind and possession of real virtues can make us truly happy" (Dr. L. Schmitz in Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Biog.: Art. _Cebes_.) There were in Milton's time Latin translations of Cebes, and at least one in English.] PLUTARCH, [Footnote: This must be some such portion of PLUTARCH'S "Moral Works" as that relating to Pedagogy. An English translation of the "Morals," by Philemon Holland, had been published in 1603.] and other Socratic Discourses," are mentioned as fit for the purpose in Greek; and, in Latin, "the two or three first Books of QUINTILIAN." [Footnote: I do not find in Lowndes any early English translation of QUINTILIAN'S "Institutes." The first two or three Books of this work are an excellent dissertation on the importance of Education and survey of what it ought to include; and it gives us an idea of Milton's purpose that he wanted them to be read to pupils at the outset. He wanted to fire them with high notions of that business of education on which they were entering.] Most, however, would depend on the explanations and precepts of the master himself at every opportunity, and on the influence of his own example, "infusing into their young breasts such an ingenuous and noble ardour as would not fail to make many of them renowned and matchless men." Always, too, at evening, there was to be Religious teaching and reading of the Bible.

(2) _Second Class or Stage_ (_ætat_. 13-16?):--This stage, it must be presumed, was to be considerably longer than the first; for its business was to consist in Latin continued, with Greek added, and in the acquisition through these tongues, and otherwise, of a knowledge of all the useful Sciences and Arts. Here, indeed, Milton's utilitarian bent, his determination to substitute a pabulum of real knowledge for the studies then customary in schools, asserts itself most conspicuously. Here it is that he approaches most to Comenius in the substance, though with a difference in the manner. For what were the books he would exercise his pupils on at this stage, _i.e._ as soon as they had got through the Latin Grammar, and could make out a bit of Latin? First, CATO, VARRO, and COLUMELLA, the three Latin writers on Agriculture. [Footnote: CATO is the famous "Cato the Censor" of Roman history, or M. Porcius Cato (B.C. 231-141), among whose preserved writing, is an agricultural treatise, _De Re Rustica_; VARRO is M. Terentius Varro (B.C. 116-28), reputed the most learned of all the Romans, and among whose various works is also one _De Re Rustica_; COLUMELLA, the author of a systematic work on Agriculture, in twelve Books, lived in the first century of the Christian era. I do not know that there were any English translations of these Latin works on Agriculture in Milton's time.] If the language of these unusual authors was difficult for the pupils, "so much the better; it is not a difficulty beyond their years." They would, at all events, find the matter useful and interesting, and might, by these readings, and due modern comments, be "incited and enabled" for the great work of "improving the tillage of their country" when they should grow to be men. Hartlib, we may be sure, would like this on its own account; but Milton had an additional reason for it. The pupils, after having read these writers, would have a good grasp of the Latin vocabulary, and would be masters of any ordinary Latin prose. They might then, therefore, learn Geography, with "the use of the Globes and all the Maps," through any good modern (Latin) treatise on that subject, and also the elements of "Natural Philosophy" in the same way. Milton does not specify any manual on either subject. But, about this time, he says, the pupils would be learning Greek. This they would do "after the same manner as was before prescribed in the Latin; whereby, the difficulties of Grammar being soon overcome, all the historical Physiology of ARISTOTLE and THEOPHRASTUS are open before them, and, as I may say, under contribution." In other words, the first Greek readings of the pupils would be in such works of Aristotle as his "History of Animals," his "Meteorology," and parts of his general "Physics," and in the "History of Plants" of Aristotle's disciple, Theophrastus; [Footnote: Lowndes mentions no English translations of ARISTOTLE or THEOPHRASTUS as early as Milton's time.] and the purpose of such readings would be to enlarge their knowledge of the Physical Sciences at the same time that they were breaking themselves into Greek. But now, Latin being thoroughly in their possession, they might be ranging at large, in quest of the same and analogous kinds of information, in VITRUVIUS (Architecture), SENECA's "Natural Questions," MELA (Geography), CELSUS (Medicine), PLINY (Natural History), and SOLINUS (Natural History and Geography). [Footnote: VITRUVIUS and CELSUS do not seem to have been translated into English so early as Milton's time; but there were translations of all the others. The works of SENECA, both Moral and Natural, had been "done into English" by Thomas Lodge (1614); PLINY'S "Natural Historie of the World," translated by Philemon Holland, Doctor of Physic (1601), was a well-known book; and MELA and SOLINUS had been made accessible together in "The rare and singular work of Pomponius Mela, that excellent and worthy Cosmographer of the Situation of the World, most orderly prepared, and divided every parte by it selfe; with the Longitude and Latitude of everie kingdome, &c.; whereunto is added that learned worke of Julius Solinus _Polyhistor_, with a necessarie table for this Booke, right pleasant and profitable for Gentlemen, Merchants, Mariners, and Travellers, Translated into Englyshe by Arthur Golding, gent." (1585-7.)] What next? Why, "having thus passed 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, Enginry, or Navigation; and, in Natural Philosophy, they may proceed leisurely from the History of Meteors, Minerals, Plants, and Living Creatures, as far as Anatomy. Then also in course might be read to them out of some not tedious writer the Institution of Physic; that they may know the tempers, the humours, the seasons, and how to manage a crudity." Text-books are not mentioned here; and, though some must have been in view for such subjects as Trigonometry, Fortification, Engineering, and Navigation, yet it is clear, from Milton's language, that he meant a good deal of the miscellaneous instruction to be by lectures and digests of books by the teacher. Nay, there were to be more than lectures. "To set forward all these proceedings in Nature and Mathematics, what hinders but that they may procure, as oft as shall be needful, the helpful experiences of Hunters, Fowlers, Fishermen, Shepherds, Gardeners, Apothecaries, and, in the other sciences, Architects, Engineers, Mariners, Anatomists; who, doubtless, would be ready, some for reward, and some to favour such a hopeful Seminary." Hartlib must here have rejoiced again. But there comes in a Miltonic touch at the end. Hitherto he has debarred the pupils of his Academy, it will have been noticed, from all the ordinary classics read in schools. But, just about the end of this, the second stage of their studies, devoted to the Real or Physical Sciences and their applications, he would admit them to such classic readings as would impart a poetic colouring to the knowledge so acquired. In Greek, they might take now to ORPHEUS, HESIOD, THEOCRITUS, ARATUS, NICANDER, OPPIAN, and DIONYSIUS, and in Latin to LUCRETIUS, MANILIUS, and the Georgics of VIRGIL. [Footnote: Of the ORPHIC POEMS Milton must here have intended those relating to Nature and her phenomena. Of the "Works and Days" or "Georgics" of HESIOD, there had been an English translation by George Chapman (1618); and at least some of the Idylls of THEOCRITUS had been in English since 1588. The _Phnomena_ and _Diosemeia_ of Aratus (circ. B.C. 270) were, as we know, a favourite book with Milton, and he had had a copy of the Paris edition of 1559 in his possession since 1631 (see Vol. I. p. 234, Note), with MS. notes of his own in the margin. In looking at the specimens of these MS. notes facsimiled by the late Mr. Leigh Sotheby in his Milton _Ramblings_ from the original book, now in the British Museum, I can see, by my test of the shaping of the letter e (Vol. II. p. 121, Note), that, while some of the notes were written before the journey to Italy, or between 1631 and 1638, others were written after the return from Italy, _i. e._ after 1639. This proves that Milton kept using the book in his manhood. There was, I think, then no English translation of it. Neither was there a translation of the _Theriaca_ and _Alexipharmaka_ (Poems on Venomous Animals and Poisons) of the Greek NICANDER (circ. B.C. 150); nor of the _Halieutics_ and _Kynegetics_ (Poems on Fishing and Hunting) of OPPIAN (circ. A.D. 210). There was, however, as early as 1572, an English translation "by Thomas Irvine, gentl." of the _Periegetes_ or Geographical Poem of DIONYSIUS AFER (third century after Christ). Of the Latin Poems mentioned-- LUCRETIUS _De Rerum Natura_, the _Astronomica_ of MANILIUS, and the Georgics of VIRGIL--only the last had been Englished as yet. They had been Englished in 1589 by an Abraham Fleming, and in 1628 by Thomas May.]

Some of these books which were "counted most hard" would be, in the circumstances, facile and pleasant.