The Life of John Milton

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. EARLY EDUCATION: ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL. 1620-1625. Although nothing has been yet said respecting that part of Milton's early education which consisted in his gradual training in the knowledge of books, the reader will have taken it for granted that this was not neglected ? that the child was duly taught his letters; that as he grew up, he was farther and more formally instructed; and that.he was provided with books to his desire, and with other means of turning his accomplishments to account. To all this let it now be added, that Milton was from the very first the pride of his parents, and the object of their most sedulous care. There is evidence that, in quite a different sense from the ordinary one of compliment, he was a child of unusual promise, and that his father's fondness for him was more than the common feeling of rather late paternity. Anno Domini 1619, says Aubrey, he was ten years old, as by his picture; and he was then a poet. That is to say, according to the information given by Christopher Milton, his brother John was, even in his eleventh year, a prodigy in the household, and a writer of verses. What more natural than that such a boy should have every advantage of education, in order that he might one day be an ornament of the Church? The Church to whose service, by the intentions of my parents and friends, I was destined of a child, is one of his own sayings in later life;l and there can be little doubt that the intention existed as early as the time under notice. The circumstance mentioned by Aubrey, that the scrivener had his son's portrait when he was but ten years old, is worth noting. The facts are these: About the year 1618 Cornelius Jansen, a young Dutch painter, came over from his native city of Amsterdam, with the hope of f...