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matter, which what it is, there be few who know not, I was so allur'd to read, that no recreation came to me better welcome. For that it was then those years with me which are excus'd, though they be least severe, I may be sav'd the labour to remember ye. Whence having deserv'd them to account it the chiefe glory of their wit, in that they were ablest to judge, to praise, and by that could esteeme themselves worthiest to love those high perfections, which under one or other name they took to celebrate, I thought with myselfe by every instinct and presage of nature which is not wont to be false, that what imbolden'd them to this task, might with such diligence as they us'd imbolden me; and that what judgment, wit, or elegance was my share would herein best appeare, and best value itselfe, by how much more wisely, and with more love of vertue I should choose (let rude eares be absent) the object of not unlike praises. For albeit these thoughts to some will seeme vertuous and commendable, to others only pardonable, to a third sort perhaps idle; yet the mentioning of them now will end in serious. Nor blame it, Readers, in those yeares to propose to themselves such a reward, as the noblest dispositions above other things in this life have sometimes preferr'd: Whereof not to be sensible when good and faire in one person meet, argues both a grosse and shallow judgment, and withall an ungentle and swainish brest: for by the firme setling of these perswasions, I became, to my best memory, so much a proficient, that if I found those authors anywhere speaking unworthy things of

themselves, or unchaste of those names which before they had extoll'd; this effect it wrought with me, from that time forward their Art I still applauded, but the men I deplor'd; and above them all, preferr'd the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts without transgression. And long it was not after, when I was confirm'd in this opinion, that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to bee a true Poem; that is, a composition and patterne of the best and honourablest things; not presuming to sing high praises of heroick men or famous Cities, unlesse he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praise worthy. These reasonings, together with a certain nicenesse of nature, an honest haughtinesse, and self-esteem either of what I was, or what I might be, (which let envie call pride,) and lastly that modesty, whereof though not in the Title-page, yet here I may be excus'd to make some beseeming profession; all these uniting the supply of their naturall aid together, kept me still above those low descents of minde, beneath which he must deject and plunge himself, that can agree to salable and unlawfull prostitutions. Next, (for hear me out now, Readers,) that I may tell ye whether my younger feet wander'd; I betook me among those lofty Fables and Romances, which recount in solemne canto's the deeds of Knighthood founded by our victorious

Kings, and from hence had in renowne over all Christendome. There I read it in the oath of every Knight, that he should defend to the expence of his best blood, or of his life, if it so befell him, the honour and chastity of Virgin or Matron; from whence even then I learnt what a noble vertue chastity sure must be, to the defence of which so many worthies, by such a deare adventure of themselves, had sworne. And if I found in the story afterward, any of them, by word or deed, breaking that oath, I judg'd it the same fault of the Poet, as that which is attributed to Homer, to have written undecent things of the gods. Only this my mind gave me, that every free and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought to be borne a knight, nor needed to expect the guilt spurre, or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder to stirre him up both by his counsell and by his arme, to secure and protect the weaknesse of any attempted chastity. So that even those books, which to many others have been the fuell of wantonnesse and loose living, I cannot thinke how, unless by divine indulgence, prov'd to me so many incitements, as you have heard, to the love and stedfast observation of that vertue which abhorres the society of Bordello's. Thus from the Laureat fraternity of Poets, riper yeares and the ceaselesse round of study and reading led me to the shady spaces of philosophy; but chiefly to the divine volumes of Plato, and his equall Xenophon where, if I should tell ye what I learnt of chastity and love, I meane that which is truly so, whose charming cup is only vertue,

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which she bears in her hand to those who are worthy. The rest are cheated with a thick intoxicating potion, which a certain Sorceresse, the abuser of loves name, carries about; and how the chiefest office of love begins and ends in the soule, producing those happy twins of her divine generation, knowledge and vertue; with such abstracted sublimities as these, it might be worth your listning, Readers, as I may one day hope to have ye in a still time, when there shall be no chiding; not in these noises, the adversary, as ye know, barking at the doore, or searching for me at the Burdello s, where it may be he has lost himselfe, and raps up without pitty the sage and rheumatick old prelatesse, with all her young Corinthian Laity, to inquire for such a one.

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II.

A Passage from Milton's Letter to Master Samuel Hartlib, published

The letter was published in 1644, the same year when the "Areopagitica " appeared. It outlines a remarkable scheme of education, to be carried on in "a spacious house and ground about it fit for an academy, and big enough tolodge a hundred and fifty persons." "This place," it is added, "should be at once both school and university"; and the students are to be of ages ranging from twelve to twenty-one. At the point referred to in the following passage, they are supposed to be at an advanced stage, well read in law, religion, literature, and even in "Orpheus, Hesiod, Theocritus, . . . and in Latin, Lucretius, Manilius, and the rural part of Virgil."

as a tractate,

"Of Education."

WHEN all these employments are well con

quer'd, then will the choice Histories, Heroic Poems, and Attic Tragedies of stateliest and most regal argument, with all the famous Political Orations, offer themselves; which, if they were not only read, but some of them got by memory, and solemnly pronounc't with right accent and grace, as might be taught, would endue them even with the spirit and vigour of Demosthenes or Cicero, Euripides, or Sophocles.

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