B

it deserves, for the tree that bore it, until I can dissect one by one the properties it has. But I have first to finish, as was propounded, what is to be thought in general of reading books, whatever sort they be, and whether be more the benefit or the harm that thence proceeds?

Not to insist upon the examples of Moses, Daniel and Paul, who were skilful in all the learning of the Egyptians, 380 Chaldeans and Greeks, which could not probably be without reading their books of all sorts-in Paul especially, who thought it no defilement to insert into Holy Scripture the sentences of three Greek poets, and one of them a tragedian—the question was notwithstanding sometimes controverted among the primitive doctors, but with great odds on that side which affirmed it both lawful and profitable, as was then evidently perceived, when Julian the Apostate, and subtlest enemy to our faith, made a decree forbidding Christians the study of heathen learning: for, said he, they wound us with our own 390 weapons, and with our own arts and sciences they overcome

us. And indeed the Christians were put so to their shifts by this crafty means, and so much in danger to decline into all

Grotius, however, thinks that the second cones from Menander.

383. a tragedian, Euripides. 385. primitive doctors, the early Fathers of the Church. 385. odds, advantage."

387. Julian the Apostate. Gibbon says that by Julian's edict the Christians were directly forbidden to teach, and, since they would not frequent the schools of the Pagan, they were indirectly forbidden to learn. The Emperor Julian, who forsook the Christian tenets, and was hence called the Apostate, died in A.D. 363.

391. to their shifts, to a loss, in difficulties.

392. to decline, modern English "of declining,"

ignorance, that the two Apollinarii were fain, as a man may say, to coin all the seven liberal sciences out of the Bible, reducing it into divers forms of orations, poems, dialogues, even to the calculating of a new Christian grammar. But, saith the historian Socrates: The Providence of God provided better than the industry of Apollinarius and his son, by taking away that illiterate law with the life of him who devised it./ So great an injury they then held it to be deprived of Hellenic 400 learning; and thought it a persecution more undermining, and secretly decaying the Church, than the open cruelty of Decius or Diocletian. And perhaps it was the same politic drift that the devil whipped St. Jerome in a lenten dream for reading Cicero; or else it was a phantasm bred by the fever which had then seized him. For had an angel been his discipliner, unless

393. the two Apollinarii. Apollinarius, Bishop of Alexandria and his father. They produced a sacred history after the style of Homer in 24 books, and imitations of the Greek poets.

393. fain, glad. A.S. fægen. 394. the seven liberal sciences, the Trivium :-Grammar, Dialogue, Rhetoric; the Quadrivium:-Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy.

397. the historian Socrates, not the great Socrates, but the fifth century writer of an Ecclesiastical History.

399. illiterate, because tending to make the Christians illiterate.

399. him, Julian the Apostate. 400. Hellenic, Greek.

400-403. Milton seems here to follow Bacon, who wrote:-

"The edict of the Emperor Julian was esteemed and accounted a more pernicions engine and machination against the Christian Church than were all the sanguinary prosecutions of his predecessors."--BACON's Advancement of Learning.

it were for dwelling too much upon Ciceronianisms, and had chastised the reading, not the vanity, it had been plainly partial; first, to correct him for grave Cicero, and not for 410 scurril Plautus, whom he confesses to have been reading not long before; next, to correct him only, and let so many more ancient fathers wax old in those pleasant and florid· studies without the lash of such a tutoring apparition; insomuch that Basil teaches how some good use may be made of Margites, a sportful poem, not now extant, writ by Homer; and why not then of Morgante, an Italian romance much to the same purpose se? But if it be agreed we shall be tried by visions, there is a vision recorded by Eusebius, far ancienter than this tale of Jerome to the nun Eustochium, and, besides, has 420 nothing of a fever in it. Dionysius Alexandrinus was about

407. dwelling Ciceronianisms. Studying the beauties and peculiarities of Cicero in order to make more perfect his Latin style. This Milton calls "vanity."

408. had been, conditional

mood.

We

The

410. scurril Plautus.
should now write "scurrilous,"
which Milton also uses.
form "scurril" is perhaps used
to avoid the repetition of the
"us." For Plautus, see note
to l. 223.

410, 411. not long before.
As Jerome confesses in the
letter. Plautus sumebatur in
manus." Plautus was taken
into my hands."

411. so many more. The study of the classic authors was a favourite one with all the Fathers of the Church, e.g., Basil, mentioned in l. 414, and St. Augustine.

412. wax, A.S. wacsian=to grow.

414: Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, A.D. 370-379.

414. Margites. Not now extant, is attributed to Homer on doubtful grounds. Four lines of it are quoted in Plato and Aristotle.

415. sportful, wanton, improper.

415. writ, written; cf. l. 549. 416. Morgante. Il Morgante Maggiore, a burlesque and satirical poem, was written by Luigi Pulci, in 1488.

418. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, A.D. 315-338. He wrote an Ecclesiastical History in ten volumes.

418. ancienter, notice the form.

419. and besides, has, and (which) besides, has. An example of Milton's likings for elliptical expressions. The date of Jerome's dream was A.D. 384. Eusebius died A.D. 338. "Far ancienter (1.418) seems therefore a slight exaggeration.

420. Dionysius Alexandrinus Dionysius was Bishop of Alexandria, A.D. 247-265.