in the fentence, which the vifitor, upon application, refused to expunge.

If therefore the Registers of Chrift's College are filent with refpect to the expulfion of John Milton, it is not plain that he was either expelled or rusticated, not to mention that the terms, vetiti laris et exilium, may refer to twenty causes befides that affigned by the new Biographer. If Milton's return to college was voluntary, it would be invidious to afcribe his abfence to compulfion, unless you will fuppofe that the prohibition was the effect of his father's economy, which is by far moft likely to have been the cafe.

Milton however was certainly out of humour with the univerfities (except per

perhaps with a few of his ingenious and judicious friends in them); and Dr.Johnfon gives us our choice of two causes of it, the injudicious feverity of his governors,. and Milton's captious perverfenefs *.

Had Milton left us nothing upon the fubject but rude and indiscriminate abuse of the univerfities, Dr. Johnfon's alternative in affifting us to account for it had been liberal and gracious. But the fingle letter of Milton to Hartlib fhews that his objections were of another fort, and took their rife neither from any refentment against his governors for their feverity, nor from any perverfenefs of his own temper. So far from blaming their feverity, he reproves the idle vacancies

* Life, p. 10.

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given

given both to schools and univerfities, as a detrimental and improper indulgence; with refpect to his own difpofition, nothing appears here but a defire to meliorate the mode of education, in which Hartlib was as hearty as himself; and it appears by our late academical reformations, that the authors of them were no more in humour with the methods of their predeceffors than Milton himself.

It is true, Milton was zealous for Re-formation in the church, and who can fay it was not wanted or who but Dr. John-fon will fay it? Milton laid the errors. and abufes in the church to the account of the bishops. The bishops countenanced and encouraged the universities; and it was but natural for the univerfi

ties in their turn to inculcate that fort of learning which tended to uphold the epifcopal authority, and consequently to prevent the reformation Milton wished for.

"One of his objections," fays the Doctor, "to academical education, as it was "then conducted, is, that men defigned. "for orders in the church were per"mitted to act plays, writhing and un"boning their clergy limbs to all the antic "and difhoneft geftures of Trinculoes,. "buffoons, and bawds, proftituting the

fhame of that ministry, which either they "bad or were nigh having, to the eyes of "courtiers and court-ladies, with their

grooms and madamoiselles *."

Apology for Smectymnus, p. 11o. Birch's ed.

Num fingit, num mentitur! If Ignoramus was well acted at Trinity College, thefe ludicrous appearances must be exhibited to the spectators, who were perfons exactly answering the defcription here given of them; and if the characters were perfonated by clergymen, or candidates for orders, there is propriety as well as truth in Milton's reflection. But this is not the objection.

"This is fufficiently peevish," fays the Doctor," in a man, who, when he " mentions his exile from the college, "relates, with great luxuriance, the "compensation which the pleasures of "the theatre afford him. Plays were "therefore only criminal when they were "acted by academicks *."

*Life, p. 12.

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