Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

have seen, he used to visit his uncle regularly, and give him any aid he could in revising the manuscripts of his works. In 1675 he published his Theatrum Poetarum, or account of the principal ancient and modern, but chiefly English, poets. He did various literary jobs for the booksellers, such as translations, etc.; and from a passage in his Life of Milton, we might infer that he kept a school in his later years. In 1694 he published a translation of his uncle's Latin Letters, to which he prefixed the well-known and precious piece of biography so often quoted in these pages. He probably died not long after, for he was no longer living when Toland wrote his Life of Milton in 1698. The character of Edward Phillips appears to have been that of an amiable, honourable, learned, and industrious man of letters.

He

John Phillips was superior to his brother in talent, but far below him in moral worth. We have seen that in 1651 he was deputed by his uncle to answer one of the assailants of his Defence. He was probably at that time acting as clerk to him in his public office. could hardly have been so when, in 1655, he published his witty but licentious poem, the Satire against Hypocrites; in which he describes a Sunday, a Christening, and a Wednesday-Fast as they were held by the rigidly righteous of those days. This poem went through several editions. In 1659 he published Montelion, or the Prophetical Almanac, in ridicule of the noted Lilly the Astrologer, who was then in high repute; and next year, a mock romance on the Royalist side, and ridiculing the Commonwealth's-men. It was named Don Lamberto, from General Lambert; and Sir Harry Vane and others figure in it. In thus attacking men under persecution he showed alike his want of taste and want of feeling.

In 1672 he published a travestie of the fifth and sixth books of the Æneis; he also published a licentious translation of Don Quixote,* and various other things. After the Revolution he became the conductor of a monthly journal, called the Monthly Mercury. He is supposed to have lived till the year 1705, and to have continued writing to the last. Wood, but his dicta are not to be received implicitly, says of him: "A man of very loose principles, atheistical, forsakes his wife and children, makes no provision for them."

-

"The translation of Don Quixote, published in 1682, may also be specified as incredibly vulgar, and without the least perception of the tone which the original author has preserved." (Hallam, Lit. of Europe, iii. 553.) Mr. Hallam was apparently ignorant of the name of the translator. He is speaking of the slang which then prevailed in English literature.

H

MILTON'S FRIENDS.

THOMAS YOUNG.

THOMAS YOUNG, as we have seen, was engaged by the elder Milton to instruct his son in private. Aubrey's account of him is, that he was "a Puritan in Essex, who cut his hair short." Warton tells us, from a manuscript history of Jesus College, Cambridge, of which Young was Master, that he was a native of Scotland, apparently of Perthshire. In 1623 he was invited by the English merchants settled at Hamburg to assume the office of their spiritual pastor. He accepted the invitation; and during his residence there his former pupil wrote him a Latin epistle, dated London, March 26, 1625, and his fourth Latin Elegy in 1627. Young, as there is reason to suppose, returned to England in this or early in the following year, and settled at Stowmarket, in the county of Suffolk; whence he appears to have written to Milton, inviting him to go and spend some time with him. In his answer, dated Cambridge, July 21, 1628, Milton promises to visit him in the following Spring, in order to enjoy the charms of the season and of his conversation, away from the din and bustle of the town. He speaks of his Suffolk Stoa as vying with that of Zeno or Cicero's Tusculum, where, like another Serranus or Curius, in his

moderate circumstances he gently ruled with a royal mind in his little farm. Whether this language is figurative, or that Young had in reality become the occupier of a small farm, is not certain. The latter seems the more probable supposition; and probably to his charge of a Puritan congregation he united—according to the plan afterwards proposed by his pupil-the occupation of an agriculturist.

Young was one of those whose initials went to the formation of the name Smectymnuus. He was also a member of the Assembly of Divines. In 1644 he was made Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, by the Parliament. On his refusing to take the Engagement, he was ejected in 1662; and he retired to his former residence at Stowmarket, where he died and was buried, having, as Warton says, held the vicarage of that place for thirty years.

Beside his share in Smectymnuus, Warton supposes Young to have published in 1639 a learned work in Latin, on the observation of Sunday, and entitled Dies Dominica. He also preached a sermon, entitled Hope's Incouragement, before the House of Commons, on a Fastday, February 20, 1644-5, which was printed by order of the House. In the Dedication he subscribes himself, "Thomas Young, Sancti Evangelii in comitatu Suffolciensi Minister." Yet, if Warton be correct in his statement, he was at that time Master of Jesus College; for he says that he was admitted to his office there by the Earl of Manchester in person, April 12, 1644. Warton also tells us, from Neale's History of the Puritans, that at the time of his appointment he held a London preachership in Duke's Place.

In his Life by Clarke the Calvinist it is stated of

Young that he was "a man of great learning, of much prudence and piety, and of great ability and fidelity in the work of the ministry."

ALEXANDER GILL.

When Milton was at St. Paul's School it was kept by Alexander Gill, a man of considerable learning, who published in 1621 a work entitled Logonomia, the object of which was that most futile of all objects, to fix and reform the English language; and in 1635, another, called the Sacred Philosophie of the Holy Scripture. His son of the same name, the subject of the present notice, was at that time one of the assistants in the school; and being a lover of learning and an admirer of genius, he was naturally attracted by the future author of Paradise Lost, and intimacy and friendship was the result.

Alexander Gill the younger was probably born in 1597, for he was fifteen when he was admitted a Commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, in 1612. He had two brothers, named George and Nathaniel, who were also of that College, and on the foundation. Alexander presented the library of his College with the old folio edition of Spenser's Faerie Queene, Drayton's Polyolbion by Selden, and Bourdelotius' Lucian, in all of which were poetic mottoes from the classics in his own handwriting. It would seem that when he had graduated he became assistant to his father, on whose death, in 1635, he was appointed Master. He was at that time a Doctor of Divinity, having taken that degree at

*It must have been he therefore, and not his father, who was Milton's neighbour in Aldersgate-street. See above, p. 24.

« EdellinenJatka »