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 Facrie 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.

Oxford in 1629. His rule at St. Paul's lasted, we are told, only five years; for he was removed on account of his excessive severity. As he is said also to have been an assistant in the school of the celebrated Thomas Farnaby, who left London in 1636, we must suppose that he had not been continuously attached to St. Paul's. His death occurred in 1642, in his forty-fifth or fortysixth year.

Gill was distinguished as a writer of Latin poetry. Wood says "he was accounted one of the best Latin poets in the nation." But there is higher testimony than Wood's. Three of Milton's Latin epistles are addressed to Gill; and in the first of them, dated from Cambridge, May 20, 1628, acknowledging the receipt of a Latin poem of his on the capture of some town by Henry of Nassau, he terms his verses "carmina sane grandia, et majestatem vere poeticam Virgilianumque ubique ingenium redolentia," to which he adds other highly laudatory expressions. In his third letter to him, written at Horton, December 4, 1634, he returns him his thanks for a copy of Hendecasyllabics, more precious, he says, than gold; and, with great modesty, sends him in return his Greek version of the 114th Psalm, which, as the strain of an inspired writer, he adds, exceeds his poem as much in the subject, as he excels the translator in poetic skill. Gill had published a selection of his Latin poetry in 1632, in a small duodecimo volume, under the title of Poetici Conatus.

CHARLES DIODATI.

Charles Diodati was the schoolfellow and most intimate friend of Milton. He was son to Dr. Theodore

Diodati, an eminent physician, a native of Geneva, of an Italian family settled in that city, who came young to England, where he married a lady of good fortune and family. He was physician to Prince Henry and the Princess Elizabeth, in the reign of James I. His son Charles appears to have been born in 1607, the year before Milton. He was educated at St. Paul's School, whence he was sent to Trinity College, Oxford, where he was entered as a Gentleman Commoner, February 7, 1621-2. He remained there till 1628, when he left it, after having taken his Master's degree. He seems to have spent a part of his time in Cheshire, where probably his mother's family resided. We also find that he had a younger brother; and it would appear that after his father's death, he had, in 1637, some difficulty in arranging matters with his stepmother. He died in the Spring of the following year, while his friend Milton was at Florence. From some passages in one of Milton's letters to him, it would appear that he had adopted his father's profession.

Diodati, as may be inferred from Milton's affection. for him, was a man of learning and talent; but there are none of his literary productions remaining, except a copy of Alcaics, in an Oxford collection, on the death of Camden, called Camdeni Insignia, printed in 1624, and consequently written when he was sixteen; and two Greek epistles to Milton, without dates, formerly in the possession of Toland, and now in the British Museum.* In the first of these,-evidently written when they were both in London, probably in vacation time at the Universities, he complains of the badness of the weather, which had prevented some proposed walk of theirs, into

* Mr. Mitford has printed them at the end of his Life of Milton.

the country it would seem, in which they were to amuse themselves with philosophic and literary discussions. He exhorts him to keep up his spirits and not change his mind, as the fine weather must soon re-appear. In the second, apparently written from Cheshire, he speaks with delight of the comforts he enjoyed where he was, and of the charms of the country at that season,-the month of May, it would seem,-with the single drawback, that he had no like-minded friend with whom he could communicate his ideas. He gently reproaches his friend with his disregard of the charms of nature, and his poring, without remission, day and night, over books; and exhorts him to live, laugh, and enjoy his youth, relaxing after the example of those old sages. "As for myself," he adds, "in all other things your inferior, in this of knowing how to moderate labour, I both think myself to be and am your superior." Milton addressed to Diodati two of his Latin Elegies; the first, when he was at home, in London, under sentence of rustication from the University, and when Diodati was in Cheshire, but it contains no date, or anything that would enable us to assign its date; and the sixth, written in December, 1629, in answer to a copy of verses sent him by Diodati from the country, that is of course from Cheshire,in which he had pleaded in excuse for their inferiority to his usual efforts, the festivities he was partaking of with his friends. Milton also wrote to him two Latin epistles, in September, 1637. Diodati was probably at that time also in Cheshire, for his correspondent terms those he was residing among, Hyperboreans. In the second of these he gives him an account of his aspirations and his studies, and asks him to lend him a historian of Venice. It might appear, from the conclusion of this

epistle, that Diodati had settled in Cheshire. There is also reason to suppose that Milton had already introduced in his Comus the praises of his medical friend, under the character of the "certain shepherd lad, of small regard to see to, but well skilled in every virtuous herb," etc. On his return from Italy, Milton, in his beautiful Epitaphium Damonis, celebrated the virtues of his friend, and bewailed his own deserted condition, now that he was for ever deprived of his society.

HENRY LAWES.

Henry Lawes was the son of Thomas Lawes, a vicarchoral of Salisbury Cathedral, and it is probable that he was one of the choir-boys. At the charges of Edward, Earl of Hertford, he and his brother William were instructed in music by John Cooper, who, having been in Italy, had Italianized his name to Coperario. In January, 1625, Lawes was appointed, probably through his patron's interest, Pistoler* of the Royal Chapel; and in the November following, one of the Gentlemen of the Choir belonging to it, and, soon after, Clerk of the Cheque and one of the Court musicians. Lawes, who was a poet and vocalist, as well as a musician, was on terms of intimacy with the best poets of his time, whose verses he set to music, and with the more cultivated and intellectual of the nobility; the children of some of whom, such as the Earl of Bridgewater, he seems to have instructed. During the time of the Civil War and Commonwealth, he supported himself by teaching young ladies to sing and play on the lute. His chief patronesses, as Wood informs us, were Lady Carbury, and

* This is said to mean the person who read the Epistle.