man's life, and most slippery to stay well in) they have commonly the rein of all license in their own hand, and specially such as do live in the court. And that which is most to be marveled at, commonly the wisest and also best men be found the fondest fathers in this behalf. And if some good father would seek some remedy herein, yet the mother (if the household of our lady) had rather, yea, and will to, have her son cunning and bold, in making him to live trimly when he is young, than by learning and travel to be able to serve his prince and his country both wisely in peace and stoutly in war when he is old.

But nobility, governed by learning and wisdom, is indeed most like a fair ship, having tide and wind at will, under the rule of a skilful master; when contrariwise, a ship carried, yea, by the highest tide and greatest wind, lacking a skilful master, most commonly doth either sink itself upon sands or break itself upon rocks. And even so, how many have been either drowned in vain pleasure or overwhelmed by stout wilfulness the histories of England be able to afford over many examples unto us. Therefore, ye great and noble men's children, if ye will have right fully that praise, and enjoy surely that place which your fathers have, and elders had, and left unto you, ye must keep it as they got it, and that is by the only way of virtue, wisdom and worthiness.

XVI. JOHN MILTON.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Milton is best known as a poet. His "Paradise Lost," one of the world's great epics, has given him a place among the greatest singers of all time. But he was more than a poet. He was a scholar of wide attainments, a controversialist of great force, a patriot of unselfish purpose, and an educator of broad and independent spirit. The Commonwealth, it was said, owed its standing in Europe to Cromwell's battles and Milton's books.

He was born in London, December 9, 1608. He was educated at Cambridge, where he spent seven years and took the usual degrees. But the education of the time did not approve itself to his judgment, and later, as will be seen, he pointed out its defects of subject and method with trenchant force. He left the university in 1632, and spent the next five years in private study at his father's home in Buckinghamshire. Besides reading all the Greek and Latin writers of the classic period, he mastered Italian, and feasted, as he tells us, "with avidity and delight on Dante and Petrarch."

Tiring at length of his country life, Milton left England in 1638 for a tour on the continent. At Paris he met Grotius, one of the most learned men of his age, who resided at the French capital as ambassador from the Queen of Sweden. Afterwards he visited the principal cities of Italy, and was everywhere cordially received by men of learning. In his travels he preserved an admirable and cour

ageous independence; and even under the shadow of St. Peter's he made no effort to conceal his Puritan faith.

He was about to extend his travels to Sicily and Greece when the news of the civil commotion in England caused him to change his purpose. "I thought it base," he said, "to be traveling for amusement abroad, while my fellowcitizens were fighting for liberty at home." Not being called to serve the state in any official capacity on his arrival in London, he opened a private school, in which he tried to exemplify, in some measure at least, his educational theories. He held that languages should be studied, not for verbal drill, but for their literary treasures. At this period in his life he entered upon the religious and political controversies of the time, in which he showed himself a stout champion of Protestantism and the Commonwealth.

In 1644 Milton published two treatises that will long survive; the first is his "Areopagitica, or Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing," the other is his "Tractate on Education." It is the latter work that places him in the line of modern educational reformers. It was written at the earnest entreaty of Samuel Hartlib, a friend of Milton's, who was interested in educational reform and in the advancement of learning. In this "Tractate " Milton undertakes to "set down in writing," as he states in the opening paragraph, “that voluntary idea, which hath long in silence presented itself to me, of a better education, in extent and comprehension far more large, and yet of time far shorter, and of attainment far more certain, than hath been yet in practice." With the exception of the introductory paragraph, the “Tractate" is here given in its entirety.

PAINTER PED. Ess.-16

SELECTION FROM MILTON.

A TRACTATE ON EDUCATION.

The end, then, of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith, makes up the highest perfection. But because our understanding cannot in this body found itself but on sensible things, nor arrive so clearly to the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by orderly conning over the visible and inferior creature; the same method is necessarily to be followed in all discreet teaching. And seeing every nation affords not experience and tradition enough for all kind of learning, therefore we are chiefly taught the languages of those people who have at any time been most industrious after wisdom; so that language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. And though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and lexicons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man, as any yeoman or tradesman, competently wise in his mother-dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have made learning generally so unpleasing, and so unsuccessful; first, we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek, as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year. And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our time lost, partly in too oft idle vacancies given both to schools and universities, partly in a preposterous ex

action, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled by long reading and observing, with elegant maxims, and copious invention. These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit. Besides the ill habit which they get of wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms, odious to be read, yet not to be avoided without a well-continued and judicious conversing among pure authors digested, which they scarce taste; whereas, if after some preparatory grounds of speech, by their certain forms got into memory, they were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen short book lessoned thoroughly to them, they might then forthwith proceed to learn the substance of good things, and arts in due order, which would bring the whole language quickly into their power. This I take to be the most rational and most profitable way of learning languages, and whereby we may best hope to give account to God of our youth spent herein; and for the usual method of teaching arts, I deem it to be an old error of universities, not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of beginning with arts most easy, (and those be such as are most obvious to the sense,) they present their young unmatriculated novices, at first coming, with the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics: so that they having but newly left those grammatic flats and shallows, where they stuck unreasonably to learn a few words with lamentable construction, and now on the sudden transported under another climate, to be tossed and turmoiled with their unballasted wits, in fathomless and unquiet deeps of controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all this while with ragged notions and