mory, (") and solemnly pronounced with right accent and grace, as might be taught, would endue them even with the spirit and vigour of Demosthenes or Cicero, Euripides or Sophocles.

17. And now, lastly, will be the time to read with them those organic arts, which enable men to discourse and write perspicuously, elegantly, and according to the fittest style, of lofty, mean, or lowly. Logic, (2) therefore, so much as is useful, is to be referred to this due place with all her wellcouched heads and topics, until it be time to open her contracted palm into a graceful and ornate rhetoric, taught out of the rule of Plato, Aristotle, Phalereus, Cicero, Hermogenes, Longinus. (23) To which poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtile and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate. I mean not here the prosody of a verse, which they

(21) From the Phædrus we learn it was the practice among the young men of Athens to commit entire speeches to memory. Xenophon, in the Memorabilia, introduces a youth who could repeat the whole Iliad; Cicero, De Oratore, speaks with commendation of this kind of mental exercise; and it may be observed, generally, that the science of mnemonics was cultivated much more carefully among the ancients than it has ever been in modern times.

(22) In 1672, Milton himself published a work on Logic, entitled "Artis Logica Plenior Institutio, ad Petri Rami Methodum Concinnata, Adjecta est Praxis Analytica, et Patri Rami Vita. Libris Duobus."

(23) To these should undoubtedly be added Quinctilian and Vossius, the latter of whom has, by his compendious Rhetoric, done good service to the cause of eloquence. Of this work the second and best edition was published at Leyden, 1637..

could not but have hit on before among the rudiments of grammar; but that sublime art which in Aristotle's poetics, in Horace, and the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro, (24) Tasso, Mazzoni, and others, teaches what the laws are of a true epic poem, what of a dramatic, what of a lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand masterpiece to observe. This would make them soon perceive what despicable creatures our common rhymers and play-writers be; and show them what religious, what glorious and magnificent use might be made of poetry, both in divine and human things.

18. From hence, and not till now, will be the right season of forming them to be able writers and composers in every excellent matter, when they shall be thus fraught with an universal insight into things. (25) Or whether they be to speak in parliament or council, honour and attention would be waiting on their lips. There would then also appear in pulpits other visages, other gestures, and stuff otherwise wrought than what we now sit under, ofttimes to as great a trial of our patience as any other that they preach to us. These are the studies wherein our noble and our gentle youth

(24) Piccolomini and Beni deserve also to be enumerated among the excellent commentators of the Poetics.

(25) The reader will here doubtless call to mind the spendid idea given by Crassus (De Oratore, 1. i.) of the education and acomplishments of an orator. Both Cicero and Milton looked solely to the development of great minds; and from the system of the latter, as from the school of Isocrates, which Cicero compares to the Trojan horse, none but princes in eloquence, had it ever been fully put in practice, would have issued.

ought to bestow their time, in a disciplinary way, from twelve to one and twenty: unless they rely more upon their ancestors dead, than upon themselves living. In which methodical course it is so supposed they must proceed by the steady pace of learning onward, as at convenient times, for memory's sake, to retire back into the middle ward, and sometimes into the rear of what they have been taught, until they have confirmed and solidly united the whole body of their perfected knowledge, like the last embattling of a Roman legion. Now will be worth the seeing, what exercises and recreations may best agree, and become these studies.

19. The course of study hitherto briefly described is, what I can guess by reading, likest to those ancient and famous schools of Pythagoras, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, and such others, out of which were bred such a number of renowned philosophers, orators, historians, poets, and princes all over Greece, Italy, and Asia, besides the flourishing studies of Cyrene and Alexandria. But herein it shall exceed them, and supply a defect as great as that which Plato noted in the commonwealth of Sparta; (2) whereas that city trained up their youth most for war, and these in their academies and Lycæum all for the gown, this institution of

(26) See Plato, De Legibus, 1. i. Opera, t. vii. p. 181, sqq. edit. Bekk. Aristotle notices the same defect in the Spartan government; and adds that, though military superiority was the object aimed at by Lycurgus, they had been excelled by their neighbours (the Athenians?) no less in the virtues of war

breeding which I here delineate shall be equally good both for peace and war. Therefore about an hour and a half ere they eat at noon should be allowed them for exercise, and due rest afterwards; but the time for this may be enlarged at pleasure, according as their rising in the morning shall be early.

20. The exercise which I commend first, is the exact use of their weapon, to guard, and to strike safely with edge or point; this will keep them healthy, nimble, strong, and well in breath; is also the likeliest means to make them grow large and tall, and to inspire them with a gallant and fearless courage, which being tempered with seasonable lectures and precepts to them of true fortitude and patience, will turn into a native and heroic valour, and make them hate the cowardice of doing wrong. They must be also practised in all the locks and gripes of wrestling, wherein Englishmen were wont to excel, (27) as need may often be in fight to tug, to grapple, and to close. And

than in the arts of peace.-Politics, 1. ii. and 1. v. c. 4. Müller, in his "Hist. and Antiq. of the Doric Race," endeavours to exalt the political institutions of the Spartans above the popular governments of the Ionians.-Vol. ii. p. 1–269.

(27) Aristotle's remarks on the employment of exercise in education are full of good sense. He allows, as might have been expected, that the culture of the body should precede that of the mind; but is far from inculcating, with many writers, the necessity of acquiring athletic habits of body, which have, on the growth and shape, effects no less injurious than on the intellect. At Sparta, where gymnastic exercises were not pursued as a profession, excessive labour produced no less dangerous results— unfeeling and ferocious habits. During the years preceding

M

this perhaps will be enough, wherein to prove and heat their single strength.

21. The interim of unsweating themselves regularly, and convenient rest before meat, may, both with profit and delight, be taken up in recreating and composing their travailed spirits with the solemn and divine harmonies of music, (28) heard or learned; either whilst the skilful organist plies his grave and fancied descant in lofty fugues, or the whole symphony with artful and unimaginable touches adorn and grace the well-studied chords of some choice composer; sometimes the lute or soft organ-stop waiting on elegant voices, either to religious, martial, or civil ditties; which, if wise men and prophets be not extremely out, have a great power over dispositions and manners, to smooth and make them gentle from rustic harshness and distempered passions. (29) The like also would

puberty all violent exercises and forced regimens are pernicious; which is clear from the fact that, of those who won the prize in boyhood in the Olympic contests, not above two or three had again proved victors in manhood.-Politics, 1. v. c. 4; see also 1. ii. c. 3. Plato, in his Republic, observes that too continuous an application to gymnastics, to the neglect of music, engenders ferocity.-Opera, t. vi. 152.

(28) In his L'Allegro he thus describes the delights of music:

"And ever against eating cares,

Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse,

Such as the meeting soul may pierce

In notes, with many a winding bout

Of linked sweetness long drawn out,

With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie

The hidden soul of harmony."

(29) He here undoubtedly alludes to Plato, who, in various