doubted that it was at the instance of the father of the poet.*

These details, if they fail in establishing the truth respecting the origin of this great poet, and leave it still in a degree of obscurity, establish however the fact, how extremely difficult it is in this country to recover genealogical truth respecting families who were not of the class of those who appeared at the Heralds' Visitations, though they might be but just below many who did so appear and entered themselves on record, thus evincing the extreme importance, if it is thought an object of importance at all to hand down accurate information on such a subject as this to our posterity, of not trusting to the possible chance of discovering the truth by the search of parish registers, wills, and the other assistance in genealogical investigations, but seizing A the opportunity which is always open to every one of entering the facts of this kind which can be proved in the books of the Heralds.

What has now been said seems to be all that comes legitimately within the scope of this inquiry, and yet I am induced to trespass further in bringing forward a few facts respecting other persons of the name of Milton living in the forest-country, who may seem to be in some kind of connection with the family which boasts this eminently illustrious

name.

There was living in the latter part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and in the reign of King James the First, near to

*This MS. of Segar's Grants is among the manuscripts called “Additional," No. 12,225, and the entry respecting the arms of Milton may be found at f. 162.

the Hundred of Bullington, but not within it, a Nicholas Milton, to whose name we find the addition of "Gentleman," and who may therefore be assumed to have been a Milton who claimed a right to coat-armour. This Nicholas resided at Appleton in Berkshire, a place about equally distant from Abington and Oxford. He was living there in the 31st, 32nd and 39th of Elizabeth, when his assessments were upon goods of the annual value of £10. He was living as late as the 10th of James I. at which time he was owner of lands at Appleton. A Nicholas Milton, who was certainly the same person, was assessed at Natley-Scures, in the Hundred of Basingstoke, in 1590 and 1599, and at Mettingham, in the Hundred of Blackheath, in 1598 and 1607. He was evidently a person of a better condition than the Miltons of the immediate neighbourhood of Shotover.

One Thomas Milton was a "Sworn Regarder and Preservator of all the Queen's Majesty's Woods within Battell's Bailiwick, parcel of the Park of Windsor." He and his two associates make answer to certain articles given them in charge by John Norris and Richard Stafferton, Esquires, verdurers of the said Forest of Windsor, dated March 10, 1571. Sonning-hall Park, Folie-John Park, and Cranburn Chace were within their division. In 1576 this Thomas Milton had a grant of a tenement called La Rolfe, with two gardens, in New Windsor. In 1624 there was a Robert Milton of Sonning Hall, who had lands in Windsor Forest.

Further, in 1523 there was a William Milton among the inhabitants of Oxford: in 1559 a person of the same name living at Newbury in Berkshire, and a Richard Milton at Warfield. In the reign of Philip and Mary there was a William Milton, a Collector of Customs in the Port of B 2

London. There was a Somerset family of the name who were farmers of the tithe of Upton, and several Miltons in the Hundred of Brexon in Cheshire, to which county some persons have sought to trace the poet's ancestry.

II. THE POET'S FATHER.-If Aubrey is here to be depended upon, who says that he was able to read without spectacles at eighty-four, and that he died about 1647, he could not be born later than 1563, so that he must have been between thirty and forty when Richard Milton of Stanton was so severely fined for his recusancy, and forty-five at the time when his son the poet was born. But Aubrey may have represented him as older than he really was.

We are told that he was sent by his father to Christ Church, but no trace of him as a member of that house is now to be found; and if any such trace existed it could hardly have escaped the research of two such men as Anthony Wood and Dr. Philip Bliss. He was settled as a Scrivener in Bread Street, near Cheapside, before the close of the reign of Elizabeth. This is proved by the copy of a bond for the payment of money to John Sanderson, an eminent Turkey merchant, in the manuscript book of his transactions now at the Museum.* The date of the bond is March 4, 1602: the money being to be paid on May 5 following, "at the new shop of John Milton, scrivener, in Bread Street, London." He was a witness to the signature of the persons who gave the bond, namely, Thomas Heigheham, of Bethnal Green, Esquire, and Richard Sparrow, citizen and goldsmith of London. He had thus early in his career respectable clients.

*Lansdowne MSS. No. 241.

This it is believed is the earliest date that has hitherto been discovered in the life of the poet's father. It was a "new shop," as if then only lately opened by him. Some time must have been passed in the practice of the profession before that date; some time also in preparation for it, and yet there seems to be several years to be accounted for between his leaving the University and engaging in this profession; and to those years when he was living without any definite plan of life before him is to be referred his cultivation of his musical talent, and some, if not most, of the compositions which are attributed to him. Morley's "Oriana," to which he was one of the contributors, was published as early as 1601. As the other known contributors to the Oriana were nearly all musicians by profession, it seems but a reasonable conjecture that the elder Milton might have once thought of taking up music as a profession.

Other musical compositions of his are, however, to be found in later collections, as in Sir William Leighton's "Tears of a Sorrowful Soul," 1614, and Slatyer's Psalms, 1643. Probably everything has been collected on this subject by Warton, Hawkins, and Burney. Warton's conjecture, that he was the John Melton, author of a book printed in 1609, entitled "A Six-fold Politican," requires better proof.

No other literary composition in print has ever, I believe, been attributed to him; and that he had much regard for literature is not quite so apparent as Mr. Todd would have us suppose: "Of whose attachment to literature, the Latin verses of his son, addressed to him with no less elegance than gratitude, are an unequivocal proof." I own they do not appear to me to support this opinion. It is true that they shew the father permittin, his son to forsake the law,

and follow the bent of his genius; but they seem to me as if there were conveyed in them something approaching almost to the language of gentle and respectful reproach for neglecting literature too much, and confining himself so exclusively to music. If anything could raise a probability that the Six-fold Politician is the work of the elder John Milton, it would be the tone of the chapter in that work on "Poets," when it is compared with the language of this Epistle.

It is indeed sufficiently apparent that the father had but small literary power, and acted very wisely when, as joint sons of Apollo, he left the nobler province to his son. The Biographers and Editors of Milton have in this respect dealt gently, shall I say generously, with his memory. Yet it is something to know what kind of person the father of so great a man was, and therefore I venture to place upon this page that which is perhaps the only specimen which remains of attempts in verse by the elder Milton; for he who could write the lines which follow could never have attained to the delicacy of the Madrigal in Oriana, to which his music was set. The lines are a complimentary sonnet addressed to Lane-John Lane, the "fine old Queen Elizabeth's gentleman" of Philips' "Theatrum Poetarum." They were addressed to him on his poem, entitled Guy Earl of Warwick, which he finished in 1621. This poem no one has thought it worth his pains to draw from its obscurity of a manuscript life, and indeed it does not deserve the pains. It may be found in the Museum by those who desire to consult it.*

*Harl. 6243. The manuscript has the appearance of an author's autograph, and seems to have been intended for the press, having an imprimatur, dated July 13, 1617, signed John Taverner.