ough it brought its practitioner, doubtless, more or less
into contact with men of really professional standing in the science of
jurisprudence. Perhaps the elder Milton cherished a deeper conviction of
the value of classic culture than do those who simply inherit, and take
as a matter of course, the custom of devoting years to the study of
ancient languages and literatures.

Evidently the father thought he saw in his son that promise of
intellectual vigor and of sound moral stamina which justified the
innovation, in his family, of sending his boy to the university. His
preparation for college Milton got under private masters and at the
famous public school of St. Paul's, which was near his home. This
preparation consisted chiefly in exercises in Latin composition and
literature, and was both thorough and effectual. At sixteen, when he went
to college, he had already composed Latin verse, and he read and wrote
Latin with facility.

In 1625 Milton entered Christ's College, Cambridge. Here he remained as a
student seven years, or till 1632, taking in course his A.B. and A.M.
degrees, and, in spite of his studious habits and his aversion to the
rough and wayward customs of student life, winning more and more, and at
last having in full measure, the respect of his fellow-collegians. During
these years he wrote, but did not publish, in Latin or English, no less
than twenty-five pieces of verse, among them poems of no less note than
the Nativity Ode, and the Sonnet on arriving at the age of twenty-three.
The lines on Shakespeare were also composed in this period, and appeared
in print among the poems prefixed to the second Shakespeare folio in
1632.

Returning, at the close of his university course, to the paternal
residence, the poet came, not to London, but to the village of Horton, in
Buckinghamshire, where his father had taken a house in order to live in
the country. Now had to be debated the question of a profession. Hitherto
the son had seemed silently to acquiesce in the understood hope of the
family that he would devote himself to a career in the church. But during
his university years of study and observation his views had become fixed,
his mind had advanced to self-determination, and he could not remain
content with a future that seemed to hamper his intellectual freedom.
This difference between father and son was settled, apparently without
strife, by the elder man's entire yielding to the desires of the younger.