his brilliant
talents, and himself selected to represent his college on an occasion
when an able representative was indispensable. Cambridge had all
imaginable complacency in the scholar, it was towards the reformer that
she assumed, as afterwards towards Wordsworth, the attitude of

"Blind Authority beating with his staff
The child that would have led him."

The University and Milton made a practical covenant like Frederick the
Great and his subjects: she did what she pleased, and he thought what he
pleased. In sharp contrast with his failure to influence her educational
methods is "that more than ordinary respect which I found above any of
my equals at the hands of those courteous and learned men, the Fellows
of that College wherein I spent seven years; who, at my parting, after I
had taken two degrees, as the manner is, signified many ways how much
better it would content them that I would stay; as by many letters full
of kindness and loving respect, both before that time and long after, I
was assured of their singular good affection toward me." It may be added
here that his comeliness and his chastity gained him the appellation of
"Lady" from his fellow collegians: and the rooms at Christ's alleged to
have been his are still pointed out as deserving the veneration of poets
in any event; for whether Milton sacrificed to Apollo in them or not, it
is certain that in them Wordsworth sacrificed to Bacchus.

For Milton's own sake and ours his departure from the University was the
best thing that could have happened to him. It saved him from wasting
his time in instructing others when he ought to be instructing himself.
From the point of view of advantage to the University, it is perhaps the
most signal instance of the mischief of strictly clerical fellowships,
now happily things of the past. Only one fellowship at Christ's was
tenable by a layman: to continue in academical society, therefore, he
must have taken orders. Such had been his intention when he first
repaired to Cambridge, but the young man of twenty-three saw many
things differently from the boy of sixteen. The service of God was still
as much as ever the aim of his existence, but he now thought that not
all service was church service. How far he had become consciously
alienated from the Church's creed it is difficult to say. He was able,
at all events, to subscribe the Articles on taking his degree, and no
trace of Arianism appears in his writings