but disillusioned by the ambition of the sectarian preachers,' Milton offers them a plan of education that, unlike his generous and liberal design of fifteen years earlier, is at the opposite extreme from the elaborate and aristocratic training of the universities. It is possible that he did not expect the proposal to be seriously entertained; and the whole scheme may well have been suggested in a mood of bitter irony. So different is its spirit from that of the Tractate that the two plans can hardly be compared, much less considered the same. One might almost believe that, in losing faith in popular government, Milton had for the time lost faith in higher education.*

Though not utilitarian, then, in the narrower sense of directly teaching industrial arts, the plan of studies outlined in the Tractate has encountered another objection, which is stated by Dr. Johnson as follows:

The purpose of Milton, as it seems, was to teach something more solid than the common literature of schools, by reading those authors that treat of physical subjects, such as the Georgick, and astronomical treatises of the ancients.

But the truth is that the knowledge of external nature, and the sciences which that knowledge requires or includes, are not the great or the frequent business of the human mind. Whether we provide for action or conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions. Prudence and Justice are virtues, and excellences, of all times and of all places; we are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure. Physiological learning is of such rare emergence that one man may know another half his life without being able to esti

1 Compare the sonnets, On the New Forcers of Conscience, and To the Lord General Cromwell.

2 See Masson, Life of Milton 5. 615-6.

See below, pp. 274-6; but see also Prose Works 2. 125.

4 See below, pp. 224-226.

mate his skill in hydrostatics or astronomy; but his moral and prudential character immediately appears.

Those authors, therefore, are to be read at schools that supply most axioms of prudence, most principles of moral truth, and most materials for conversation; and these purposes are best served by poets, orators, and historians.1

Dr. Johnson, we must note, objects to physical science, not because it is useful, but because it is not useful enough. According to his view, Milton, in quite properly attempting to select practical studies—that is, studies that prepare one for living in the world simply made a wrong choice, and selected those that were less practical than the ones already in use.

No better statement of the genuinely humanistic spirit in education could be desired than these remarks of Dr. Johnson. The very term 'humanities' signifies the pursuits, the activities, proper to mankind, and it was so understood by educators early in the Renaissance.2 The answer to Johnson's criticism lies in the history of the classical curriculum. Some of those who most fully represent the humanistic ideal, by keeping education in contact with life, approve of studying mathematics and the natural sciences. Erasmus recommends cosmography. Vives, 'the second Quintilian,' gives a prominent place to the study of nature;1 and Quintilian himself insists upon including geometry, which Dr. Johnson declared could be useful 'only by chance.' Hemsterhuys, the illustrious contemporary of Johnson, 'often regretted that mathematics and philosophy were no longer included among the studia humanitatis.'6

Though recommended by the earlier humanists, mathematics and natural science were definitely subordinated to the general aim of a liberal education. They were not to be pursued in the

1 Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. by Hill, 1. 99–100.

2 Monroe, A Text-book in the History of Education, p. 370.

3 Woodward, Erasmus Concerning Education, pp. 144-5.

4 Watson, Vives on Education, pp. cxi, 163 ff.

5 Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 1. 10. 34-49.

Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship 2. 452.

indulgence of curiosity,1 and their direct applicability to the affairs of life was not expected to compare with that of the humanities in the more restricted sense. Contrary to the view of Dr. Johnson and of certain modern educators, Milton, too, subordinated his 'real' studies to a purpose that was strictly humanistic. This fact is shown by the order of his curriculum, as will later appear. With regard, indeed, to the relative importance of 'real' and 'ideal' studies, Milton in Paradise Lost had expressly stated the opinion that is advanced by Johnson. It is also worth note that Milton concludes his survey of the natural sciences with a reading of the poets who treat of nature and add to it what Wordsworth calls 'the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge'-'the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.'4

Milton's humanism also explains his attitude toward the writings of Comenius. The disparaging allusion to 'many modern Januas and Didactics' probably indicates that Hartlib had brought the works of Comenius to Milton's notice. The English poet and the Moravian bishop had thus much in common-they both desired to simplify and to expedite the teaching of Latin; both insisted upon the study of things rather than words; both upheld the encyclopædic ideal. But Milton, though at one with Comenius in making all knowledge the province of his student, chiefly emphasized an educational medium for which Comenius appears to have had less regard. Milton, as a humanist, would instruct through literature-preferably the best literature. Comenius, as a rationalist, would codify all knowledge into systems, for memorization. With implicit faith in the importance attached by Bacon to the natural sciences-perhaps even overemphasizing that importance-Comenius would make the study 1 Watson, Vives on Education, p. 166.

2 See below, pp. 43-7.

See below, pp. 298, 301, and 320.

Wordsworth, Poetical Works, ed. by Hutchinson, p. 938.

See below, p. 52.

of external nature the chief part of secular education.1 The knowledge of things is, indeed, as with Milton, to lead to the knowledge of God. Comenius to some extent even follows the 'scale of nature'-proceeding in the order of his curriculum from the material to the intellectual, and finally to the moral. Practical piety and religion he would also teach from the first. But with Milton's study of human nature through the noblest achievements of the human spirit, as recorded in history and literature, one finds in the system of Comenius nothing worthy of comparison. Rather did he look upon the classics with disfavor, as studies inappropriate to a Christian school."

Had Milton glanced through a copy of the Janua Linguae Latinae Reserata, which, one may fancy, Hartlib had sent him, he would have found what purported to be 'The Gate of Languages Unlocked, or the Seminary of all Languages and Sciences: that is, a compendious method of learning Latin or any other tongue, along with the elements of all the Sciences and Arts, comprehended under a hundred chapter-headings and in a thousand sentences.'" Scarcely a hint is there, either in the Janua or in the Didactic, of that effectually refining influence of art and literature scarcely a trace of that humane love of the noble and the beautiful, in man and nature of that intellectual idealism, through which alone, in the Middle Ages, Virgil attained to the esteem of a divine prophet, and which gives to Milton's educational structure its very spirit and form! After observing how the genius of the English poet animates his educational doctrine and practice, one little wonders that his inclination should have led him to read no further in the projects of Comenius.

1 Laurie, John Amos Comenius, pp. 251–2.

2 Ibid., pp. 104-5.

See below, pp. 44-5; 295-6.

Keatinge, The Great Didactic, pp. 140-6.

5 Laurie, John Amos Comenius, p. 162; Keatinge, The Great Didactic, pp. 383–400. Laurie, John Amos Comenius, p. 213.

IV

SOME IMPORTANT RESULTS OF HUMANISM

IN ENGLAND

One of the principal censures that Milton brings against English education in his day reflects the common attitude among humanist scholars toward the Middle Ages as compared with classical antiquity. Woodward says of Erasmus, whom he accepts as a representative personality of the age of Revival in Teutonic Europe':

Antiquity laid its spell upon him not less stringently than upon Bruni or Poliziano. To him, as to them, it stood for a Golden Age. Humanist scholarship did not, as yet, admit of a critical judgment of the actual conditions, moral, social, or economic, of the great age of Athens, or of the Augustan empire. The Roman world was, it is not unfair to say, presented as the ideal, once realized, of a universal state ruling in peace and justice the entire human race, adorned with arts, letters, and achievements of practical skill, which mankind had lost through barbarism, and was then struggling to recover. Hence, to Erasmus, antiquity was not a subject of liberal study alone, but partook of the nature of a working ideal of social order, to be adjusted to modern conditions, chief among which was the supremacy of the Christian faith. Hence the passionate note discernible in all that he has to say concerning the function of ancient literature in the education of the new generation. To deny the claims of antique learning was to take stand against human progress; for the illumination that the age craved for in every department of life lay there. Progress meant, therefore, to hark back to an ideal once perfectly realized in a historic past.1

That Milton agreed with this view is indicated by his remark upon the universities, which, he says, are 'not yet well recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages. Many other

1 Woodward, Education during the Renaissance, pp. 111-2.