as it consists of sixteen lines. In its anonymous printed form among the commendatory verses prefixed to the Shakespeare Folio of 1632, it is entitled "An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespeare." That it was written two years before its publication in so distinguished a place appears from the date "1630" appended to its shorter title in the original editions of Milton's Poems. It seems to me not improbable that Milton originally wrote the lines in a copy of the First Folio Shakespeare in his possession, and furnished them thence to the publisher of the Second Folio. They were the first thing of Milton's given to the public in print; and, but for his reclaiming them thirteen years later, they might have been read now in the Second Folio Shakespeare without any knowledge of their being his. ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER. (Editions of 1645 and 1673.) The two pieces on this subject are chiefly curious as specimens of Milton's muse in that facetious style in which, according to his own statement, he was hardly at home. They celebrate an incident which must have been of considerable interest to all Cambridge men of Milton's time-the death of old Thomas Hobson, the Cambridge University carrier. Born in 1544, or twenty years before Shakespeare, Hobson had for more than sixty years been one of the most noted characters in Cambridge. Every week during this long period he had gone and come between Cambridge and the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate Street, London, driving his own wain and horses, and carrying letters and parcels, and sometimes stray passengers. All the Heads and Fellows of Colleges, all the students, and all the townspeople, knew him. By his business as a carrier, and also by letting out horses, he had become one of the wealthiest citizens in Cambridge-owner of houses in the town. and of other property. He had also such a reputation for shrewdness and humour that, rightly or wrongly, all sorts of good sayings were fathered upon him. Thus, the well-known 66 66 66 saying "Hobson's choice; this or nothing," is referred, on Steele's authority in the Spectator (No. 509), to Hobson, the Cambridge carrier. 'Being a man of great ability and inven"tion," says Steele, "and one that saw where there might good profit arise, though the duller men overlooked it, this ingenious 'man was the first in this island who let out hackney-horses. "He lived in Cambridge; and, observing that the scholars rid 'hard, his manner was to keep a large stable of horses, with "boots, bridles, and whips, to furnish the gentlemen at once, "without going from college to college to borrow, as they have done since the death of this worthy man. I say, Mr. Hobson "kept a stable of forty good cattle, always ready and fit for travelling; but, when a man came for a horse, he was led "into the stable, where there was great choice; but he obliged "him to take the horse which stood next the stable-door; so "that every customer was alike well served according to his "chance, and every horse ridden with the same justice-from "whence it became a proverb, when what ought to be your "election was forced upon you, to say 'Hobson's Choice'!" 66 Sometimes a horse which Hobson thus let out was let for the whole journey to London and back; and on such occasions, when Hobson, standing at the stable-door, saw a college-man go off at a rate which he thought too fast for the horse, he is said to have had one phrase in his mouth. "You will get to London time enough," he used to say, "if you don't ride too fast"—a saying which looks like another version of that which Bacon, in his Essay "On Despatch," quotes from a wise man of his acquaintance. "I knew a wise man," says Bacon, "that had it for a by-word, "when he saw men hasten to a conclusion, 'Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner!' With all his wit, wealth, and prudence, last for ever. Till his eighty-sixth year the persisted in driving his carrier's waggon But, in April or May 1630, a stop had been put to his journeys. The Plague, after an interval of five years, was again in England; it was rife in Cambridge this time, so that the colleges had been prematurely closed and all University exercises brought to an end; and one of the precautions taken was to interdict Hobson could not hale old man had himself. the continued passage of Hobson, with his letters and parcels, between Cambridge and London. Though many of his neighbours among the townspeople died of the Plague, the tough old carrier escaped that distemper. But the compulsory idleness of some months was too much for him. Some time in November or December 1630, just as the colleges had reassembled, and, the Plague having abated, he might have resumed his journeys, he sickened and took to his bed. On the 1st of January, 1630-31, he died, aged eighty-six. Before he died he had executed a will, in which he left a large family of sons, daughters and grandchildren (one of his daughters being the wife of a Warwickshire baronet), well provided for. Nor had he forgotten the town in which he had made his fortunes. Besides other legacies for public purposes to the town of Cambridge, he left money for the perpetual maintenance of the town-conduit; and to this day the visitor to Cambridge sees a handsome conduit, called after Hobson's name, in the centre of the town, and runnels of clear water flowing, by Hobson's munificence, along the sides of the footways in the main streets. In some respects, Hobson is still the genius loci of Cambridge. In London also Hobson was long remembered. At the Bull Inn, in Bishopsgate Street, where he used to put up, there was to be seen, in Steele's time, and long afterwards, a fresco figure of the old Cambridge carrier, with a money-bag under his arm. There are engravings of this figure. Little wonder that the death of such a worthy as old Hobson made a stir among the Cambridge dons and undergraduates, and that many copies of verses were written on the occasion. Several such copies of verses have been recovered; but none so remarkable as Milton's. Milton seems to have had a fondness for the old man, whose horses he must have often hired, and by whom he must often have sent and received parcels. The title of Milton's two pieces is exact to the circumstances of the case. "On the University Carrier, who sickened in the time of his vacancy, being forbid to go to London by reason of the Plague." The gist of the poems themselves, too-in which, through all their punning facetiousness, there is a vein of kindliness-is that Hobson died of ennui. Both pieces must have been written in or about January 1630-31. The second of them, according to Todd, appeared in a small book published in London in 1640 under the title of A Banquet of Jests, the first words being altered from "Here lieth one" to "Here Hobson lies," so as to make the piece intelligible without its companion. AN EPITAPH ON THE MARCHIONESS OF WINCHESTER. (Editions of 1645 and 1673.1) The date of the composition of this poem is determined by that of the event to which it refers-the death, in child-birth, of Jane, wife of John Paulet, fifth Marquis of Winchester. This lady, who was but twenty-three years of age when she died, and was much spoken of for her beauty and mental accomplishments, was a daughter of Thomas, Viscount Savage, of Rock-Savage, Cheshire, by his wife, Elizabeth, the eldest daughter and co-heir of Thomas Darcy, Earl of Rivers. Her husband, the Marquis of Winchester, who had succeeded to the title in 1628, was a Roman Catholic; he subsequently attained great distinction by his loyalty during the civil wars; and he did not die till 1674, forty-three years after he had been made a widower by the death of this, his accomplished (first) wife. That event occurred on the 15th of April, 1631, in circumstances thus communicated in a contemporary news-letter,2 dated the 21st of the same month :-"The Lady Marquis of Winchester, daughter "to the Lord Viscount Savage, had an imposthume upon her cheek "lanced; the humour fell down into her throat, and quickly "despatched her, being big with child: whose death is lamented, 1 I have seen a draft, apparently of earlier date, in a MS. volume of poems, transcribed for private use, by some lover of poetry in the first half of the sixteenth century. The volume is among the Ayscough MSS. in the British Museum, and is numbered 1446 in that collection; and this particular poem occurs at pp. 72-74, and has this superscription, "On the Marchionesse of Winchester, whoe died in childbedd, April 15, 1631," and this subscription, "Jo. Milton, of Chr. Coll. Cambr." 2 Letter, of date "London, April 21, 1631," from John Pory to Sir Thomas Puckering, Bart., of Priory, Warwickshire; quoted in the Court and Times of Charles I., vol. ii. p. 106. as. well in respect of other her virtues as that she was inclining "to become a Protestant." An unusual amount of public regret seems to have been caused by the lady's melancholy death. It was the subject of a long elegy by the poet-laureate, Ben Jonson, printed in his "Underwoods;" and there were verses on the occasion by Davenant and other poets.1 How Milton, then in his twenty-third year, and still at Cambridge, came to be so interested in the event as to make it the subject of a poem, is not known. Warton had been told that there was a Cambridge collection of verses on the occasion, among which Milton's elegiac ode first appeared; and some expressions in the ode might imply that fact; but no such volume has been found. Whether Milton alone at Cambridge wrote on the subject, or whether he wrote in conjunction with others, the poem which he did write will not suffer in comparison with even that of the veteran poet-laureate on the same occasion. Here is a portion of Ben Jonson's corresponding elegy: "What gentle ghost, besprent with April dew, Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew, And, beckoning, woos me from the fatal tree I do obey you, beauty! for in death You seem a fair one. O that you had breath To give your shade a name! Stay, stay! I feel Stiff, stark, my joints 'gainst one another knock ! Whose daughter? Ha! great Savage of the Rock! Alas! I am all marble! write the rest 1 Care must be taken not to confound this Marchioness with another Marchioness of Winchester, who would have been this one's mother-in-law had she lived, but who died as early as 1614. Verses on her death have been quoted as verses on the death of Milton's Marchioness. |