have been admitted by 1620 at the latest.

At the time of Milton's entry, St. Paul's stood high among the schools
of the metropolis, competing with Merchant Taylors', Westminster, and
the now extinct St. Anthony's. The headmaster, Dr. Gill, was an
admirable scholar, though, as Aubrey records, "he had his whipping
fits." His fitful severity was probably more tolerable than the
systematic cruelty of his predecessor Mulcaster (Spenser's schoolmaster
when he presided over Merchant Taylors'), of whom Fuller approvingly
records: "Atropos might be persuaded to pity as soon as he to pardon
where he found just fault. The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed
with him as much as the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing
than mitigating his severity on their offending children." Milton's
father, though by no means "cockering," would not have tolerated such
discipline, and the passionate ardour with which Milton threw himself
into the studious life of the school is the best proof that he was
exempt from tyranny. "From the twelfth year of my age," he says, "I
scarcely ever went from my lessons to bed before midnight." The ordinary
school tasks cannot have exacted so much time from so gifted a boy: he
must have read largely outside the regular curriculum, and probably he
practised himself diligently in Latin verse. For this he would have the
prompting, and perhaps the aid, of the younger Gill, assistant to his
father, who, while at the University, had especially distinguished
himself by his skill in versification. Gill must also have been a man of
letters, affable and communicative, for Milton in after-years reminds
him of their "almost constant conversations," and declares that he had
never left his company without a manifest accession of literary
knowledge. The Latin school exercises have perished, but two English
productions of the period, paraphrases of Psalms executed at fifteen,
remain to attest the boy's proficiency in contemporary English