his father had settled himself on his retirement from business. This
retreat of the elder Milton may be supposed to have taken place in 1632,
for in that year he took his clerk into partnership, probably devolving
the larger part of the business upon him. But it may have been earlier,
for in 1626 Milton tells Diodati--

"Nos quoque lucus habet vicina consitus ulmo,
Atque suburbani nobilis umbra loci."

And in a college declamation, which cannot have been later than 1632, he
"calls to witness the groves and rivers, and the beloved village elms,
under which in the last past summer I remember having had supreme
delight with the Muses, when I too, among rural scenes and remote
forests, seemed as if I could have grown and vegetated through a hidden
eternity."




CHAPTER II.


Doctor Johnson deemed "the knowledge of nature half the task of a poet,"
but not until he had written all his poetry did he repair to the
Highlands. Milton allows natural science and the observation of the
picturesque no place among the elements of a poetical self-education,
and his practice differs entirely from that which would in our day be
adopted by an aspirant happy in equal leisure. Such an one would
probably have seen no inconsiderable portion of the globe ere he could
resolve to bury himself in a tiny hamlet for five years. The poems which