a man whom it is reasonable to suppose of great merit, since he was
thought by Milton worthy of a poem, entitled "Epitaphium Damonis,"
written with the common but childish imitation of pastoral life.

He now hired a lodging at the house of one Russel a tailor in St.
Bride's Churchyard, and undertook the education of John and Edward
Philips, his sister's sons. Finding his rooms too little, he took a
house and garden in Aldersgate Street, which was not then so much
out of the world as it is now; and chose his dwelling at the upper
end of a passage, that he might avoid the noise of the street. Here
he received more boys, to be boarded and instructed.

Let not our veneration for Milton forbid us to look with some degree
of merriment on great promises and small performance, on the man who
hastens home, because his countrymen are contending for their
liberty, and, when he reaches the scene of action, vapours away his
patriotism in a private boarding-school. This is the period of his
life from which all his biographers seem inclined to shrink. They
are unwilling that Milton should be degraded to a schoolmaster; but
since it cannot be denied that he taught boys, one finds out that he
taught for nothing, and another that his motive was only zeal for
the propagation of learning and virtue; and all tell what they do
not know to be true, only to excuse an act which no wise man will
consider as in itself disgraceful. His father was alive; his
allowance was not ample; and he supplied its deficiencies by an
honest and useful employment

It is told, that in the art of education he performed wonders; and a
formidable list is given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were
read in Aldersgate Street by youth between ten and fifteen or