sbyterian tutor called Thomas Young, partly at St. Paul's
School, which he attended for some years as a day-scholar. From his
twelfth year onward he was an omnivorous reader, and before he left
school had written some boyish verses, void of merit. The next fourteen
years of his life, after leaving school, were spent at Cambridge, in
Buckinghamshire, and in foreign travel, so that he was thirty years old
before he lived continuously in London again.

We know pretty well how he spent his time at Cambridge and at Horton,
sedulously turning over the Greek and Latin classics, dreaming of
immortality. We know less about his early years in London, where there
were wider and better opportunities of gaining an insight into "all
seemly and generous arts and affairs." London was a great centre of
traffic, a motley crowd of adventurers and traders even in those days,
and the boy Milton must often have wandered down to the river below
London Bridge to see the ships come in. His poems are singularly full of
figures drawn from ships and shipping, some of them bookish in their
origin, others which may have been suggested by the sight of ships. Now
it is Satan, who, after his fateful journey through chaos, nears the
world,

And like a weather-beaten vessel holds
Gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn.

Now it is Dalila, whom the Chorus behold approaching.

Like a stately ship
Of Tarsus, bound for the isles
Of Javan or Gadire,
With all her bravery on, and tackle trim,
Sails filled, and streamers waving,
Courted by all the winds that hold them play.

Or, again, it is Samson reproaching himself,

Who, like a foolish pilot, have shipwracked
My vessel trusted to me from above,
Gloriously rigged.

The bulk of Satan is compared to the great sea-beast Leviathan, beheld
off the coast of Norway by

The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff.

In his approach to the happy garden the Adversary is likened to

them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabaean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the Blest, with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheered with the grateful smell old Ocean smiles;
So entertained those odorous sweets the Fiend.

And when he draws near to Eve in the rose-thicket,

sidelong he works his way,
As when a ship, by skilful steers