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JEREMY TAYLOR AT CAMBRIDGE.

Jeremy Taylor, the most eloquent and imaginative of English divines, and the Shakspeare and Spenser of our theological literature, was born in 1613, and descended from gentle and even heroic blood. His family had, however, "fallen into the portion of weeds and outworn faces," and Jeremy's father was a barber in Cambridge. He, nevertheless, put his son to college, as a sizar, in his thirteenth year, having himself previously taught him the rudiments of grammar and mathematics, and given him the advantages of the Free Grammar School. In 1631, Jeremy Taylor took his degree of B.A. in Caius College, and entering into sacred orders, removed to London, where his eloquent lectures in St. Paul's Cathedral, aided by "his florid and youthful beauty and pleasant air," procured him the patronage of Archbishop Laud. Such was the commencement of the rise of Jeremy Taylor, whose fortunes suffered "in the great storm which dashed the vessel of the church all in pieces," and from his being in advance of the age in which he lived, and of the ecclesiastical system in which he had been reared.

COWLEY AT WESTMINSTER.

Abraham Cowley, whom Milton declared to be one of the three greatest English poets, was born in Fleet-street, in 1618. He was sent early to Westminster School: he tells us that he had such a defect in his memory, as never to "bring it to retain the ordinary rules of grammar." Bishop Spratt says:

"However, he supply'd that want by conversing with the books themselves from whence those rules had been drawn. That no doubt was a better way, though much more difficult, and he afterward found this benefit by it, that having got the Greek and Roman languages as he had done his own, not by precept but use, he practiced them, not as a scholar but a native.

"The first beginning of his studies was a familiarity with the most solid and unaffected Authors of Antiquity, which he fully digested, not only in his memory, but his judgment. By this advantage he learn'd nothing while a boy, that he needed to forget or forsake when he came to be a Man. His Mind was rightly season'd at first, and he had nothing to do, but still to proceed on the same Foundation on which he began."

At Westminster, Cowley "soon obtain'd and increas'd the noble genius peculiar to that place." He wrote his Piramus and Thisbe when only ten years old, and his Constantia and Philetus when only twelve. They were published, with other pieces, as Poetical Blossomes, when he was only fifteen. At Westminster, too, he wrote his comedy of Love's Riddles; and his elegy upon the tragical fate of the two sons of Sir Thomas Lyttleton, drowned at Oxford, the elder in attempting to save the younger, in 1635. He had great respect for his master, Dr. Busby, to whom, in

* Cowley's father was a law-writer, or engrosser, and not a grocer, as stated generally.

1662, he presented a copy of his two Books of Plants, with a letter couched in the most affectionate and respectful terms. Dr. Johnson has pithily characterized Cowley as "a man whose learning and poetry were his lowest merits." Cowley, in his Essay "Of Myself," says:

"When I was a very young boy at school, instead of running about on holidays, and playing with my fellows, I was wont to steal from them, and walk into the fields, either alone with a book, or with some one companion, if I could find any of the same temper. I was then, too, so much an enemy to constraint, that my masters could never prevail on me, by any persuasions or encouragements, to learn without book the common rules of grammar, in which they dispensed with me alone, because they found I made a shift to do the usual exercise out of my own reading and observation. That I was then of the same mind as I am now (which, I confess, 1 wonder at myself), may appear at the latter end of an ode which I made when I was but thirteen years old, and which was then printed with many other verses. The beginning of it is boyish, but of part," adds Cowley, "if very little were corrected, I should hardly now be much ashamed. You may see by it I was even then acquainted with the poets (for the conclusion is taken out of Horace); and perhaps it was the immature and immoderate love of them which stamped first, or rather engraved, the characters in me." "I believe I can tell the particular little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse, as have never since left ringing there; for I remember when I began to read, and take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlor (I know not by what accident, for she never in her life read any book but of devotion); but there was wont to be Spenser's works; this I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, and giants, and monsters, and brave houses, which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had little to do with all this); and by degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme, and dance of the numbers; so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years old. With these affections of mind, and my heart wholly set upon letters, I went to the university; but was soon torn from thence by that public violent storin, which would suffer nothing to stand where it did, but rooted up every plant, even from the princely cedar, to me, the hyssop."

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At college he was known by the elegance of his exercises, and composed the greater part of his epic, Davideis. Before he was 20 years old, he laid the design of this his most masculine work, that he finished long after.

JOHN EVELYN AT ETON AND OXFORD.

John Evelyn, the perfect model of an English gentleman of the seventeenth century, and known as "Sylva Evelyn,” from his work with that title, on Forest Trees, was born in 1620, at Wotton House, in the most picturesque district of Surrey. He states in his Diary, that he " was not initiated into any rudiments till he was four years old, and then one Frier taught him at the church porch." When he was eight years old, at which time he resided with his maternal grandmother, he began to learn Latin at Lewes, and was afterward sent to the Free School at Southover, adjoining Lewes. His father, who would willingly have weaned him from the fondness of his grandmother, intended to place him at Eton, but the boy had been so terrified by the report of the severe discipline there, that he was sent back to Lewes. Poor Tusser's* account of Eton, which Evelyn

*Thomas Tusser, born about 1523, of ancient family, was the author of the first didactic poem in the language. He had a good education, and commenced life at Court, under the

undoubtedly had in his mind, was quite sufficient to justify

him:

From Pauls I went, to Eton sent,

To learn straightways the Latin phrase,
Where fifty-three stripes given to me
At once I had;

For fault but small, or none at all,
It came to pass, thus beat I was;
See Udall see, the mercy of thee
To me, poor lad!

No such inhumanity, we may be assured, would be perpetrated at Eton while Sir Henry Wotton was provost; and Evelyn, who says that he afterward a thousand times regretted his perverseness, lost much in not being placed under this admirable man. In 1636, he was admitted into the Middle Temple, though then absent and at school, whence, however, he finally removed in the following year, to Balliol College, Oxford. At school he had been very remiss in his studies till the last year, "so that I went to the university," he says, "rather out of shame of abiding longer at school, than from any fitness, as by sad experience I found, which put me to relearn all I had neglected, or but perfunctorily gained." While at Oxford, Evelyn was "admitted into the dancing and vaulting school," and began also to "look on the rudiments of music," in which, he says, "he afterward arrived to some formal knowledge, though to small perfection of hand, because he was so frequently diverted by inclinations to newer trifles." Having quitted the university, he went to London in 1640, to reside in the Middle Temple, his father having intended that he should adopt the profession of the law, which he denominates an "unpolished study;" but this idea he relinquished, on the death of his father. Storing his mind by travel and study, he entered on a long career of active, useful, and honorable employment. He was the great improver of English gardening; his love of planting, and the want of timber for the Navy, led him to write his "Sylva, a Discourse of Forest Trees,"* the first book printed by order of the Royal Society, of which Evelyn was one of the earliest Fellows; it led to the planting of many millions of forest-trees, and is one of the very few books in the world which completely effected what it was designed to do. Another valuable work by Evelyn, is his Diary, or Kalendarium, a most interesting record of the eventful times in which the writer lived.

patronage of Lord Paget. Afterward he practiced farming successively at Ratwood, in Sussex; Ipswich; Fairsted, in Essex; Norwich, and other places. He died in 1580 He is principally known by his poem entitled Hundred Good Points of Husbandrie, first published In 1557, and consisting of practical directions for farming, expressed in simple verse. *The best illustration is to be seen to this day in the magnificent woods at Wotton Place.

A short time before the publication of the Memoirs of John Evelyn, in 1817, Mr. Upcott, of the London Institution, was at Wotton, in Surrey, the residence of the Evelyn family; and, sitting after supper with Lady Evelyn and Mrs Molyneux, his attention was attracted to a tippet made of feathers, on which the latter was employed. "Ah, Mrs. Molyneux, we have all of us our hobbies," said Mr. Upcott. "Very true, Mr Upcott," rejoined Lady Evelyn, "and may I take the liberty of asking what yours is?" Why mine, madam from a very early age, has been the collecting of the handwriting of men of eminence." "What! I suppose, "Mrs Molyneux said, "you would care for things like these; unfolding one of her thread-cases, which was formed of a letter written by Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough "Indeed I should, very much." "Oh, if that be your taste," said Lady Evelyn, we can easily satisfy you This house is full of such matters; there is a whole clothes-basket full of letters and other papers f old Mr. Evelyn, in the garret, which I was so tired of seeing, that I ordered the housemaid the other day to light the fires with them; but probably she may not yet have done it." The bell was rung, the basket appeared untouched, and the result was the publication of the Memoirs and Diary vf John Evelyn.

MARVELL'S SCHOLARSHIP.

Andrew Marvell, prose-writer, poet, and patriot, was born in 1620, at Kingston-upon-Hull, where his father was master of the Grammar School. At the age of 15, he was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge. Milton, writing to Bradshawe, in 1652, thus speaks of Marvell's attainments: "He (Marvell) hath spent four years abroad in Holland, France, Italy, and Spain, to very good purpose as I believe, and the gaining of those four languages; besides, he is a scholar, and well read in the Latin and Greek authors, and no doubt of an approved conversation, for he comes now lately out of the house of the Lord Fairfax, who was general, where he was intrusted to give some instructions in the languages to the lady his daughter."

JOHN AUBREY, IN WILTSHIRE.

Aubrey, born in the parish of Kingston-St.-Michael, in 1625, in his Diary, tells us that in 1633 he "entered into his grammar at the Latin School at Yatton Keynel (Wilts), in the church, where the curate, Mr. Hare, taught the eldest boys Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, etc." Next year Aubrey was removed to the adjoining parish of Leigh-de-la-Mere, under Mr. Robert Latimer, the Rector, who, "at 70, wore a dudgeon, with a knife and bodkin.”* He had been the schoolmaster of Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher of Malmesbury. At these schools it was the fashion for the boys to cover their books with parchment-" old manuscript,” says Aubrey, “which I was too young to understand; but I was pleased with the elegancy of the writing, and the colored initiall letters." These manuscripts are believed to have been brought

* Bodkin was, at this period, a name for a small dagger. In this sense, it occurs in Shakspeare:

"When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin."—Hamlet.

Dudgeon was likewise the name for a dagger:

"It was a serviceable dudgeon

Either for fighting or for drudging."—Hudibras.

from the Abbey of Malmesbury; and the Rector, "when he brewed a barrell of special ale, his use was to stop the bunghole (under the clay) with a sheet of manuscript. He sayd nothing did it so well, which methought did grieve me then to see.” In 1638, Aubrey was "transplanted to Blandford School, in Dorset," "in Mr. Wm. Gardner's time the most eminent school for the education of gentlemen in the West of England." Aubrey has left the following account of his school-days in the manuscript of his Lives of Eminent Men, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford:

"When a boy bred at Eston (in eremiticall solitude), was very curious, his greatest delight to be with the Artificers that came there, e. g. joyners, carpenters, cowpers, masons, and understood their trades: Noris vacuis, I drew and painted. In 1634, I was entred in Latin gramer by Mr. R. Latimer, a delicate and little person, rector of Leigh-de-la-Mere, a mile fine walk,-who had an easie way of teaching; and every time we asked leave to go forth, we had a Latin word from him, wch at our returne we were to tell him again: which in a little while amounted to a good number of words. 'Twas my unhappinesse in half a year to lose this good enformer by his death, and afterwards was under severall dull ignorant teachers till 12, 1638, about which time I was sent to Blandford schoole in Dorset, Mr. Sutton, B.D., who was ill natured. Here I recovered my health and got my Latin and Greeke. Our usher had (by chance) a Cowper's Dictionary, which I had never seen before. I was then in Terence. Perceiving this method, I read all in the booke where Ter. was, and then Cicero, which was the meanes by which I got my Latin. "Twas a wonderfull helpe to my phansie in reading of Ovid's Metamorph. in English by Sandys, which made me understand Latin the better. Also I mett accidentally a book of my mother's-Bacon's Essayes-which first opened my understanding on the moralls (for Tullies Offices were too crabbed for my young yeares), and the excellent clearnesse of the style, and hints and transitions." He also notes: "at eight I was a kind of Engineer, and then fell to Drawing. Copied pictures in the parlor in a table book. Not very much care for gram."

THE HON. ROBERT BOYLE, A TRUE PATRON AND CULTIVATOR OF SCIENCE.

The early life of the Hon. Robert Boyle presents a remarkable instance of the right employment of wealth and station to obtain an excellent education. He was born in 1627, and was the youngest son of the great Earl of Cork. He tells us that his father, having "a perfect aversion for their fondness who use to breed their children so nice and tenderly that a hot sun or a good shower of rain as much endangers them as if they were made of butter or of sugar," committed him to a nurse away from home, under whose care he formed a vigorous constitution. He adds, that at an early age he acquired a habit of stuttering, from mocking other children. He was taught very young to speak both Latin and French; and his studiousness and love of truth endeared him to his father. At eight years old he was sent to Eton, with his elder brother. Here he became immoderately fond of study from "the accidental perusal of Quintus Curtius, which first made him in love with other than pedantic books;" and the most effectual mode of preventing the ill effects of reading romance, he found to be the extraction of the square and cube roots, and the more laborious operations of

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