MILTON'S LIFE ON BREAD STREET
Directly under the shadow of St. Mary le Bow Church, and almost within
bowshot of old St. Paul's, in a little court off Bread Street, three doors
from Cheapside, John Milton, the son of John Milton, scrivener, was born,
December 9th in 1608. The house was marked by the sign of a spread eagle,
probably adopted from the armorial bearings of the family, which appear on
the original agreement for the publication of "Paradise Lost." John
Milton, scrivener, whose business was much like that of the modern
attorney, was the son of a well-to-do Catholic yeoman of Oxfordshire, and
is said to have studied for a time at Christ Church, Oxford. Certain it is
that he turned Protestant, was cast off by his father, and in Elizabeth's
reign settled in London; by 1600, when he married his wife Sarah, the
worldly goods with which he her endowed in the church of All Hallows,
Bread Street, included two houses on that street, besides others
elsewhere.
We know little of Milton's mother, except that she was a woman of a warm
heart and generous hand, and had weak eyes which compelled her to wear
spectacles before she was thirty, while her husband read without them at
the age of eighty-four. Three of their six little ones died in babyhood,
but the little John's elder sister, Anne, and younger brother,
Christopher, grew with him to middle life.
It was a musical household; an organ and other instruments were part of
the possessions most highly prized in the Bread Street home. The little
lad must have looked with pride at the gold chain and medal presented to
his father by a Polish prince for a composition in forty parts which the
former had written for him. Many chimes in country churches played the
psalm tunes that he had harmonised. To this day a madrigal and other songs
of his are known to music lovers. No wonder that the boy reared in this
home was ever a lover of sweet sounds, and learned to evoke them with his
own little fingers upon the organ keyboard.
The Bread Street of Milton's day, though swept over by the Great Fire, was
not obliterated, and still covers its old site. Just at the head of it, on
Cheapside, stood the "Standard in Cheap"--an ancient monument in hexagonal
shape, with sculptures on each side, and on the top the figure of a man
blowing a horn. Here Wat Tyler and Jack Cade had beheaded prisoners. A
little west was the Gothic Cross in Cheap, one of the nine crosses erected
in memory of Queen Eleanor, somewhat similar to the modern one at Charing
Cross.
Only a few steps from his father's house the little John found himself in
the thickest traffic and bustle of the city. Here were mercers' and
goldsmiths' shops, and much coming and going of carts, and occasionally
coaches, which, as the antiquarian Stow declared, "were running on wheels
with many whose parents had been glad to go on foot," for coaches were but
newly come into fashion. As the little lad stood at the street corner
looking east and west along Cheapside,--the ancient market-place,--his eye
fell on well-built houses three and four stories high; they were turned
gable end to the street, were built of timber, brick, and plaster, and had
projecting upper stories of woodwork. Stow describes a row built by Thomas
Wood, goldsmith, of "fair large houses, for the most part possessed of
mercers," and westward, beginning at Bread Street, "the most beautiful
frame of fair houses and shops that be within the walls of London or
elsewhere in England. It containeth in number ten fair dwelling-houses and
fourteen shops, all in one frame, uniformly builded, four stories high,
beautified toward the street with the goldsmiths' arms and the likeness of
woodmen, in memory of his name, riding on monstrous beasts; all of which
is cast in lead, richly painted over and gilt."
The modern visitor, as he turns from the jostling crowds of Cheapside into
Bread Street, which is scarcely wider than a good sidewalk, will find no
trace of aught that Milton saw. The present mercantile establishment, at
numbers 58-63, that covers the site of his house, covers as well the whole
Spread Eagle Court, in which it stood. It bears no inscription, but, if
one enters, the courteous proprietor may conduct him to the second story
where a bust of Milton is placed over the spot where he was born.
A little farther south, on the corner of Watling Street, is the site of
All Hallows Church, where Milton was baptised, and which is marked by a
gray stone bust of the poet and the inscription:
"MILTON
BORN IN BREAD STREET
1608
BAPTISED IN CHURCH OF ALL HALLOWS
WHICH STOOD HERE ANTE
1878."
The register of his baptism referred to him as "John, sonne of John
Mylton, Scrivener."
Here the Milton family sat every Sunday and listened to the sermons of
Reverend Richard Stocke, a zealous Puritan and most respected man, who is
said to have had the gift of influencing young people.
Further south, on the same side as All Hallows, were "six almshouses
builded for poor decayed brethren of the Salter's Company," and beyond
this the church of St. Mildred, the Virgin. Upon crossing Basing Lane,
Milton saw the most noted house upon the street, known as "Gerrard Hall."
This was an antique structure "built upon arched vaults and with arched
gates of stone brought from Caen in Normandy," as Stow relates. A giant is
said to have lived here, and the large fir pole in the high hall, which
reached to the roof, was said to have been his staff. Stow thought it
worth while to measure it, and declares it was fifteen inches in
circumference. Small boys in Bread Street may well have stood in awe of
such a cane.
Whether the famous "Mermaid" Tavern was in Bread or Friday Street or
between them seems doubtful, but Ben Jonson's lines plainly indicate Bread
Street:
"At Bread-street's Mermaid having dined and merry,
Proposed to go to Holborn in a wherry."
[Illustration: OLD ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL
The two upper views show the porch by Inigo Jones. The two lower views
show the "Lesser Cloisters." Milton's school stood at the rear of the
church.
_From an old engraving._]
As Milton was early destined for the Church, his unusually thoughtful
disposition and quick perception must have given promise of his
fulfillment of his father's hope. At the age of ten he was writing verses.
At this time, a Dutch painter, Jansen, reputed to be "equal to Van Dyck in
all except freedom of hand and grace," was employed to paint the
scrivener's little son, as well as James I. and his children and various
noblemen.
This portrait shows us a sweet-faced, sober little Puritan in
short-cropped auburn hair, wearing a broad lace frill about his neck, and
an elaborately braided jacket. This portrait is now in private hands, from
whence it is to be hoped that it will some day find its way to the
National Portrait Gallery, and be placed beside the striking and noble
likeness of the poet in middle life.
The lines which were written beneath the first engraving of it may have
been the poet's own:
"When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing; all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do
What might be public good; myself I thought
Born to that end, born to promote all truth
And righteous things."
Milton appears to have been very fond of his preceptor, a Scotch Puritan
named Young. He seems to have well grounded the lad in Latin, aroused in
him a love of poetry, and set him to making English and Latin verses. But
the little John must go to school with other boys; and what more natural
than that the famous St. Paul's School, within five minutes' walk, should
have been selected?
When Milton went to school in 1620, St. Paul's Cathedral was become old
and much in need of restoration. It had been built on the site of an older
church and was in process of erection and alteration from about 1090 to
1512, when its new wooden steeple, covered with lead, was completed. Its
cross was estimated later by Wren to have been at least 460 feet from the
ground. This had disappeared in a fire in 1561, and none replaced it. What
Milton saw was a huge edifice, chiefly Gothic, with a central tower about
260 feet high. The classical porch by Inigo Jones was not added, neither
were certain buildings which abutted the nave torn down until after
Milton's school-days were over. On the east end, next his schoolhouse, was
a great window thirty-seven feet high, above which was a circular rose
window. The choir stretched westward 224 feet, which, with the nave, made
the entire length 580 feet. When Jones's portico was added, its whole
length was 620 feet. The area which it covered was 82,000 feet, and it was
by far the largest cathedral in all England. Upon the southwest corner
was a tower once used as a prison, and also as a bell and clock tower.
This was the real Lollards' tower, rather than the one at Lambeth which is
so called. The northwest tower was likewise a prison. The nave was of
transitional Norman design, of twelve bays in length, and with triforium
and clerestory. For many decades a large part of the cathedral was
desecrated by a throng of hucksters, idlers, and fops.
Ben Jonson makes constant allusion to "Paul's." Here he studied the
extravagant costumes of the day. According to Dekker, the tailors
frequented its aisles to catch the newest fashions: "If you determine to
enter into a new suit, warn your tailor to attend you in Paul's, who with
his hat in his hand, shall like a spy discover the stuff, colour, and
fashion of any doublet or hose that dare be seen there; and stepping
behind a pillar to fill his table-book with those notes, will presently
send you into the world an accomplished man."
Bishop Earle, writing when Milton was twenty years of age, describes St.
Paul's as follows: "It is a heap of stones and men with a vast confusion
of languages; and were the steeple not sanctified, nothing liker Babel.
The noise in it is like that of bees mixed of walking tongues and feet. It
is the exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here
stirring and afoot. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may
cheapen here at all rates and sizes. All inventions are emptied here, and
not few pockets. The best sign of a temple in it is that it is the
thieves' sanctuary."
Well may John Milton senior have cautioned his young son not to tarry in
"Duke Humphrey's Walk," as this scene of confusion was called, on his way
home from school, though he may well have taken him to inspect the lofty
tomb of Dean Colet or the monuments to John of Gaunt and Duke Humphrey and
the shrine of St. Erkenwald, which was behind the high altar. As a man, in
later years, Milton may have walked down from Aldersgate on a December in
1641 and attended the funeral of the great painter, Sir Anthony Van Dyck,
who for nine years had made his residence in England, and was buried here.
In a corner of the churchyard stood a covered pulpit surmounted by a
cross, where in ancient times the folkmote of the citizens was held. For
centuries before Milton, this was a famous spot for outdoor sermons and
proclamations. Here the captured flags from the Armada had waved above the
preacher. But in 1629, when Milton was in Cambridge, Oliver Cromwell, in
his maiden speech in Parliament, declared that flat popery was being
preached at Paul's Cross. When Cromwell's day of power was come, and the
cathedral during the war was sometimes used to stable horses, Paul's Cross
was swept away, and its leaden roof melted into bullets. Before that, in
1633, preaching had been removed from there into the choir.
Of the architecture of the bishop's palace, which stood at the northeast
of the cathedral, we know nothing, but we know that it existed in Milton's
school-days. Adjoining the palace was a "Haw," or small enclosure
surrounded by a cloister, filled with tombs, and upon the walls was a
grisly picture of the Dance of Death. Death was represented by a skeleton,
who led the Pope, and emperor, and a procession of men of all conditions.
In brief, the little "Haw" was a small edition of the Pisan Campo Santo.
At the east end of the churchyard stood the Bell Tower, surmounted by a
spire covered with lead and bearing a statue of St. Paul. The cloister of
the Chapter House or Convocation House hid the west wall of the south
transept and part of the nave. It was, unlike most structures of that
character, two stories in height, and formed a square of some ninety feet,
which was called the "Lesser Cloisters," doubtless to distinguish it from
the other cloisters in the "Haw." During his most impressionable years,
the city boy John Milton could not have stirred from home without being
confronted by majestic symbols of the Christian faith, and mighty
structures already venerable with age, and rich in treasures of a great
historic past. Religion and beauty played as large a part in the
influences that moulded the life of his young contemporaries as science
and athletics do in the life of every American boy to-day. Whatever faults
the methods of education in Milton's age may be accused of, it can not be
denied that they developed industry, reverence, and moral courage--three
qualities which with all our child study and pedagogical improvements are
perhaps less common to-day than they were then.
About the year 1620, when William Bradford was writing his famous journal,
and John Carver and Edward Winslow were sailing with him in the
_Mayflower_, when Doctor Harvey had told London folk that man's blood
circulates, and many new things were being noised abroad, twelve-year-old
John Milton first went to school. His school had been founded in 1512 by
Dean Colet, whose great tomb, just mentioned, was but a stone's throw
distant. It was a famous school. Ben Jonson and the famous Camden had
studied there, and learned Latin and Greek, the catechism, and good
manners. There were 153 boys in all; the number prescribed had reference,
curiously, to the number of fishes in Simon Peter's miraculous draught.
Over the windows were inscribed the words in large capital letters:
"_Schola Catechizationis Puerorum In Christi Opt. Max. Fide Et Bonis
Literis_." On entering, the pupils were confronted by the motto painted on
each window: "_Aut Doce, Aut Disce, Aut Discede_"--either teach or learn
or leave the place. There were two rooms, one called the _vestibulum_, for
the little boys, where also instruction was given in Christian manners. In
the main schoolroom the master sat at the further end upon his imposing
chair of office called a _cathedra_, and under a bust of Colet said to
have been a work of "exquisite art." Stow tells us that somewhat before
Milton's time the master's wages were a mark a week and a livery gown of
four nobles delivered in cloth; his lodgings were free. The sub-master
received weekly six shillings, eight pence, and was given his gown.
Children of every nationality were eligible; on admission they passed an
examination in reading, writing, and the catechism, and paid four pence,
which went to the poor scholar who swept the school. The eight classes
included boys from eight to eighteen years of age, though the curriculum
of the school extended over only six years. Milton's master was Doctor
Alexander Gill, who from 1608-1635 held the mastership of St. Paul's
School. A progressive man was this same reverend gentleman--a great
believer in his native English and in spelling reform. Speaking of Latin,
this remarkable Latin master said: "We may have the same treasure in our
own tongue. I love Rome, but London better. I favour Italy, but England
more. I honour the Latin, but worship the English." He was also an
advocate of the retention of good old Saxon words as against the invasion
of Latinised ones. "But whither," he writes, "have you banished those
words which our forefathers used for these new-fangled ones? Are our words
to be exiled like our citizens? O ye Englishmen, retain what yet remains
of our native speech!" Under Mr. Gill's instruction, and that of his son,
who was usher, Milton spent about four years of strenuous study. So great
was his ambition for learning during the years when most boys find school
hours alone irksome enough that he says: "My father destined me when a
little boy for the study of humane letters, which I seized with such
eagerness that from the twelfth year of my age I scarcely ever went from
my lessons to bed before midnight; which indeed was the first cause of
injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there were also added
frequent headaches." Philips writes:
"He generally sat up half the night as well in voluntary improvements of
his own choice as the exact perfecting of his school exercises; so that at
the age of fifteen he was full ripe for academical training." During these
years the boy probably learned French and Italian, as well as made a
beginning in Hebrew.
It was in his last year at school that he paraphrased the ninety-fourth
Psalm, beginning:
"When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son
After long toil their liberty had won,
And passed from Pharian fields to Canaan's land
Led by the strength of the Almighty's hand,
Jehovah's wonders were in Israel shown,
His praise and glory were in Israel known."
Likewise Psalm one hundred and thirty-six, beginning:
"Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord, for he is kind:
For his mercies aye endure,
Ever faithful, ever sure."
The present St. Paul's School is now splendidly housed in a great
establishment in Hammersmith. But Milton's school and the one which arose
on its ashes after the Great Fire are remembered by the following
inscription: "On this site, A. D. 1512 to A. D. 1884, stood St. Paul's
School, founded by Dr. John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's." From the studio
of Mr. Hamo Thornycroft at Kensington, whence came the heroic figures of
Cromwell at Westminster and King Alfred at Winchester, St. Paul's School
is to receive a noble statue of the great scholar.