John Milton's L'allegro Author:John Milton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LYCIDAS [The external facts relating to the evolution of "Lyoidas" are ample on the whole, and easy to set forth. Among Milton's friends at Christ's College h... more »ad been two sous of Sir John King, long Secretary for Ireland. They were admitted during his third year, Roger, the elder, being sixteen and his brother Edward two years younger. Nothing seems to be heard of them until four years later, when, to the surprise of everyone, Edward King was chosen a fellow of the college, in obedience to a royal mandate, which had doubtless been obtained through considerable political influence. Such royal interference was not usual or palatable, and it must have been especially galling to Milton, who, as a Bachelor of two years' standing and " an acknowledged ornament of his college," to quote Professor Masson, had good reason to expect that the honor would have fallen to him. He seems, however, to have taken his disappointment gracefully and to have shared the general liking for his brilliant and amiable college- mate, who, thanks to the pen of a disappointed rival, now lives in our memories even more freshly than his two greater fellow-students, John Cleveland, the royalist poet, and Henry More, the Platonist. After Milton left Cambridge, King continued his academic career in an orthodox and successful way, proceeding M.A. in 1633, and filling the offices of tutor and prelector while preparing himself for active work in the Church. During the vacation of 1637, however, he sailed from Chester for Ireland, where he had been born and where he had relations and friends of high social standing. On the 10th of August his ship struck on a rock off the Welsh coast and went down. Accounts vary as to the cause of the accident, and it is not known how many, if any, were saved. The memorial volume shor...« less