. . . I thought it
better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of
speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing." Thus
was he, he says, "church-outed by the Prelates."* Milton could
not, with a free conscience, become a clergyman, so having taken
his degree he went home to his father, who now lived in the
country at Horton. He left Cambridge without regrets. No thrill
of pleasure seemed to have warmed his heart in after days when he
looked back upon the young years spent beside the Cam.
*The Reason of Church Government, book II.
Milton went home to his father's house without any settled plan
of life. He had not made up his mind what he was to be, he was
only sure that he could not be a clergyman. His father was well
off, but not wealthy. He had no great estates to manage, and he
must have wished his eldest son to do and be something in the
world, yet he did not urge it upon him. Milton himself, however,
was not quite at rest, as his sonnet On his being arrived to the
age of twenty-three shows:--
"How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year:
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late Spring no bud or blossom show'th.
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