14 396 THE LIFE or MILTON. The Sunday's exercife for his pupils was for the molt part to read a chapter of the Greek Teflarnent, and to hear his learned expofitiont ofit. The next work after this was to write from his diaation fome part of a fyftem of divinity, which he had collefted from the ableft divines, who had written upon that fubjea. Such were his academic inflitutions ; and thus by teaching others, he in fome manner inlarg. ed his own knowledge ; and having the reading of fo many authors as it were by proxy, he might pollibly have preferved his fight, if he had not moreover been perpetually bufied in reading or writing fome- thing himfelf. It was certainly a very reclufe and iludioul life, that both he and his pupils led ; but the young men of that age were of a different turn from thofe of the prefent ; and he himfelf gave an example to thofe under him of hard fludy and fpare diet ; only now and then, once in three weeks or a month, he made a gaudy day with fome young gentlemen of his acquaintance, the chief of whom, fays Mr. Philips, were Mr. Alphry and Mr. Miller, both of Gray's-Inn, and two of the greateft beaus of thofe times. But he was not fo fond of this academical life, as to be an indif- ferent fpeaator of what was acted upon the public nage of the world. The nation was now in a great ferment in 1641, and the clamor ran high again the bifhops, when he joined loudly in the cry, to help the puritan minifters, (as he lays himfelf in his fecond Defenfej they being inferior to the bifhops in learning and eloquence ; and publifhed his two books, Of Reformation in England, written to a friend. About the fame time certain minifters having publifhed a treatife againft epifcopacy, in anfwer to the Humble Remorftrance of Dr. Jofeph Hall of Norwich, under the title of Smeaymnuus, a word confining of the initial letters of their names, Stephen Marfhal, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew iinlewcomen, and Wil- liam Sparflow ; and Archbifhop Uther having publiihed at Oxford a refutation of Smeaymnaus, in a traa concerning the original of Bifhops and Metropolitans ; Milton wrote his little piece Of Prela- tical Epifcopacy, in oppofition chiefly to Ufher, for he was for con- tending with the most powerful adverfary ; there would be either leis
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