only authentic account of his domestic manners.
John, the poet, was born in his father's house, at the Spread-Eagle in Bread-street Dec. 9, 1608, between six and seven in the morning. His father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he was instructed at first by private tuition under the care of Thomas Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburgh, and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar considered him as worthy of an epistolary Elegy.
He was then sent to St. Paul's School, under the care of Mr. Gill, and removed, in the beginning of his sixteenth year, to Christ's College in Cambridge, where he entered a sizar[1], Feb. 12, 1624.
He was at this time eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he himself, by an-
- ↑ In this assertion Dr. Johnson was mistaken. Milton was admitted a pensioner, and not a sizar, as will appear by the following extract from the College Register: "Johannes Milton Londinensis, filius Johannis, institutus fuit in literarum Elementis sub Mag'ro Gill Gymnasii Paulini præfecto, admissus est Pensionarius Minor Feb. 12°, 1624, sub M'ro Chappell, solvitq pro Ingr. £.0 10s, 0d," R .
