East Anglia Part 8

As one of the leaders of the Presbyterian party, Dr. Thomas Young became Vicar of Stowmarket in due time. He was one of the Smectymnian divines.

As it is not every schoolboy who knows what the term means, let me explain who they were. Two or three hundred years ago people were much more controversial than they are now, and very fierce was the battle on the subject of the relative claims, from a Scriptural point of view, of Prelacy or Presbytery. One of the most distinguished champions of the former was Dr. Hall, Bishop of Norwich-a simple, G.o.dly, learned man, who deserves to be held in remembrance, if only for the way in which he got married. 'Being now settled,' he writes, 'in that sweet and civil county of Suffolk, the uncouth solitariness of my life, and the extreme incommodity of that single housekeeping, drew my thoughts, after two years, to condescend to the necessity of a married state, which G.o.d no less strangely provided for me; for walking from the church on Monday, in the Whitsun week, with a grave and reverend minister, I saw a comely and modest gentlewoman standing at the door of that house where we were invited to a wedding-dinner, and inquiring of that worthy friend whether he knew her, "Yes," quoth he, "I know her well, and have bespoken her for your wife." When I further demanded an account of that answer, he told me she was the daughter of a gentleman whom he much respected-Mr. George Whinniff, of Brettenham; that out of an opinion he had of the fitness of that match for me he had already treated with her father about it, whom he found very apt to entertain it. Advising me not to neglect the opportunity, and not concealing the just praises of the modesty, piety, good disposition, and other virtues that were lodged in that seemly presence, I listened to the motion as sent from G.o.d, and at last, upon due prosecution, happily prevailed, enjoying the comfortable society of that meet-help for the s.p.a.ce of forty-nine years.' A young clergyman so good and amiable ought to have fared better as regards the days in which his lot was pa.s.sed. Hall should have lived in some theological Arcadia.

As it was, he had to fight much and suffer much. In those distracted times he was all for peace. When the storm was brewing in Church and State, which for a time swept away Bishop and King, he published-but, alas! in vain-his 'Via Media.' 'I see,' he wrote, 'every man to rank himself unto a side, and to draw in the quarrel he affecteth. I see no man either holding or joining their hands for peace.' Bishop Hall was the most celebrated writer of his time in defence of the Church of England. Archbishop Laud got him to write on 'The Divine Right of Episcopacy,' nor could he have well placed the subject in abler hands.

This was followed, after Laud had fallen, with 'An Humble Remonstrance to the High Court of Parliament,' in which treatise he vindicated the antiquity of liturgies and Episcopacy with admirable skill, meekness, and simplicity, yet with such strength of argument that five Presbyterian divines clubbed their wits together to frame an answer. These Presbyterian ministers were-Stephen Marshal, then lecturer at St.

Margaret's, whom Baillie terms the best of the preachers in England; Edmund Calamy, who had long been a celebrated East Anglian preacher, first at Swaffham, then at Bury St. Edmunds, who, as we all know, refused a bishopric when offered him, and whom, therefore, at any rate, his adversaries must allow to have been sincere; Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow. To this reply was given the name of Smectymnuus-a startling word, as Calamy calls it, made up of the initial letters of these names. This work, which was published in 1641, gave, says Dr. M'Crie, the first serious blow to Prelacy. It was composed in a style superior to that of the Puritans in general, and was, by the confession of the learned Bishop Wilkins, a capital work against Episcopacy. Dr. Kippis says, 'This piece is certainly written with great fierceness and asperity of language,' and quotes, as evidence, some strong things said against the practice of the prelates. But Neal, who has given a long account of the work, states that, if the rest of the clergy had been of the same temper and spirit with Bishop Hall, the controversy between him and the Smectymnian divines might have been compromised.

Stowmarket, as I have said, had the honour of being placed under the pastoral care of one of these Smectymnian divines. He came there in March, 1628, on the presentation of Mr. John Howe, a gentleman then residing in the town, and a man of wealth, whose ancestors had been great cloth-manufacturers in that place and neighbourhood. Since the time of Edward III. the cloth manufacture had been very active in Suffolk, and it is little to the credit of its merchants that we find them, in 1522, pet.i.tioning for the repeal of a royal law which inflicted a penalty against those who sold cloth which, when wetted, shrunk up, on the plea that, as such goods were made for a foreign market, the home-consumer was not injured. Stowmarket, when I was a lad, had reached its climax in a pecuniary sense. In the early part of the present century it was spoken of as a rising town. Situated as it was in the centre of the county, it was a convenient mart for barley, and great quant.i.ties of malt were made.

Its other manufactures were sacking, ropes, and twine. Its tanneries were of a more recent date, as also its manufactory of gun-cotton, connected with which at one time there was an explosion of a most fatal and disastrous character. In 1763 it was connected with Ipswich by means of a ca.n.a.l, which was a great source of prosperity to the town. Up to the time of the great Reform Bill, it was the great place for county meetings, and for the nomination of the county representatives. In our day it has a population of 4,052. When I was a lad it was one of the first towns to welcome the Plymouth Brethren into Suffolk, and they are there still. The Independent Chapel for awhile suffered much from them.

The pastor was a very worthy but somewhat dry preacher. His favourite quotation in the pulpit, when he would describe the attacks of the enemy of G.o.d and man, was

'He worries whom he can't devour With a malicious joy.'

Suffolk had its great lawyers as well as Norfolk. The first to head the list is Ranulph de Glanville, a man of great parts, deep learning, for the times, eminent alike for his legal abilities and energetic mind. He was said, by one account, to have been born at Stowmarket. It is certain he founded Leiston Abbey, near Aldborough, and Bentley Priory. As Chief Justice under Henry II. he naturally was no favourite with Richard I., who deprived him of his office and made use of his wealth. He lived, however, to accompany Richard to the Holy Land, and died at the siege of Acre. His treatise on our laws is one of the earliest on record. It must be remembered also that G.o.dwin, the author of 'Political Justice,'

and 'Caleb Williams,' a novel still read-the husband of one gifted woman, and the father of another-was at one time an Independent minister at Stowmarket.

But to return to Dr. Young. He, like Mr. Newcomen, had become an East Anglian, and Smectymnuus may therefore more or less be said to have an East Anglian original. As the living of Stowmarket was at that time worth 300 a year, and as 300 a year then was quite equal to 600 a year now, Dr. Young must have been in comfortable circ.u.mstances while at Stowmarket. A likeness of him is hung up, or was preserved, in Stowmarket Vicarage. 'It,' wrote an old observer, 'possesses the solemn, faded yellowness of a man much given to austere meditation, yet there is sufficient energy in the eye and mouth to show, as he is preaching in Geneva gown and bands, that he is a man who could write and think, and speak with great vigour.' One of Milton's biographers terms him, contemptuously, a Puritan who cut his hair short. The Rev. Mr.

Hollingsworth writes that it is an error to suppose that Young remained long as chaplain to merchants abroad. 'He must have remained generally in constant residence, because we possess his signature to the vestry accounts, in a curious quarto book, which contains the annual accounts of Stow upland Parish for eighty-four years. At the parish meetings, and at the audit of each year's accounts Vicar Young presided, with some exceptions, from the year 1629 to 1655, and his autograph is attached to each page.' As an author, Dr. Young had distinguished himself before he appeared as one of the Smectymnians. In 1639, while the Stuarts and the Bishops were doing all they could to break down the sanct.i.ty of the Sabbath, and to make it a day of vulgar revelry and rustic sport, Dr.

Young published a thin quarto in Latin, ent.i.tled 'Dies Dominica,'

containing a history of the inst.i.tution of the Sabbath, and its vindication from all common and profane uses. There is no place of publication named, the signature is feigned, 'Theophilus Philo Kunaces Loncardiensis,' and in the copy reserved at Stowmarket is added, in characters by no means unlike that of the handwriting of the Vicar himself, 'Dr. Thos. Young, of Jesus.' The tractate is described as a very elaborate and learned compilation from the Fathers upon the sanct.i.ty of the Sabbath. A spirit of laborious and determined energy pervades it, nor is it unworthy the abilities and erudition of the author. The work was written at Stowmarket, and may have been published in Ipswich. Its paper and type are coa.r.s.e; the name of the author was concealed, because at that time a man who reverenced the Sabbath had a good chance of being brought before the Star Chamber, and of being roughly treated by Archbishop Laud, as an enemy to Church and State. About ten years before, Dr. Young had heard how, for writing his plea against Prelacy, Dr. Alexander Leighton had been cast into Newgate, dragged before the Star Chamber, where he was sentenced to have his ears cut off, to have his nose slit, to be branded in the face, to stand in the pillory, to be whipped at the post, to pay a fine of 10,000, and to suffer perpetual imprisonment. Dr. Young might well shrink from exposing himself to similar torture. But Dr. Young had other warnings, and much nearer home.

Dr. Young, like most of the men of that time, persecuted witches. These latter were supposed to have existed in great numbers, and a roving commission for their discovery was given to one Matthew Hopkins, of Manningtree, in Ess.e.x, to find them out in the eastern counties and execute the law upon them. It was a brutal business, and Hopkins followed it for three or four years. He proceeded from town to town and opened his courts. Stowmarket was one of the places he visited. The Puritans are said to have hung sixty witches in Suffolk, but the Puritans were not alone responsible. It is a fact that, up to fifty years ago two supposed witches lived in Stowmarket.

Dr. Young escaped the Star Chamber, but, like most good men who would be free at that time he had to fly his native land for awhile. Milton refers to this exile in his Latin elegy:

'Meantime alone Thou dwellest, and helpless on a soil unknown, Poor, and receiving from a foreign hand The aid denied thee in thy native land.'

It seems from this that the living at Stowmarket was under sequestration.

A little while after Young is back in Stowmarket, and Milton thus describes his daily life-a personal experience of the poet's, not a flight of fancy:

'Now, entering, thou shalt haply seated see Besides his spouse, his infants on his knee; Or, turning page by page with studious look Some bulky paper or G.o.d's holy Book.'

Good times came to Dr. Young. The seed he had sown bore fruit. For awhile England had woke up to attack the Stuart doctrine of royal prerogative in Church and State. The men of Suffolk had been the foremost in the fight, and in 1643 we find the Doctor in Duke's Place, London. A sermon was preached by him before the House of Commons, and printed by order of the House. A Stowmarket Rector speaks of it naturally as a very prolix, learned, somewhat dull and heavy effort to encourage them to persevere in their civil war against the King; but he has the grace to add: 'There is much less of faction in it than many others, and it is rather the production of a contemplative than of an active partisan.' 'One of his examples,' writes Mr. Hollingsworth, 'is from 2 Sam. xiii. 28, where the command of Absalom was to kill Amnon: "Could the command of a _mortal man_ infuse that courage and valour into the hearts _of his servants_ as to make them adventure upon a _desperate_ design? And shall not the command of the _Almighty G.o.d_ raise up the hearts of His people employed by Him in any work to which _He_ calls them, raise up their hearts in following at His command!"' The Doctor had not cleared himself of all the errors of his times. He urged on his hearers, by the example of the Emperors, the necessity of maintaining the doctrine of the Trinity uncorrupt, by the aid of the civil power. He urged, however, on them personal holiness, in order that the reformation of the Church might be more easily accomplished. The two legislative enactments he wished them to pa.s.s were to confer a power upon the Presbyterian clergy to exclude men from the Sacrament, and enforce a better observance of the Sabbath-day. The sermon is scarce, but is bound up with others in the Library at Cambridge, preached at the monthly fasts before the House of Commons.

In the library of the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, where a.s.suredly the portrait of the Stowmarket Rector should find a place, there is a copy of this sermon, which was preached at the last solemn fast.

February 28, 1643, with the notice that 'It is this day ordered by the Commoners' House of Parliament that Sir John Trevor and Mr. Rous do from this House give thanks to Mr. Young for the great paines hee tooke in the sermon hee preached that day at the intreaty of the said House of Commons at St. Margaret's, Westminster, it being the day of publike humiliation, and to desire him to print this sermon;' which accordingly was done, under the t.i.tle of 'Hope's Encouragement.' The motto on the outside was: 'Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul both sure and steadfast, and entereth into that which is within the veil.' The sermon was printed in London for Ralph Smith, at the sign of the Bible, in Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange. In his sermon the preacher took for his text: 'Be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart, all ye that wait upon the Lord.' The three propositions established are: First, that G.o.d's people are taught by the Lord in all their troubles to wait patiently on Him. The second is that such as wait patiently upon the Lord must rouse themselves with strength and courage to further wait upon Him; and that, thirdly, when G.o.d's people wait upon Him, He will increase their courage.

The preacher quotes the Hebrew and Augustine, and reasons in a most undeniable manner in support of his propositions; but above all things he is practical. 'The work you are now called on to do,' he says to the M.P.'s, 'is a work of great concernment. It is the purging of the Lord's floor. As it hath reference both to the Church and the Commonwealth, a work sure enough to be encountered with great opposition. Yet I must say it is a work with the managing whereof G.o.d hath not so honoured others which have gone before you in your places, but hath reserved it to make you the instruments of His glory in advancing it, and that doth much add unto your honour. Was it an honour to the Tyrians that they were counted amongst the builders of the Temple when Hiram sent to Solomon things necessary for that work? How, then, hath G.o.d honoured you, reserving to you the care of re-edifying His Church (the throne of the living G.o.d) and the repairing of the shattered Commonwealth, so far borne down before He raised you to support it, that succeeding ages may with honour to your names, say, "This was the Reforming Parliament," a work which G.o.d, by His blessing on your unwearied pains, hath much furthered already, whilst He, by you, hath removed the rubbish that might hinder the raising up of that G.o.dly structure appointed and prescribed by the Lord in His Word.' They were to stick to the truth, contended the preacher, quoting the edict of the Emperor Justinian in the Arian controversy, and the reply of Basil the Great to the Emperor's deputy: 'That none trained up in Holy Scriptures would suffer one syllable of Divine truth to be betrayed; but were ready, if it be required, to suffer any death in the defence thereof.' People, he maintained, are ever carried on by the example of their governors. 'How,' he asks, 'was the Eastern Empire polluted with execrable Arianism, whilst yet the Western continued in the truth? The historians give the reason of it. Constantine, an Arian, ruled in the East when at the same time Constans and Constantius, sons to Constantine the Great, treading in the steps of their pious father, adhered to the truth professed by him, and so did as far enn.o.ble the Western Empire with the truth as the other did defile the Eastern with his countenancing of error and heresy.' The preacher here asks his hearers to make no laws against religion and piety, and 'recall such as have been made in time of ignorance against the same, and study to uphold and maintain such profitable and wholesome laws as have been formerly enacted for G.o.d and His people. Improve what was well begun by others before you, and not perfected by them.' Under this latter head he dwelt on the possible abuse of the Holy Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and the irreligious profanation of the Lord's Day.

In 1643 the Earl of Manchester ejected many of the Royalist clergymen from their livings who were scandalous ministers. Dr. Sterne having been deprived of the masters.h.i.+p of Jesus College, Cambridge, the Stowmarket Vicar was placed there in his stead. He held the situation till 1654, when, on his refusal of the engagement, Government deprived him of his office. At the time the sermon was preached Dr. Young was one of the far-famed a.s.sembly of Divines which met in Henry VII.'s chapel in accordance with the Solemn League and Covenant, which proposed three grand objects: 'To endeavour the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy superst.i.tion, heresy, and profaneness; to endeavour the preservation of the reformed religion in Scotland and the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland in doctrine, wors.h.i.+p, discipline, and government according to the Word of G.o.d and the example of the best Reformed Church; and to endeavour to bring the Churches of G.o.d in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion-confession of faith, form of Church government, directory for wors.h.i.+p and catechizing; that we and our posterity after us may as brethren live in faith and love, and that the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us.' A clause was inserted to the effect that it was English prelacy which they contemned; and thus modified, after all due solemnities, and with their right hands lifted to heaven, was the Solemn League and Covenant sworn to by the English Parliament and by the a.s.sembly of Divines in St. Margaret's Church, September 25, 1643. It was, writes a Presbyterian divine, too much the creature of the Long Parliament who convoked the meeting, selected the members of a.s.sembly, nominated its president, prescribed its bye-laws, and kept a firm hold and a vigilant eye on all their proceedings. Still, with all these drawbacks, it must be admitted that Parliament could hardly have made a selection of more pious, learned, and conscientious men. The a.s.sembly consisted of men nominated by the members for each county sending in suitable names. The two divines appointed for Suffolk were Mr. Thomas Young, of Stowmarket, and Mr. John Phillips, of Rentall. The Vicar, it is said, sometimes acted as chairman, but this, as Mr. Hollingsworth remarks, is doubtful.

Mr. Young's claim to fame rests on something greater than his sermon, or his position in the a.s.sembly of Divines at Westminster, or his masters.h.i.+p of Jesus College. He was, as we have said, Milton's schoolmaster. The poet tells us:

''Tis education forms the common mind; Just as a twig is bent the tree's inclined.'

If so, much of Milton's piety and lofty principle and ma.s.sive learning must have come to him from the Stowmarket Vicar. In our day there is little chance of a young scholar becoming imbued with Miltonian ideas on the subject of civil and religious liberty. That sublime genius which was to sing in immortal verse of

'Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe,'

must have owed much to Dr. Young-a debt which the poet acknowledged, as we have already seen, in no n.i.g.g.ardly way. Amongst Milton's Latin letters is the following, which has been translated by Professor Ma.s.son thus: 'Although I had resolved with myself, most excellent preceptor, to send you a certain small epistle composed in metrical numbers, yet I did not consider that I had done enough unless I also wrote something in prose: for, truly, the singular and boundless grat.i.tude of my mind which your deserts justly claim from me was not to be expressed in that cramped mode of speech, straitened by fixed feet and syllables, but in a free oration-nay, rather, if it were possible, in an Asiatic exuberance of words. To express sufficiently how much I owe you, were a work far greater than my strength, even if I should call into play all those commonplaces of argument which Aristotle or that dialectician of Paris (Ramus) has collected, or even if I should exhaust all the fountains of oratory. You complain as justly that my letters have been to you very few and very short; but I, on the other hand, do not so much grieve that I have been remiss in a duty so pleasant and so enviable, as I rejoice, and all but exult, at having such a place in your friends.h.i.+p, as that you should care to ask for frequent letters from me. That I should never have written to you for over more than three years, I pray you will not misconceive, but, in accordance with your wonderful indulgence and candour, put the more charitable construction on it; for I call G.o.d to witness how much, as a father, I regard you, with what singular devotion I have always followed you in thought, and how I feared to trouble you with my writings. In sooth, I make it my first care, that since there is nothing else to commend my letters, that their rarity may commend them.

Next, as out of that most vehement desire after you which I feel, I always fancy you with me, and speak to you, and beheld you as if you were present, and so, as always happens in love, soothe my grief by a certain vain imagination of your presence, it is, in truth, my fear, as soon as I meditate sending you a letter, that it should suddenly come into my mind by what an interval of earth you are distant from me, and so the grief of your absence, already nearly lulled, should grow fresh and break up my sweet dream. The Hebrew Bible, your truly most acceptable gift, I have already received. These lines I have written in London, in the midst of town distractions, not, as usual, surrounded by books; if, therefore, anything in this epistle should please you less than might be, and disappoint your expectations, it will be made up for by another more elaborate one as soon as I have returned to the haunts of the Muses.'

When the above letter was written, Milton had become a Cambridge student, where he was to experience a new kind of tutor. Milton could not get on with Chappell as he did with Young. The tie between the Stowmarket Vicar and the poet was of a much more cordial character.

Again the poet appears to have forwarded the following letter to the Stowmarket Vicarage. It is to be feared that few such precious epistles find their way there now. Milton writes to the Doctor: 'On looking at your letter, most excellent preceptor, this alone struck me as superfluous, that you excused your slowness in writing; for though nothing could come to me more desirable than your letters, how could I or ought I to hope that you should have so much leisure from serious and more sacred affairs, especially as that is a matter entirely of kindness, and not at all of duty? That, however, I should suspect that you had forgotten me, your so many recent kindnesses to me would by no means allow. I do not see how you could dismiss out of your memory one laden with so great benefits by you. Having been invited by you to your part of the country, as soon as spring has a little advanced I will gladly come to enjoy the delights of the year, and not less of your conversation, and will then withdraw myself from the din of town to your Stoa of the Iceni, as to that most celebrated porch of Zeno or the Tusculan Villa of Cicero, where you with moderate means, but regal spirit, like some Serra.n.u.s or Curius, placidly reign in your little farm, and contemning fortune, hold as it were a triumph over riches, ambition, pomp, luxury, and whatever the herd of man admire and are amazed by. But as you have deprecated the blame of slowness, you will also, I hope, pardon me the fault of haste; for having put off this letter, I preferred writing little, and that rather in a slovenly manner, to not writing at all. Farewell, much-to-be respected Sir.'

The question is, Did Milton carry out this intention, and pay Stowmarket a visit? Professor Ma.s.son thinks he may have been there in the memorable summer and autumn of 1630. The Rev. Mr. Hollingsworth, the Stowmarket historian argues that it is not unlikely that several, if not many, visits, extending over a period of thirty years, while the tutor held the living, were made by the poet to the place. Tradition has constantly a.s.sociated his name with the mulberry-trees of the Vicarage, which he planted, but of these only one remains. 'This venerable relic of the past,' continues the Vicar, 'is much decayed, and is still in vigorous bearing. Its girth, before it breaks into branches, is ten feet, and I have had in one season as much as ten gallons from the pure juices of its fruits, which yields a highly flavoured and brilliant-coloured wine.' It stands a few yards distant from the oldest part of the house, and opposite the windows of an upstair double room, which was formerly the sitting-parlour of the Vicar, and where, it is to be believed, the poet and his friend had many a talk of the way to advance religion and liberty in the land, to remove hirelings out of the Church, and to abolish the Bishops. There too, perhaps, might have come to the guest visions of 'Paradise Lost.' In his first work Milton throws out something like a hint of the great poem which he was in time to write. 'Then, amidst,' to quote his own sonorous language, 'the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, _someone_ may, perhaps, be heard offering in high strains, in new and lofty measures, to sing and celebrate Thy Divine mercies and marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages.' We can easily believe how, in the Stowmarket Vicarage, the plan of the poet may have been talked over, and the heart of the poet encouraged to the work. Regarding Young as Milton did, we may be sure that he would have been only too glad to listen to his suggestions and adopt his advice. There must have been a good deal of plain living and high thinking at the Stowmarket Vicarage when Milton came there as an occasional guest. This is the more probable as Milton's earliest publications were in support of the views of Smectymnian divines. His friends.h.i.+p for Young probably led him into the field of controversy, for he owns that he was not disposed to this manner of writing 'wherein, knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may account, but of my left hand.' It is a fact that Milton was thus drawn into the controversy, and what more natural than that he should have been induced to do so by the Stowmarket Vicar in the Stowmarket Vicarage? The poet's family were familiar with that part of Suffolk, and his brother, Sir Christopher, who was a stanch Royalist and barrister, lived at Ipswich, but twelve miles off. He went to see Milton, and Milton might have visited Ipswich and Stowmarket at the same time. Be that as it may, tradition and probability alike justify the belief that Milton came to Stowmarket, and that he went away all the wiser and better, all the stronger to do good work for man and G.o.d, for his age and all succeeding ages. Young, as it may be inferred, was held in high honour by his friends. He was spoken of by two neighbouring ejected Rectors as the reverend, learned, orthodox, prudent, and holy Dr. Young. When he died, an epitaph was inscribed with some care by a friendly hand, and an unwilling admission is made of the opposition he had encountered. It is now illegible, and some of its lines appear to have been carefully erased-by some High Church chisel, probably. But the following copy was made when the epitaph was fresh and legible:

'Here is committed to earth's trust Wise, pious, spotlesse, learned dust, Who living more adorned the place Than the place him. Such was G.o.d's grace.'

Is the verse of this epitaph from Milton's pen or not? Mr. Hollingsworth writes: 'The probability is quite in favour that the pupil should write the last memorial of one whom he so highly honoured and loved as his old master. Nor is the verse itself, with the exception of the last line, unlike the character of Milton's poetry, and this last may have been mutilated and rendered inharmonious by the action of the stone-cutter, who also confused the death of the father and son.' It is pleasant to think, not only that Milton now and then came to the Stowmarket Vicarage, but that in the church itself there is a slight record of his poetical fame. Let me add, as a further ill.u.s.tration of the connection of the great poet with the county of Suffolk, that I am informed one of the family of the Meadowses, of Witnesham, was for a time one of his secretaries.

Young died, aged sixty-eight, in the year 1655, when Milton was fully embarked in public life, when he could spare but little time; but we may be sure that he would be the last at that time of life to forget all that he owed to his tutor Young. Wife and son had predeceased the Vicar. It seems as if there was no one left but the poet to record on the marble in the middle aisle, in front of the present reading-desk, the virtues of a character which had long exercised so beneficial an influence on his own, and which he had loved so well. Milton's regret for the loss of such a guide, philosopher, and friend must have been lasting and sincere.

CHAPTER XI.

IN CONSTABLE'S COUNTY.

East Bergholt-The Valley of the Stour-Painting from nature-East Anglian girls.

Charles Kingsley was wont to glorify the teaching of the hills, and to maintain that the man of the mountain is more imaginative and poetical than the man of the plain. There are many Scotch people, mostly those born in the Highlands, who tell us much the same. If the theory be true-and I am not aware that it is-the exceptions are striking and many.

Lincolns.h.i.+re is rather a flat country, but it gave us (I can never bring myself to call him Lord) Alfred Tennyson. Many of our greatest poets and artists were c.o.c.kneys; and Constable, that sweet painter of cornfields and shady lanes and quiet rivers, used to say that the scenes of his boyhood made him a painter. I was one autumn in Constable's county, and I do not wonder at it. It is a wonderful district. I trod all the while, it seemed to me, on enchanted ground: in the gilded mist of autumn, with its river and its marsh lands, where the cows lazily fed-or got under the pollards to be out of the way of the flies-where laughing children swarmed along the hedges in pursuit of the ripe blackberry, where every cottage front was a thing of beauty, with its ivy creeping up the roof or over the wall; while the little garden was a ma.s.s of flowers.

We expected to see the old G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses again to partic.i.p.ate in the joyousness of an ancient mirth.

Nor was it altogether a flat land, sacred to fat cattle and wheat and turnips. All round me were the elements of romance. At one end of the Vale of Dedham is a hill whence you may look all along the valley (Constable has made it the subject of one of his pictures) as far as Harwich; and as I lingered by the Stour-the river which divides Ess.e.x and Suffolk-East Bergholt, clothed with woods and crowned with a church, in which there is a stained-gla.s.s window put up in honour of Constable, and a baptismal font, the gift of Constable's brother, unfolded to my wondering eye all her rural charms. There are people who love to climb hills; I hate to do so. It is all vanity and vexation of spirit; when you get to the top of one hill the chances are all you see is another hill, to the top of which you will have to climb. Give me a country lane, with its luxuriant hedges, its shady trees, its flowers, its richness of greensward, its pigs and poultry and farmyard; there is poetry in such nooks and corners of the earth, as Burns and Bloomfield and Gerald Ma.s.sey found. No wonder the place made Constable an artist, and an artist whose name will not speedily pa.s.s away. My dear sir or madam, the next time you are on your way from London to Ipswich, don't rush along at express speed; get out at Ardleigh, make your way to the Vale of Dedham, then walk along the Stour, and cross it by a couple of rustic bridges, and you are at East Bergholt, in Suffolk, where Constable was born, and if you do so you will bless me evermore. Then, if you like, rejoin the train at Manningtree, and resume your journey. Few East Anglians even are aware of the wealth of beauty in that quiet corner.

'The beauty of the surrounding scenery,' writes Constable's biographer, 'its gentle declivities, its luxuriant meadows, flats sprinkled with flocks and herds, its well-cultivated Uplands, its woods and rivers, with mansions scattered, and churches, farms, and picturesque cottages-all impart to this spot an amenity and elegance hardly anywhere else to be found.'

The Constables have been long in the district. The grandfather was a farmer at a village close by. The father, who was well-to-do, purchased a water-mill at Dedham and two windmills at East Bergholt, where he lived. The great artist, his son John, was born in the last century, and was educated at Lavenham and the Dedham Grammar School, and when the lad had reached sixteen or seventeen became addicted to painting, his studio being in the house of a Mr. John Dunthorne, a painter and glazier, with whom he remained on terms of the greatest intimacy for many years. The father would fain have made the son a farmer. He preferred to be a miller, and in his young days was known in the district as the handsome miller. His windmills, when he took to painting, were wonderful, and well deserved the criticism of his brother, who used to say, 'When I look at a windmill painted by John, I see that it will go round, which is not always the case with those of other artists,' for the simple reason that John knew what he was about, which the others did not. Again, his industrial career helped him in another way. A miller learns to study the clouds, and Constable's clouds were exceptionally life-like and real.

The handsome young miller soon acquired artistic friends, one of them being Sir George Beaumont, the guide, philosopher, and friend of most of the geniuses of that time. Said another to him, 'Do not trouble yourself about inventing figures for a landscape; you cannot remain an hour in a spot without the appearance of some living thing, that will in all probability better accord with the scene and the time of day than any invention of your own.' After a visit to his artist friends in London, he resumed his mill life, and in 1779 he finally commenced his artistic career, and painted all the country round. His studies were chiefly Dedham, East Bergholt, the Valley of the Stour, and the neighbouring village of Stratford. At Stoke Nayland he painted an altar-piece for the church. There is also another altar-piece in a neighbouring church, but his altar-pieces are not known or treasured like his other works.

Cooper tells a good story of Constable. One day Stodart, the sculptor, met Fuseli starting forth with an old umbrella. 'Why do you carry the umbrella?' asked the sculptor. 'I am going to see Constable,' was the reply, 'and he is always painting rain.' One can only remark that, if Constable was always painting rain, he always did it well.

Another good story was told Redgrave by Lee. 'I hear you sell all your pictures,' said Constable to the younger landscape-painter. 'Why, yes,'

said Lee; 'I'm pretty fortunate. Don't you sell yours?' 'No,' said Constable, 'I don't sell any of my pictures, and I'll tell you why: when I paint a _bad_ picture I don't like to part with it, and when I paint a _good_ one I like to keep it.' It is well known that one year when Constable was on the Council of the Royal Academy, one of his own pictures was pa.s.sed by mistake before the judges. 'Cross it,' said one.

'It won't do,' said another. 'Pa.s.s on,' said a third. And the carpenter was just about to chalk it with a cross, when he read the name of 'John Constable.' Of course there were lame apologies, and the picture was taken from the condemned heap and placed with the works of his brother Academicians. But after work was over Constable took the picture under his arm, and, despite the remonstrance of his brother colleagues, marched off with it, saving: 'I can't think of its being hung after it has been fairly turned out. The work so condemned was the 'Stream bordered in with Willows,' now in the South Kensington Museum. Leslie once remarked to Redgrave that he would give any work he had painted for it, so warmly did he admire it.

'Constable is the best landscape-painter we have,' wrote Frith to his mother in 1835. 'He is a very merry fellow, and very rich. He told us an anecdote of a man who came to look at his pictures; he was a gardener.

One day he called him into his painting-room to look at his pictures, when the man made the usual vulgar remarks, such as, "Did you do all this, sir?" "Yes." "What, all this?" "Yes." "What, frame and all?"

At last he came to an empty frame that was hung against the wall without any picture in it, when he said to Constable, "But you don't call this picture quite finished, do you, sir?" Constable said that quite sickened him, and he never let any ignoramuses ever see his pictures again, or frames either.'

Constable's great merits, writes Mr. Frith, were first recognised in France, with the result upon French landscape art that is felt at the present time. His advice to Frith was: 'Never do anything without nature before you if it be possible to have it. See those weeds and the dock leaves? They are to come into the foreground of this picture. I know dock leaves pretty well, but I should not attempt to introduce them into a picture without having them before me.'

Constable died very suddenly in 1837. His fame, now that he is dead, is greater than when he was alive. His work abides in all its strength.

There is little in East Bergholt to remind one of Constable, where his reputation remains as that of a genial and kindly-hearted man; but the landscape in all its essential features remains the same. The house in which he was born was pulled down in 1841, which is a great pity, as it is described as a large and handsome mansion. But I never saw a small village with so many attractive residences, though why anybody should live in any of them I could not, for the life of me, understand. Yet there they were, quite a street of them, all in beautiful order, as if they were the residences of wealthy citizens in the suburbs of a busy town. They ought to have been filled with handsome girls, as Charles Kingsley tells us East Anglia is famed for the beauty of its women; all I can say, however, is that I saw none of them, or any sign of life anywhere, beyond the inevitable tradesmen's carts. Independently of Constable, East Bergholt claims to be worth a pilgrimage for its rustic beauty, which, however, becomes tame and common as you get away from it.

The church is old, and has a history-of little consequence, however, to anyone now. One of its rectors was burned at Ipswich in Queen Mary's reign. His name, Samuel, ought to be preserved by a Church which, till lately, had few martyrs of its own. East Bergholt has also a Congregational and Primitive Methodist chapel, and a colony of Benedictine nuns, driven away from France by the great Revolution. We are a hospitable people, and we are proud to be so, but have we not just at this time too many refugee nuns and monks in our midst?