when he was at college, ventured down among the Character-writers in his two pieces on the University Carrier.  Thomas Hobson had been for sixty years carrier between Cambridge and the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate Street, London.  He was a very well-known Cambridge character.  Steele, in No. 509 of the “Spectator” ascribed to him the origin of the proverbial phrase, Hobson’s Choice.  “Being a man of great ability and invention, and one that saw where there might good profit arise, though the duller men overlooked it, this ingenious man was the first in this island who let out hackney-horses.’” [That is a mistake, but never mind.] “He lived in Cambridge; and, observing that the scholars rid hard, his manner was to keep a large stable of horses, with boots, bridles, and whips, to furnish the gentlemen at once, without going from college to college to borrow.  I say, Mr. Hobson kept a stable of forty good cattle, always ready and fit for travelling; but, when a man came for a horse, he was led into the stable, where there was great choice; but he obliged him to take the horse which stood next the stable door; so that every customer was alike well served according to his chance, and every horse ridden with the same justice—­from whence it became a proverb, when what ought to be your election was forced upon you, to say ‘Hobson’s Choice!’”

In the spring of 1630 the Plague in Cambridge caused colleges to be closed, and among other precautions against spread of infection, Hobson the Carrier was forbidden to go to and fro between Cambridge and London.  At the end of the year, after six or seven, months of forced inaction, Hobson sickened; and he died on the first of January, at the age of eighty-six, leaving his family amply provided for, and money for the maintenance of the town conduit.  At the Bull Inn in London there used to be a portrait of him with a money-bag under his arm.

Character-writing being in fashion many a character of the University Carrier was written, no doubt, by Cambridge men after Hobson’s death at the beginning of the year_ 1631 (new style).  And these were Milton’s.  Their unlikeness to other work of his lies in their likeness to a form of literature which was but fashion of the day, and having travelled out of sight of its old starting-point and forgotten where its true goal lay, had gone astray, and often by idolatry of wit sinned against wisdom.

ON THE UNIVERSITY CARRIER,

Who sickened in the time of his Vacancy, being forbid to go to London by reason of the Plague.

   Here lies old Hobson.  Death hath broke his girt,
   And here, alas, hath laid him in the dirt;
   Or else, the ways being foul, twenty to one
   He’s here stuck in a slough, and overthrown. 
   ’Twas such a shifter that, if truth were known,
   Death was half glad when he had got him down;
   For he had any time this ten years