“To say that these Poems are the effects of a genius the most polite and verdant that ever the Scottish nation produced, although it he a commendation not to be rejected (for it is well known that that country hath afforded many rare and admirable wits), yet it is not the highest that may be given him; for, should I affirm that neither Tasso, nor Guarini, nor any of the most neat and refined spirits of Italy, nor even the choicest of our English Poets, can challenge to themselves any advantage above him, it could not be judged any attribute superior to what he deserves ...  And, though he hath not had the good fortune to be so generally famed abroad as many others, perhaps of less esteem, yet this is a consideration that cannot diminish, but rather advance, his credit; for, by breaking forth of obscurity, he will attract the higher admiration, and, like the sun emerging from a cloud, appear at length with so much the more forcible rays...”

Milton’s interesting German friend, Henry Oldenburg, had recently removed from London to Oxford.  “In the beginning of this year,” says Wood in his Fasti for 1656, “studied in Oxon, in the condition of a sojourner, HENRY OLDENBURG, who wrote himself sometimes GRUBENDOL [anagram of OLDENBUBG]; and in the month of June he was entered a, student by the name of ’Henricus Oldenburg, Bremensis, Nobilis Saxo’:  at which time he was tutor to a young Irish nobleman, called Henry O’Bryen [son of Henry, Earl of Thomond], then also a student there."[1] As we construe the case, Oldenburg, having been for some years in England as agent for Bremen, had begun to see that he was likely to remain in England permanently; and he had gone to Oxford for the benefit of a year of study there with readings in the Bodleian, and the society more especially of Robert Boyle, Wilkins, Wallis, Petty, and the rest of the Oxford colony or offshoot from the Invisible College of London.  Desirable on its own account, this migration to Oxford had been made easier to him financially, if it had not been, occasioned, by the arrangement that he should be tutor there to the young Irish nobleman whom Wood names.  But this young nobleman was not to be Oldenburg’s only pupil at Oxford.  Though Wood does not mention the fact, there went with him thither, or there speedily followed him thither, to be also under his charge, another young Irish nobleman.  This was no other than, our own Richard Jones, son of Viscount and Lady Ranelagh, the Benjamin among Milton’s pupils.  Whatever had been the nature of Milton’s recent instructions of the youth, they had now ceased, and Oldenburg was to be thenceforward the youth’s more regular tutor.  It does not seem to have been intended that young Ranelagh should formally enter a college, so as to receive the usual education at the University, but only that he should obtain some acquaintance with Oxford and its ways, and be for a while in the society of his uncle Boyle, and of his two cousins, Viscount Dungarvan