and Mr. Richard Boyle.  If these two sons of the Earl of Cork were still under the tutorship of Dr. Peter Du Moulin, Oldenburg and Jones at Oxford must have come necessarily also into constant intercourse with that very secret admirer of Milton.  Oxford, we do gather, was still Du Moulin’s head-quarters; but he was so much on the wing thence that Oldenburg might expect to succeed him in the tutorship of at least one of the young Boyles.  Oldenburg was then thirty years of age, and young Ranelagh about sixteen.

[Footnote 1:  Wood’s Fasti, II. 197.]

Among four letters to young Jones or Ranelagh included in Milton’s Latin Familiar Epistles one is undated.  It is put second of the four in the printed collection, but it ought to have been put first.  It is Milton’s first letter to the youth in his new position at Oxford under Henry Oldenburg’s charge.  The date may be in or about May 1636:—­

  “To the Noble Youth, RICHARD JONES.

“I received your letter much after its date,—­not till it had lain, I think, fifteen days, put away somewhere, at your mother’s.  Most gladly at last I recognised in it your continued affection for me and sense of gratitude.  In truth my goodwill to you, and readiness to give you the most faithful admonitions, have never but justified, I hope, both your excellent mother’s opinion of me and confidence in me, and your own disposition.  There is, indeed, as you write, plenty of amenity and salubrity in the place where you now are; there are books enough for the needs of a University:  if only the amenity of the spot contributed as much to the genius of the inhabitants as it does to pleasant living, nothing would seem wanting to the happiness of the place.  The Library there, too, is splendidly rich; but, unless the minds of the students are made more instructed by means of it in the best kinds of study, you might more properly call it a book-warehouse than a Library.  Most justly you acknowledge that to all these helps there must be added a spirit for learning and habits of industry.  Take care, and steady care, that I may never have occasion to find you in a different state of mind; and this you will most easily avoid if you diligently obey the weighty and friendly precepts of the highly accomplished Henry Oldenburg beside you.  Farewell, my well-beloved Richard; and allow me to exhort and incite you to virtue and piety, like another Timothy, by the example of that most exemplary woman, your mother.

  “Westminster.”

In this letter one observes the rather strict tone of Mentorship assumed towards young Ranelagh, as if Milton was aware of something in the youth, that needed checking, or as if Lady Ranelagh, with her motherly knowledge, had given Milton a hint that the strict tone with him would be generally the best.  The tendency to a depreciation of Oxford, which is also visible in the letter, is no surprise from Milton.

The Anti-Oxonian feeling, if that is not too strong a name for it after all, is even more apparent in Milton’s next letter, addressed not to young Ranelagh, but to his tutor.  Young Ranelagh, it appears, not long after the receipt of the foregoing, had run up to London on a brief visit to his mother, and had brought Milton a letter from Oldenburg.  To this Milton replies as follows:—­