“Domestic or Personal Liberty” 1642–1645proposed curriculum, after the basics of Latin grammar, arithmetic, and geometry,
the boys would turn first to subjects founded on the senses: agriculture and geogra-
phy; then Greek; then Greek and Latin texts on natural science, astronomy, mete-
orology, architecture, and physics; then the “instrumental” sciences of trigonometry,
fortification, architecture, military engineering, meteors, zoology, anatomy, and
medicine.^82 Along with their natural science Milton’s students would read the po-
etry of nature: pastoral, georgic, Lucretius, and other “scientific” poems. After these
sense-based studies, they are ready for subjects grounded in reason. Their moral
philosophy – Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, Plutarch, and the like – is to be “reduc’t in
their nightward studies” by the “determinat sentence” of scripture (396–7). Their
studies in economics (household management) are to be leavened with choice Greek,
Latin, and Italian domestic comedies and tragedies, the boys having by now learned
“at any odde hour the Italian tongue” (397). Their studies of politics, law, and
history are to be matched with the great classical epics and tragedies and the ora-
tions of Cicero and Demosthenes. Milton’s course, like that of Comenius, ends
with logic and rhetoric, but Milton, not surprisingly, adds poetics. Formal compo-
sitions employing these skills are also reserved to this late stage: they are not for the
“empty wits” of children, but should arise from independent reflection based on
“long reading, and observing” (372). Sundays are for theology and church history;
by their final years the students – some of them prospective ministers – will have
learned “the Hebrew Tongue at a set hour,” along with the Chaldean (Aramaic)
and Syriac dialects, so they can read the scriptures in the original (400).
After meals and exercise they hear or perform music for voice, organ, or lute, to
compose their spirits and passions. With the nation embroiled in civil war, Milton
also mandates military training – not only gentleman’s swordplay and wrestling but
also “embattailing, marching, encamping, fortifying, beseiging, battering” and tac-
tics, to make the students “perfect Commanders in the service of their country”
(411–12). They are also to learn something of the practical and experiential knowl-
edge Hartlib and Dury located in their Vulgar or Mechanical schools, gaining “a
reall tincture of natural knowledge” from presentations and demonstrations by
“Hunters, fowlers, Fishermen, Shepherds, Gardeners, Apothecaries... Architects,
Engineers, Mariners, Anatomists” (393–4), as well as by springtime travels to ob-
serve agriculture, trade, military encampments, ships and seafights. At age 24 or so
- but not earlier, lest they be corrupted – they might travel to foreign lands “to
enlarge experience and make wise observation” (414).
Milton’s brief excursus into matters of education did not deflect his attention
from the divorce issue. According to his own credible account, three months after
publishing the revised Doctrine and Discipline, that is, in late April or early May,
1644, he discovered a welcome ally in Martin Bucer, a leader of the Reformation
with special ties to England. Edward VI had appointed him Professor of Divinity at
Cambridge, and Bucer dedicated his treatise, De Regno Christi, to Edward.^83 On
August 6 Milton addressed to the “Supreme Court of parliament” a tract entitled