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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow XXII.: To the noble Youth Richard Jones. - The Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 2

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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: History
Subject Area: Religion
Topic: The English Revolution

XXII.: To the noble Youth Richard Jones. - John Milton, The Prose Works of John Milton, vol. 2 [1847]

Edition used:

The Prose Works of John Milton, With a Biographical Introduction by Rufus Wilmot Griswold. In Two Volumes (Philadelphia: John W. Moore, 1847). Vol. 2.

Part of: The Prose Works of John Milton, 2 vols.

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XXII.

To the noble YouthRichard Jones.

I did not receive your letter till some time after it was written; it lay fifteen days at your mother’s. With pleasure I perceive the emotions of your attachment and your gratitude. I have never ceased to promote the culture of your genius, and to justify the favourable opinion which your excellent mother entertains of me, and the confidence she places in me, by benevolence the most pure and counsels the most sincere. In that agreeable and healthy spot, to which you have retired, there are books enough for the purposes of academical education. If beauty of situation contributed as much to improve the wit of the inhabitants as it does to please the eye, the felicity of that place would be complete. The library there is rich in books, but unless the minds of the students be improved by a more rational mode of education, it may better deserve the name of a book-repository than of a library. You justly acknowledge that all these helps to learning should be associated with a taste for literature, and with diligence in the cultivation. Take care that I may never have occasion to blame you for deviating from that opinion. And this you will really avoid if you will diligently obey the weighty and friendly precepts of the accomplished Henry Oldenburgh, your associate and friend. Adieu, my dearest Richard, and let me incite you like another Timothy to the practice of virtue and of piety, by the example of your mother, who is the best of women.