A thoughtful little face, that of a well-nurtured, towardly boy; lacking the poetry and spirituality of the portrait of eleven years later, where the long hair flows down upon the ruff.
After leaving his Essex pedagogue, Milton came under the private tuition of Thomas Young, a Scotchman from St.Andrews, who afterwards rose to be master of Jesus College, Cambridge.

It would appear from the elegies subsequently addressed to him by his pupil that he first taught Milton to write Latin verse.

This instruction was no doubt intended to be preliminary to the youth's entrance at St.Paul's School, where he must have been admitted by 1620 at the latest.
At the time of Milton's entry, St.Paul's stood high among the schools of the metropolis, competing with Merchant Taylors', Westminster, and the now extinct St.Anthony's.

The headmaster, Dr.Gill, was an admirable scholar, though, as Aubrey records, "he had his whipping fits." His fitful severity was probably more tolerable than the systematic cruelty of his predecessor Mulcaster (Spenser's schoolmaster when he presided over Merchant Taylors'), of whom Fuller approvingly records: "Atropos might be persuaded to pity as soon as he to pardon where he found just fault.

The prayers of cockering mothers prevailed with him as much as the requests of indulgent fathers, rather increasing than mitigating his severity on their offending children." Milton's father, though by no means "cockering," would not have tolerated such discipline, and the passionate ardour with which Milton threw himself into the studious life of the school is the best proof that he was exempt from tyranny.