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His other activities are not so easily recovered.

His statements about sports and exercises of a physical nature are suggestive, but inconclusive.

His later boastings of his skill with the small sword are indicative of much time and practice devoted to the use of that weapon.

Venn and others have dealt with sports and pastimes at Cambridge in Milton's day with not very specific results.

Milton himself, uncommunicative as he is about his lesser and nonliterary activities, at least gives us some evidence that he was a great walker, under any and all conditions.

His early poems and some of his prose prolusions speak of wanderings in the city and the neighboring country that may be extended to Cambridge and its surrounding countryside.

The town itself and the `` reedy Cam '' he often visited, as did all in the university.

The churches, the taverns, and the various other places of the town must have known his figure well as he roved to and about them.

The tiny hamlet of Chesterton to the north, with the fens and marshes lying on down the Ouse River, may have attracted him often, as it did many other youths of the time.

The Gog Magog Hills to the southeast afforded him and all other students a vantage point from which to view the town and university of their dwelling.

The country about Cambridge is flat and not particularly spectacular in its scenery, though it offers easy going to the foot traveler.

Ball games, especially football, required some attention, and other organized sports may have attracted him as participant or spectator.

He smoked, as did everybody, and imbibed the various alcoholic beverages of that day, although his protestations while at Cambridge and after that he was no drunkard point to reasonable abstinence from the wild drinking bouts of some of the undergraduates and, we must add, of some of their elders including many of the regents or teachers.