One very singular instance is given of his zeal in the acquirement of apparently uncongenial knowledge. Late in life, when his portrait, by Kerrick, was engraved, and his friends were anxious to have his coat-of-arms on the print, the then dean, on being applied to, at once declared that he had, of course, no armorial bearings, but he entertained no objection to be furnished with such as had nothing ridiculous about them. It was, however, a constant maxim with him that any knowledge which comes in one’s way is worth gathering, and his attention being thus attracted toward heraldry, he procured books, and succeeded in gaining much curious information on the subject in which he had no natural interest. Throughout his earthly existence, Milner was distinguished by piety, purity, and integrity; and though ready enough to converse on other subjects with sportive levity, he never alluded to that of religion without the utmost sincerity and the most becoming seriousness. On entering the University he studied indefatigably, and with a result which must have been highly gratifying to his anxious relatives. In 1774 he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and that year the moderators not only assigned him the dignity of senior wrangler, but likewise the title of _Incomparabilis_. On attaining this distinction, Milner ran off, in the pride of his heart and intellect, to indulge in the extravagance of ordering a seal, with the head of his immortal predecessor, Sir Isaac Newton, engraved on it. He was now admitted as a member of the Hyson club, which had been formed in 1758, and could boast of several names known to fame. About the same period, the appointment of tutor to a Polish prince was placed within his acceptance, but declined; and his reputation as a mathematician was so unquestioned, that the papers he made out for the use of his pupils were much prized; and there even occurred an instance of a bed-maker being bribed to procure some of them by stealth, to be copied by a student belonging to another college. Yet it was not merely with mathematics that his attention was now occupied. Various philosophical subjects were subjected to his learned faculties; his intellectual performances had secured him friends, and he had shown the independence of spirit by standing alone, among the students of the college, in a refusal to attach his name to a petition against subscription to the Articles of the Church. To this fact he referred with satisfaction in later days, in his encounter with the Bishop of Peterborough, whose denunciation of the sin and danger of giving people the Bible to read, unaccompanied by the Prayer-book, had brought him into the controversial arena.