John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant. His 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost was written in blank verse and included 12 books, written in a time of immense religious flux and political upheaval. It addressed the fall of man, including the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan, and God's expulsion of them from the Garden of Eden. Paradise Lost elevated Milton's reputation as one of history's greatest poets. He also served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell.
Milton achieved fame and recognition during his lifetime. His celebrated Areopagitica (1644), condemning pre-publication censorship, is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. His desire for freedom extended beyond his philosophy and was reflected in his style, which included his introduction of new words to the English language, coined from Latin and Ancient Greek. He was the first modern writer to employ unrhymed verse outside the theatre or translations.
Milton is described as the "greatest English author" by his biographer William Hayley,McCalman 2001 p. 605. and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language",Contemporary Literary Criticism. "Milton, John – Introduction" . though critical reception has oscillated in the centuries since his death, often on account of his republicanism. Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as "a poem which ... with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind", though he (a Tory) described Milton's politics as those of an "acrimonious and surly republican". Milton was revered by poets such as William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Hardy.
Phases of Milton's life parallel the major historical and political divisions in Stuart England at the time. In his early years, Milton studied at Christ's College at the University of Cambridge, and then travelled, wrote poetry mostly for private circulation, and launched a career as pamphleteer and publicist under Charles I's increasingly autocratic rule and Britain's breakdown into constitutional confusion and ultimately civil war. He was once considered dangerously radical and heretical, but he contributed to a seismic shift in accepted public opinions during his life that ultimately elevated him to public office in England. The Restoration of 1660 and his loss of vision later deprived Milton of much of his public platform, but he used the period to develop many of his major works.
Milton's views developed from extensive reading, travel, and experience that began with his days as a student at the University of Cambridge in the 1620s and continued through the English Civil War, which started in 1642 and continued until 1651.Masson 1859 pp. v–vi. By the time of his death in 1674, Milton was impoverished and on the margins of English intellectual life but famous throughout Europe and unrepentant for political choices that placed him at odds with governing authorities.
Milton is widely regarded as one of the greatest poets in English literature, though his oeuvre has drawn criticism from notable figures, including T. S. Eliot. According to some scholars, Milton was second in influence to none but William Shakespeare. In one of his books, Johnson praised him for having the power of "displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy and aggravating the dreadful".
Early life and education
John Milton was born in Bread Street, London, on 9 December 1608, the son of composer John Milton and his wife Sarah Jeffrey. The senior John Milton (1562–1647) moved to London around 1583 after being disinherited by his devout Catholic father Richard Milton for embracing Protestantism. In London, the senior John Milton married Sarah Jeffrey (1572–1637) and found lasting financial success as a scrivener. He lived in and worked from a house in Cheapside at Bread Street, where the Mermaid Tavern was located. The elder Milton was noted for his skill as a composer of music, and this talent left his son with a lifelong appreciation for music and friendships with musicians such as Henry Lawes.Lewalski 2003 p. 3.
The prosperity of Milton's father allowed his eldest son to obtain a private tutor, Thomas Young, a Scottish Presbyterian with an MA from the University of St Andrews. Young's influence also served as the poet's introduction to religious radicalism.Skerpan-Wheeler, Elizabeth. "John Milton." British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500–1660: Second Series. Ed. Edward A. Malone. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 281. Literature Resource Center. After Young's tutorship, Milton attended St Paul's School in London, where he began the study of Latin and Greek; the classical languages left an imprint on both his poetry and prose in English (he also wrote in Latin and Italian).
Milton's first datable compositions are two psalms written at age 15 at Long Bennington. One contemporary source is Brief Lives of John Aubrey, an uneven compilation including first-hand reports. In the work, Aubrey quotes Christopher, Milton's younger brother: "When he was young, he studied very hard and sat up very late, commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night". Aubrey adds, "His complexion exceeding faire—he was so faire that they called him the Lady of Christ's College."Dick 1962 pp. 270–275.
In 1625, Milton gained entry to Christ's College at the University of Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA in 1629, ranking fourth of 24 honours graduates that year in the University of Cambridge.Hunter 1980 p. 99. Preparing, at that time, to become an Anglican priest, he stayed on at Cambridge where he received his MA on 3 July 1632.
Milton may have been rusticated (suspended) in his first year at Cambridge for quarrelling with his tutor, Bishop William Chappell. He was certainly at home in London in the Lent Term 1626; there he wrote Elegia Prima, his first Latin elegy, to Charles Diodati, a friend from St Paul's. Based on remarks of John Aubrey, Chappell "whipt" Milton. This story is now disputed, though certainly Milton disliked Chappell.Wedgwood 1961 p. 178. Historian Christopher Hill notes that Milton was apparently rusticated and that the differences between Chappell and Milton may have been either religious or personal.Hill 1977 p. 34. It is also possible that, like Isaac Newton four decades later, Milton was sent home from Cambridge because of the plague, which afflicted Cambridge in 1625.
At Cambridge, Milton was on good terms with Edward King; he later dedicated "Lycidas" to him. Milton also befriended theologian Roger Williams, tutoring Williams in Hebrew in exchange for lessons in Dutch.Pfeiffer, Robert H. (April 1955). "The Teaching of Hebrew in Colonial America". The Jewish Quarterly Review. pp. 363–73 Despite developing a reputation for poetic skill and general erudition, Milton suffered from alienation among his peers during his time at Cambridge. Having once watched his fellow students attempting comedy on the college stage, he later observed, "they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools".Milton 1959 pp. 887–888.
Milton also was disdainful of the university curriculum, which consisted of stilted formal debates conducted in Latin on abstruse topics. His own corpus is not devoid of humour, notably his sixth prolusion and his epitaphs on the death of Thomas Hobson. While at Cambridge, he wrote some of his well-known shorter English poems, including "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity", "Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare" (his first poem to appear in print), L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso.
Study, poetry, and travel
After receiving his MA, Milton moved to Hammersmith, his father's new home since the previous year. He also lived at Horton, Berkshire, from 1635 and undertook six years of self-directed private study. Hill argues that this was not retreating into a rural idyll; Hammersmith was then a "suburban village" falling into the orbit of London, and even Horton was becoming deforested and suffered from the plague.Hill 1977 p. 38. He read both ancient and modern works of theology, philosophy, history, politics, literature, and science in preparation for a prospective poetical career. Milton's intellectual development can be charted via entries in his commonplace book (like a scrapbook), now in the British Library. As a result of such intensive study, Milton is considered to be among the most learned of all English poets. In addition to his years of private study, Milton had command of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Italian from his school and undergraduate days; he also added Old English to his linguistic repertoire in the 1650s while researching his History of Britain, and probably acquired proficiency in Dutch soon after.Lewalski 2003 p. 103.
Milton continued to write poetry during this period of study; his Arcades and Comus were both commissioned for masques composed for noble patrons, connections of the Egerton family, and performed in 1632 and 1634 respectively. Comus argues for the virtuousness of temperance and chastity. He contributed his pastoral elegy Lycidas to a memorial collection for one of his fellow students at Cambridge. Drafts of these poems are preserved in Milton's poetry notebook, known as the Trinity Manuscript, because it is now kept at Trinity College, Cambridge. It was Charles Mason who made the extraordinary discovery, in the library of Trinity College, of a packet of thirty loose and tattered folio leaves, almost covered with the handwriting of Milton. It is thought that Mason recognised the nature of this material around 1735 and the loose-leaf sheets were bound for the first time in 1736; the Trinity Manuscript has been described as "the chief treasure of Trinity Library".
In May 1638, accompanied by a manservant, Milton embarked upon a tour of France and Italy for 15 months that lasted until July or August 1639.Chaney 1985 and 2000. His travels supplemented his study with new and direct experiences of artistic and religious traditions, especially Roman Catholicism. He met famous theorists and intellectuals of the time and was able to display his poetic skills. For specific details of what happened within Milton's "grand tour", there appears to be just one primary source: Milton's own Defensio Secunda. There are other records, including some letters and some references in his other prose tracts, but the bulk of the information about the tour comes from a work that, according to Barbara Lewalski, "was not intended as autobiography but as rhetoric, designed to emphasise his sterling reputation with the learned of Europe."Lewalski 2003 pp. 87–88.
He first went to Calais and then on to Paris, riding horseback, with a letter from diplomat Henry Wotton to ambassador John Scudamore. Through Scudamore, Milton met Hugo Grotius, a Dutch law philosopher, playwright, and poet. Milton left France soon after this meeting. He travelled south from Nice to Genoa, and then to Livorno and Pisa. He reached Florence in July 1638. While there, Milton enjoyed many of the sites and structures of the city. His candour of manner and erudite neo-Latin poetry earned him friends in Florentine intellectual circles, and he met the astronomer Galileo who was under house arrest at Arcetri, as well as others.Lewalski 2003 pp. 88–94. Milton probably visited the Florentine Academy and the Accademia della Crusca along with smaller academies in the area, including the Apatisti and the Svogliati.