There eternal summer dwells, And west-winds, with musky wing, Waters the odorous banks, that blow After her wandering labours long, But now my task is smoothly done, Quickly to the green earth's end, To the corners of the moon. Mortals, that would follow me, Heaven itself would stoop to her. John Milton (1608-1674) was born at the shop of The Spread Eagle, Bread Street, Cheapside, on the 9th of December 1608. His father was a musician, and by trade a wealthy scrivener. Milton was a day-pupil at St. Paul's School under Alexander Gill, esteemed the most skilful schoolmaster of the age, but he seems to have owed still more to Thomas Young, a private tutor in his father's house. He went up to Cambridge, where he was admitted a pensioner of Christ's College on the 12th of February 1625. At the University, Milton disagreed with the authorities, and was rusticated for a time; Aubrey heard that he was even flogged, but it is certain that he committed no moral fault. He was even known, for the uprightness of his behaviour and the beauty of his countenance, as "the Lady of Christ's." Milton left Cambridge in July 1632, and retired to his father's country house at Horton, Bucks, where his mother's tomb is still to be seen in the parish church. In this beautiful and sequestered hamlet he spent nearly six years in arduous self-education, taking poetry as his solemn vocation; and here he read the Greek and Latin writers, bringing to their study "a spirit and judgment equal or superior." It was during this period (1632 1638) that Milton composed L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Lycidas, and Comus. The lastmentioned was a masque, the music by Henry Lawes, written in 1637 to be performed. at Ludlow Castle by the family of the Earl of Bridgewater. It was anonymously printed at the time, and in 1638 Lycidas was included in a garland of elegies over Edward King. These were the first, and long the only, public appearances of Milton, John Milton, æt. 9 to Cornelis Janssen and these were semi-private. Milton's mother died in 1637, and the poet prepared for foreign travel. Before he started for Italy, he consulted the great Provost of Eton, Sir Henry Wotton, who knew Italy thoroughly. He received the famous advice, Pensieri stretti, ed il viso sciolto ("Keep your thoughts shut up and your eyes open "). Such advice was doubtless needed by the fearless and dreamy Puritan poet. Milton reached Paris. early in 1638, and by August was in Florence, where he spent two months. Here he was cordially received by the Academies, and recited not Latin merely but even Italian verses with applause. The poet Francini addressed a eulogistic ode to the Swan from Thames. Milton passed on by Siena to Rome, where his welcome was not so warm as Engraved by Cipriani from a Portrait ascribed it had been in Tuscany. We know little or nothing of his impressions of Rome, except that his emotions were exquisitely troubled by the beauty of two Roman ladies, one of whom was Leonora Baroni, the famous singer, whom he met and heard at the Palazzo Barberini. In November he went on to Naples, whither he carried an introduction to the great Italian patron of letters, Manso, Marquis of Villa, who entertained him. Towards the end of December 1638, Milton turned north again, abandoning his intention of pushing on to Sicily and Greece. In March 1639 he visited the blind and aged Galileo in his villa at Gioello near Arcetri. From Florence he went over to Venice, where the state of public affairs in England warned him to return home. In June he was with the Diodatis in Geneva: these were the parents of his intimate friend, Carlo Diodati, who had died in August 1638, and for whom he wrote the Epitaphium Damonis. In this poem he practically took farewell of Latin verse. In August 1639, returning to London, Milton settled first in lodgings in St. Bride's Churchyard, and then in "a pretty garden-house" in Aldersgate, where he devoted himself to literature. The only other occupation he allowed himself was the education of his nephews, for he was beginning to take a particular interest in the formation of the youthful mind. In the summer of 1643, he abruptly and perhaps injudiciously married Mary Powell, the daughter of an Oxfordshire J.P., a convinced Cavalier. But his austere life had ill fitted him to cajole a lively young woman, and after a few weeks Mrs. Milton fled back to her family. Oddly enough, Milton seems to have settled down at once to compose arguments in favour of divorce, while apparently desiring nothing more than to be reconciled to his wife, who in fact, two years later, returned to him. From 1641 to 1645 Milton was engaged in the publication of incessant controversial pamphlets on political and ethical subjects. In September 1645 he moved into a larger house, in the Barbican, where, after the battle of Naseby, he generously gave a home to his wife's now bankrupt family; here Mr. Powell died in January 1647, and the father of Milton two months later. Another change of residence took the poet, in the autumn of the same year, to High Holborn. In these years the majority of his sonnets were written; he was living in the most studious retirement, little affected by public events. But in March 1649, the republican Council of State offered him the post of Latin Secretary, and he at once accepted it, perhaps incauti ously, since his eyesight was already failing. His conduct in this office was stained with fanaticism and violence, and his physical faculties. were taxed to their extreme limit. This is the period of Milton's furious controversies with Salmasius and others. In 1652 his wife died, and he had now become completely blind, his last rays of eyesight wasted on such ignoble raillery as the Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (1650). In November 1656 Milton married his second wife, Catherine Woodcock, his "late espoused saint," in whom "love, sweetness, goodness shined." We know little else concerning her, and she died in childbirth in February 1658. Through all these years, the isolation of Milton is very remarkable; he had few friends, and almost his only intimate at this time was the Puritan poet, Andrew Marvell, who, in 1657, was appointed to assist him in his official work; he had probably for a long while helped him unofficially. Milton was now living in a house in Petty France, whence, in May 1660, he fled to a friend in Bartholomew Close, where he lay in hiding for six months in danger of his life. It used to be supposed that Milton had been a great factor in Commonwealth politics; this idea is now exploded, and "it is probable that he owed his immunity to his insignificance and his harmlessness." After having remained for some time. shadowed by the Serjeant-at-arms, Milton had two of his books burned by the hangman, and was then discharged on the 15th of December 1660. Up to this time, Milton had lived in easy circumstances, but he now sank into what was almost poverty. After several changes of residence, he settled in 1662 into a little new VOL. III. John Milton From an original Portrait in the possession of Lord Leconfield at Petworth B |