ILTON WAS born in LOCA Icember 9th, 16; the son c John Milton, who helped a competency as a scrivene to considerable eminence as a scended to his son; and it r satul by sme St. Pad's School, how59, that he began that through He "F༄་་ {༠ went from: ever, which he had entered by the vi,” forth," .7 ! M JOHN MILTON (1607-1674) BY E. S. NADAL ILTON was born in London, on December 9th, 1607; the son of John Milton, who had amassed a competency as a scrivener. The elder Milton, besides his professional success, attained to considerable eminence as a musician. This talent, we know, descended to his son; and it may be that this inheritance had some bearing upon the genius of the poet, who was gifted with perhaps the finest ear possessed by any English writer, and whom critics have described as a musical rather than a picturesque poet. Milton tells us that he was instructed early, both at grammar schools and by private masters, "as my age would suffer." It was at St. Paul's School, however, which he had entered by the year 1620, that he began that career of diligent study which he was to pursue through life. "From my twelfth year of age," he says, "I scarcely ever went from my studies to bed before midnight." Milton left school at the end of 1624, when he was sixteen; as Mr. Masson says, "as scholarly, as accomplished, and as handsome a youth as St. Paul's School has sent forth.» Early in the following year he entered Christ's College, Cambridge. It has been supposed that his career at college was not a happy one; and there was a story, now discarded, to which Johnson lent some kind of countenance, from which it appeared that he was one of the last students of the university to undergo corporal punishment. He was of a rebellious disposition, and may have found much to condemn both in the system of instruction then followed in the university and in his instructors. There is also evidence that the "lady of Christ's College," as he was termed in allusion to his beauty and the purity of his morals, was not popular with his fellow collegians. He however took his degree in due course, and remained at the university some years after graduation. Among the incidents of his college life was his friendship with Edward King, the young poet celebrated in Lycidas.' He added French, Italian, and Hebrew to the university Greek and Latin; and he became an expert swords man. It was in 1632, at the end of his seven years' life at Cambridge, that he went to live with his father, who had just removed from London to the small village of Horton in Buckinghamshire, not far from Windsor. The idea with which he entered college, that of being a priest, had been abandoned, and he had decided upon a life devoted to learning and the pursuit of literature. He lived at Horton for the next six years. At Horton he wrote, besides other poetry, 'L'Allegro,' 'Il Penseroso,' 'Comus,' and 'Lycidas.' 'Comus,' like much of his poetry, was the result of an occasion. The musician Lawes, who was his friend, had been employed to write a masque to be played at Lord Bridgewater's place in Wales; and for this entertainment Milton wrote the words. There is perhaps not in all our literature so perfect an expression as Comus' of the beauty of a youthful mind filled with lofty principles; and this quality of the poem is all the more impressive, because we know that the ideals cherished in those days of hope and health and lettered enthusiasm are to be re-asserted with deeper emphasis amid the tragic circumstances of the closing period of his career. It was the loss of his friend Edward King, by the foundering of a ship in the Irish Channel, which was the occasion of 'Lycidas, a poem which is throughout a treasury of literary beauty. His mother died in 1637, and his brother and his wife came to live with his father; and Milton now felt that he might carry out his long-contemplated project of a journey to Italy. He started upon this journey in 1637, and passed fifteen months on the Continent. This period was one of the brightest of his life, and is one of the most pleasing chapters of literary biography. After having visited Paris, Florence, Rome, Naples, and Geneva,- at all of which places he was received with a distinction and kindness due more, no doubt, to his character and accomplishments and his engaging personal qualities than to his fame, which could not at that time have been great,— he returned to England. It was the alarming state of affairs at home which determined him to bring this charming episode of his career to an end. The words in which he stated the motive for this decision are significant of the abrupt change which was about to take place in his life: "I considered it to be dishonorable to be enjoying myself at my ease in foreign lands while my countrymen were striking a blow for freedom." On reaching England he went to live in London, receiving into his house as pupils his two nephews and some other boys, to whom he gave instruction. He of course continued his life of study; but he wrote no poetry. His exertions from now on to the time of the Restoration were to be mainly those of the pamphleteer and the politician. In the ranks of the triumphant party, which had successfully opposed the purposes of Charles and Laud, there had arisen several divisions, mainly over the question of Episcopacy. Milton belonged to what was termed the "root and branch party," which wished to do away with the bishops altogether. In answer to a manifesto published by the High Church division of the party, five Puritan ministers had issued a pamphlet signed "Smectymnuus, "—a word made up of the initials of its five authors. Milton wrote during 1641 and 1642 a number of pamphlets in support of the views of this party. In 1643 he issued a pamphlet the motive of which was chiefly personal. In May of that year he had taken a journey into the country, and had brought back with him a wife. She was Mary Powell, a girl of seventeen, the daughter of a Royalist gentleman of Oxfordshire. The honeymoon was scarcely over before the young girl, who had found the abode of the Puritan scholar not so pleasant a place to live as the free and easy cavalier house in Oxfordshire, went to her family on a visit; and Milton was presently informed that she had no intention of returning. It was in the following August that he wrote his 'Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' in which he attacked the accepted views of marriage, and expressed the hope that Parliament would legislate for the relief of persons in his situation. This, of course, Parliament failed to do; and Milton made few converts to his views upon this subject, although among the numerous sects of the day there was one known as Miltonists or Divorcers. In 1645 Milton's wife returned to him. The triumph of the Puritan party had brought ruin to her family. Milton received into his house the entire family, twelve in all, including the mother-in-law, who had been the chief cause of the quarrel. Mary Powell was the mother of his three children. She died nine years later. In 1644 Milton published, without a license, a second edition of his pamphlet on 'Divorce.' The criticisms made upon this disregard of the license law resulted in his writing, in the same year, his famous 'Areopagitica,' perhaps the most magnificent and the most known and admired of all his prose writings. There now seems to have succeeded a period of inactivity, which lasted till 1649. On January 30th of that year the King was beheaded, and within a fortnight Milton published a pamphlet in defense of the act. It may have been owing to his having written this pamphlet that he was, in the following month, made Latin Secretary to the Council of State, which governed the country. His business in this new office was to translate from and into Latin the communications received from abroad by the Council, and those sent in reply. But he had other duties, of an indefinite character. One was that of official pamphleteer for the new government, in which capacity he was to defend it from its critics at home and abroad. If the Irish Presbyterians attacked the government, Milton, who belonged to the Independents and favored toleration, must answer them in behalf of Cromwell and his Council, who were also Independents. His special duty, however, proved to be that of replying to assaults made in the interests of the |