His Youth.

The second greatest English poet was born in London, eight years before the death of Shakespeare. John Milton's father followed the business of a scrivener and drew wills and deeds and invested money for clients. As he prospered at this calling, his family did not suffer for want of money. He was a man of much culture and a musical composer of considerable note.

A portrait of the child at the age of ten, the work of the painter to the court, still exists and shows him to have

been "a sweet, serious, round

headed boy," who gave early promise of future greatness. His parents, seeing that he acted as if he was guided by high ideals, had the rare judgment to allow him to follow his own bent. They employed the best teachers to instruct him at home. At the age of sixteen he was fully prepared to enter Christ's College, Cambridge, where he

took both the B.A. and M.A. degrees.

His Early Manhood and Life at Horton. In 1632 Milton left Cambridge and went to live with his father in a country home at Horton, about twenty miles west of London. Milton had been intended for the church; but he felt that he could not subscribe to its intolerance, and that he had another mission to perform. His father accordingly provided sufficient funds for maintaining him for over five years at Horton in a life of studious leisure. The poet's greatest biographer, David Masson, says: "Until Milton was thirty-two years of age, if even then, he did not earn a penny for himself." Such a course would ruin ninety-nine out of every hundred talented young men; but it was the making of Milton. He spent those years in careful study and in writing his immortal early poems.

In 1638, when he was in his thirtieth year, he determined to broaden his views by travel. He went to Italy, which the Englishmen of his day still regarded as the

home of art, culture, and song.

After about fifteen

months abroad, hearing that his countrymen were on the

FLORENCE IN 1638

verge of civil war, he returned home to play his part in the mighty tragedy of the times.

Milton's "Left Hand." In 1642 the Civil War broke out between the Royalists and the Puritans. He took sides in the struggle for liberty, not with his sword, but with his pen. During this time he wrote little but prose. He regretted that the necessity of the time demanded prose, in the writing of which, he says, "I have the use, as I may account it, but of my left hand."

With that "left hand" he wrote much prose. There is one common quality running through all his prose works,

Every

although they treat of the most varied subjects. one of these works strikes a blow for fuller liberty in some direction, for more liberty in church, in state, and in home relations, for the freedom of expressing opinions, and for a system of education which should break away from the leading strings of the inferior methods of the past. His greatest prose work is the Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing.

Much of his prose is poetic and adorned with figures of rhetoric. He frequently follows the Latin order, and inverts his sentences, which are often unreasonably long. Sometimes his "left hand" astonishes us by slinging mud at his opponents, and we eagerly await the loosing of the right hand which was to give us Paradise Lost.

His Blindness. The English government from 1649 to 1660 is known as the Commonwealth. The two most striking figures of the time were Oliver Cromwell, who in 1653 was styled the Lord Protector, and John Milton, who was the Secretary for Foreign Tongues.

One of the greatest of European scholars, a professor at Leyden, named Salmasius, had written a book attacking the Commonwealth

and upholding the late king. The Council requested Milton to write a fitting answer. As

заварийно

his eyes were al- From his application to wed Elizabeth Minshull, Feb. 11, ready failing him,

1663.

FACSIMILE OF MILTON'S SIGNATURE IN THE ELEVENTH
YEAR OF HIS BLINDNESS

he was warned to
rest them; but he said that he would willingly sacrifice his
eyesight on the altar of liberty. He accordingly wrote in
reply his Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio, a Latin work,

which was published in 1651. This effort cost him his eyesight. In 1652, at the age of forty-three, he was totally blind. In his Paradise Lost, he thus alludes to his affliction :

"Thus with the year

Seasons return; but not to me returns

Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom or summer's rose,

Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;
But clouds instead and ever-during dark
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men
Cut off."

Life after the Restoration.

In 1660, when Charles II.

was made king, the leaders of the Commonwealth had

to flee for their lives.

A MASKE

PRESENTED

At Ludlow Castle,

1634:

Some went to America for safety, while others were caught and executed. The body of Cromwell was taken from its grave in Westminster Abbey, suspended from the gallows, and left to dangle there. Milton was concealed by a friend until the worst of the storm had blown over. Then some influential friends interceded for him, and his blindness probably won him sympathy.

On Micbaclmaffe night, before thề
RIGHT HONORABLE,

JOHN Earle of Bridgewater, Vicount BRACKLY,
Lord Prefident of WALES, And one of
His MAIESTIES moft honorable
Privic Counsell.

Printed for HVMPHREY ROBINSON,
at the figne of the Three Pidgeous in
Paul: Church yard. 1637 4

COMUS TITLE PAGE

During his old age his literary work was largely dependent on the kindness

of friends, who read to him, and acted as his amanuenses.

His ideas of woman having been formed in the light of