John Milton

• 1. A Boy With Fair Complexion

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  John Milton was born on the 9th of December 1608 in Bread Street, London. His father, also named John Milton, had moved to London around 1583 after being disinherited by his devout Catholic father for embracing Protestantism. The elder Milton found lasting financial success as a scrivener and lived in a house where the Mermaid Tavern was located. He was noted for his skill as a composer of music, which left his son with a lifelong appreciation for music. This talent fostered friendships with musicians such as Henry Lawes. A contemporary source called the young Milton the Lady of Christ's College because his complexion was so fair. Christopher, Milton's younger brother, recalled that when he was young, he studied very hard and sat up very late, commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night.

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• 2. Fifteen Months On The Continent

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  In May 1638, accompanied by a manservant, Milton embarked upon a tour of France and Italy for fifteen months that lasted until July or August 1639. 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. 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. He met the astronomer Galileo who was under house arrest at Arcetri. Milton probably visited the Florentine Academy and the Accademia della Crusca along with smaller academies in the area. He left Florence in September to continue to Rome. In late October, Milton attended a dinner given by the English College, Rome, despite his dislike for the Society of Jesus. He also attended musical events, including oratorios, operas, and melodramas.

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• 3. The Pen As A Weapon

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  On returning to England where the Bishops' Wars presaged further armed conflict, Milton began to write prose tracts against episcopacy. His first foray into polemics was Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England in 1641. He vigorously attacked the High-church party of the Church of England and their leader William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. In June 1642, aged 34, he married the 17-year-old Mary Powell. The marriage got off to a poor start as Mary did not adapt to Milton's austere lifestyle. She soon returned home to her parents and did not come back until 1645. Her desertion prompted Milton to publish a series of pamphlets over the next three years arguing for the legality and morality of divorce beyond grounds of adultery. It was the hostile response accorded the divorce tracts that spurred Milton to write Areopagitica. This celebrated attack on pre-printing censorship aligned himself with the parliamentary cause. He began to synthesize the ideal of neo-Roman liberty with that of Christian liberty.

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• 4. Blindness And Public Service

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  With the Parliamentary victory in the Civil War, Milton used his pen in defence of the republican principles represented by the Commonwealth. His political reputation got him appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues by the Council of State in March 1649. His main job description was to compose the English Republic's foreign correspondence in Latin and other languages. By 1652, Milton had become totally blind; the cause of his blindness is debated but bilateral retinal detachment or glaucoma are most likely. His blindness forced him to dictate his verse and prose to amanuenses who copied them out for him. One of these was Andrew Marvell. In October 1649, he published Eikonoklastes, an explicit defence of the regicide. A month later the exiled Charles II and his party published the defence of monarchy Defensio Regia pro Carolo Primo. On the 24th of February 1652, Milton published his Latin defence of the English people Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, also known as the First Defence. Milton held the appointment of Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Commonwealth Council of State until 1660, although after he had become totally blind, most of the work was done by his deputies.

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• 5. Dictating The Epic Poem

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  Milton's magnum opus, the blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost, was composed by the blind and impoverished Milton from 1658 to 1664. As a blind poet, Milton dictated his verse to a series of aides in his employ. On the 27th of April 1667, Milton sold the publication rights for Paradise Lost to publisher Samuel Simmons for £5. It has been argued that the poem reflects his personal despair at the failure of the Revolution yet affirms an ultimate optimism in human potential. The first run was a quarto edition priced at three shillings per copy, published in August 1667, and it sold out in eighteen months. Milton followed up the publication Paradise Lost with its sequel Paradise Regained, which was published alongside the tragedy Samson Agonistes in 1671. Just before his death in 1674, Milton supervised a second edition of Paradise Lost, accompanied by an explanation of why the poem rhymes not, and prefatory verses by Andrew Marvell.

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• 6. Unorthodox Beliefs And Arianism

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  An unfinished religious manifesto, De Doctrina Christiana, probably written by Milton, lays out many of his heterodox theological views. It was not discovered and published until 1823. Milton's key beliefs were idiosyncratic, not those of an identifiable group or faction, and often they go well beyond the orthodoxy of the time. He has been accused of rejecting the Trinity, believing instead that the Son was subordinate to the Father, a position known as Arianism. His sympathy or curiosity was probably engaged by Socinianism: in August 1650 he licensed for publication by William Dugard the Racovian Catechism, based on a non-trinitarian creed. In Areopagitica, Milton classified Arians and Socinians as errorists and schismatics alongside Arminians and Anabaptists. John Rogers stated in 2019 that Heretics both, John Milton and Isaac Newton were, as most scholars now agree, Arians. Milton embraced many heterodox Christian theological views despite maintaining his personal faith in spite of the defeats suffered by his cause.

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• 7. A Shadow Over English Poetry

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  Once Paradise Lost was published, Milton's stature as an epic poet was immediately recognised. He cast a formidable shadow over English poetry in the 18th and 19th centuries; he was often judged equal or superior to all other English poets, including Shakespeare. Very early on, though, he was championed by Whigs, and decried by Tories. William Blake considered Milton the major English poet. Blake placed Edmund Spenser as Milton's precursor, and saw himself as Milton's poetical son. The Romantic poets valued his exploration of blank verse, but for the most part rejected his religiosity. William Wordsworth began his sonnet London, 1802 with Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour and modelled The Prelude, his own blank verse epic, on Paradise Lost. Thomas Carlyle declared him the moral king of English literature, while George Eliot and Thomas Hardy were particularly inspired by Milton's poetry and biography. Milton's Areopagitica is still cited as relevant to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

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