John Milton
One of the greatest poets of the English language, best-known for his epic poem PARADISE LOST (1667). Milton's powerful, rhetoric prose and the eloquence of his poetry had an immense influence especially on the 18th-century verse. Besides poems, Milton published pamphlets defending civil and religious rights.
"Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden."
(from Paradise Lost)
John Milton was born in London. His mother, Sarah Jeffrey, a very religious person, was the daughter of a merchant sailor. Milton's father, named John, too, had risen to prosperity as a scrivener or law writer he also composed madrigasl and psalm settings. The family was wealthy enough to afford a second house in the country. Milton's first teachers were his father, from whom he inherited love for art and music, and the writer Thomas Young, a graduate of St Andrews University. Milton took part in small domestic consorts, he played often a small organ and he had "delicate, tuneable voice". At the age of twelve Milton was admitted to St Paul's School near his home. Five years later he entered Christ's College, Cambridge. While considering himself destined for the ministry, he began to write poetry in Latin, Italian, and English. One of Milton'e earliest works, 'On the Death of a Fair Infant' (1626), was written after his sister Anne Phillips had suffered from a miscarriage. 'In inventorem bombardae' (On the inventor of gunpowder), a piece in a series on the occasion of the Gunpowder Plot, contains Milton's first portrayal of Satan.
Milton did not adjust to university life. He was called, half in scorn, "The Lady of Christ's", and after starting a fist fight with his tutor, he was expelled for a term. On leaving Cambridge Milton had given up his original plan to become a priest. He adopted no profession but spent six years at leisure in his father's home, writing during that...
View Full Essay
