John Milton

The English poet and controversialist John Milton (1608-1674) was a champion of liberty and of love-centered marriage. He is chiefly famous for his epic poem "Paradise Lost" and for his defense of uncensored publication.

The lifetime of John Milton spanned an age of sophistication, controversy, dynamism, and revolution. When he was born, England was illuminated by the versatile genius of Francis Bacon, William Shakespeare, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, and Inigo Jones. Christopher Wren was at the height of his powers when Milton died in 1674. At that date Henry Purcell was the major composer; Isaac Newton dominated in mathematics and physics; and literature enjoyed the varied talents of John Dryden, Andrew Marvell, John Bunyan, and Samuel Pepys.

In the middle period of Milton's life, England, after two revolutionary wars, became a republic and then a protectorate under Oliver Cromwell. When monarchy and the Anglican Church were restored in 1660, mercantilist capitalism had been firmly established, and the foundations of the British Empire and navy were laid.

Background and Education

The poet's father, John Milton, Sr., emerged from a line of obscure Roman Catholic yeomen in Oxfordshire, was educated as a chorister, went to London, and became a scrivener—a profession that combined moneylender, copyist, notary, and contract lawyer. About 1600 he married Sara Jeffrey, the wealthy daughter of a merchant-tailor. Three of their children survived infancy: Anne; John, born on Dec. 9, 1608; and Christopher. Their father was not only an able man of business but a musician. He composed madrigals, choral pieces, and some hymns that are still sung. From him young John derived the love of music that pervades his works.

According to Milton's own account in his Second Defense (1654), "My father destined me while still a child for the study of humane letters, which I took up so eagerly that, from the age of twelve on, I hardly ever took to bed from my intense studies before midnight." After private tutoring, about 1620 he entered St. Paul's School, where he studied Sallust, Virgil, and Horace and the New Testament in Greek.

"After I had thus been taught several languages and had tasted the sweetness of philosophy, my father sent me to Cambridge." Admitted to Christ's College at the age of 15, he intended to become a Church of England priest. Because of a disagreement with his tutor, he was "rusticated" (temporarily expelled) in 1626. From home he wrote a Latin poem to his best friend, Charles Diodati, about the joys of exile—reading, plays, walks, and girl watching.

Back at Cambridge about April 1626, Milton was assigned a different tutor and resumed the study of logic, ethics, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. He composed Latin poems on the deaths of prominent men, some antipopish epigrams, and In quintum Novembris (On the Fifth of November), a melodramatic little epic on the Gunpowder Plot. In 1628 his first major English poem, "On the Death of a Fair Infant, Dying of the Cough," was occasioned by the death of his sister's baby. A year later, in images of light and music, "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" celebrated the harmonizing power of divine love.

In one of his Prolusions (college orations), Milton digressed into English verse, beginning "Hail native language." Thereafter he wrote Latin verse occasionally and a series of sonnets in Italian, but he composed increasingly in English, his tone ranging from the humor of a mock epitaph, "On the University Carrier," to somber dignity in "An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester." The companion poems "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" contrasted the pleasures of the "joyful man" with the more serious ones of the "contemplative man," thus revealing the complementary sides of Milton's own nature.

The Graceful Thirties

After receiving the bachelor of arts and the master of arts degrees in 1629 and 1632, Milton lived in his family's suburban home in Hammersmith and then at its country estate in Horton, Buckinghamshire, continuing studies in theology, history, mathematics, and literature but participating in social and cultural life in London and the country. The presence of his "On Shakespeare" in the 1632 folio of Shakespeare's plays suggests that Milton was in touch with actors. In his sonnet "How Soon hath Time," Milton modestly lamented his lack of accomplishments in 23 years; but he was soon writing lyrics for his Arcades, an entertainment. In 1634 A Mask (better known as Comus) was performed at Ludlow Castle, with music by Henry Lawes. This mixture of song, dance, pageantry, and poetry is imbued with youthful charm and glorifies the purity of chastity with exquisite lyricism; but with his characteristic readiness to do justice to opposing viewpoints, Milton did not neglect to put an attractive case for seduction into the mouth of his epicurean villain. Thus Milton began his concentration on temptation themes.

Milton's themes were both particular and universal. Lycidas (1637), a pastoral elegy occasioned by the death of a promising young acquaintance, dealt with why God allows the good to die young and asked if, instead of dedicating one's self to study and writing, it would not be better to do as others do and "sport with Amaryllis in the shade." Milton's answer was that "laborious days" are not wasted: eternal life lies ahead. In 1639, when he learned that his friend Diodati had died, he penned a moving Latin elegy, finding solace in Christian hope and resolution for his grief in esthetic expression. The poem also served as an outlet for a condemnation of negligent clergymen. Though Milton had abandoned the idea of entering the ministry, he was dedicated to making the Church of England more Protestant.

In 1638-1639 Milton toured France and Italy. His short but well-formed body, long auburn hair, blue eyes, and fair skin enhanced his intellectual vivacity and graceful manners. His earnest enthusiasms and versatility in languages also conduced to his being welcomed into polite society abroad. He intended to go to Greece, but news of the growing political and religious crisis in England led him to return to London so that he could help to advance liberty if his talents were needed. In the meantime he tutored his nephews and other students.

Crucial Decades, 1640-1660

It was by writing prose that Milton found opportunity to serve his God and country. In 1641-1642 he poured out tracts opposing the bishops' control over religion. In his judgment, their powers were based on man-made traditions, self-interest, and a combination of ignorance, superstition, and deliberate falsification.

Part of what Milton regarded as episcopal tyranny was the regulation of marriage by canon law and the bishops' courts. In his Commonplace Book (classified notes based on his reading), he had already shown interest in divorce, before Mary Powell became his wife about May 1642. She was about half his age and came from an Oxfordshire family. A few months later, while she was on a visit to her parents, the civil war between King and Parliament erupted. Her family were royalists living in royalist territory, whereas Milton's attacks on the bishops had committed him to the rebels. Accordingly, she failed to return to him despite his urgings. Under these circumstances his publishing a series of pamphlets on divorce (1643-1645) was hardly tactful; but if Mary read them, she discovered that, instead of urging England to follow Protestant example abroad and permit divorce for adultery, desertion, and nonconsummation, Milton emphasized the spiritual and mental aspects of marriage: he held that what is essential is neither physical nor sacramental nor contractual but lies in marital love, in the union of what distinguishes human beings from animals— their rational souls. Milton taught that if such compatibility was lacking and could not be achieved after sincere effort, all concerned should recognize the right of divorce, inasmuch as God had not joined such an ill-yoked couple. However, it is doubtful that Milton regarded his own marriage in such a light, for in 1645 he forgave a repentant Mary—she blamed her mother—and as far as is known they lived contentedly together until she died in 1652.

In 1644 Milton's "Of Education" dealt with another kind of domestic freedom, how to develop in schoolboys discipline, reasonableness, broad culture, all-round ability, and independence of judgment. The same year saw Areopagitica, his defense of man's right to free speech and discussion as the best means of advancing truth. To this end he opposed prepublication censorship though admitting that if a book or those responsible for it broke clear and reasonable laws against libel, pornography, blasphemy, or sedition, the work could be repressed or those responsible for it could be fairly tried and punished if found guilty. Milton advocated neither licentiousness or avoidable interference with individuals but, rather, responsible freedom under just laws and magistrates.

The divorce tracts made Milton undeservedly notorious as a fanatic libertine advocate of free love. Readers of his collected Poems (1645) were therefore probably surprised to find the charming seriousness of an author who, had he died then, might have been ranked with George Herbert and Robert Herrick as an Anglican poet. The volume contained not only the poems mentioned above but also exquisite lyrics such as "On a May Morning" and "At a Solemn Musick." Milton also put new life into the sonnet genre, investing it with wider subject matter.

As the civil war drew to a close, Milton turned from defending the liberty of religion, marriage, and publication to condemning royal tyranny. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) argued that men have a natural right to freedom and that contracts they make with rulers are voluntary and terminable. Soon after its publication he began a decade as the revolutionary government's secretary for foreign tongues: his chief duty was to put state letters into choice Latin. His next pamphlet, Eikonoklastes (1649), answered "The King's Book," a self-justification attributed to Charles I. This was followed by two Defenses of the English People (1651, 1654) to explain why they revolted and a Defense of Himself (1655) against various attackers. These works were in Latin: Milton was the revolution's chief international propagandist.

For some years Milton had been losing his eyesight, and by early 1652 he was totally blind. Reflecting that this could prevent the use of his talent in God's service, he composed the sonnet "When I consider how my light is spent" with its famous conclusion, "They also serve who only stand and wait."

In 1656, four years after his first wife's death, Milton married Kathrine Woodcock. Two years later she died as a result of childbirth, and he tenderly memorialized her in a sonnet, "To my late departed Saint."

Despite adversities Milton heroically persisted. During the crisis preceding restoration of the monarchy he dictated several tracts. In A Treatise of Civil Power (1659) he again urged toleration and separation of Church and state. Ready and Easy Way (1660) argued for preservation of a republic.

Triumph in Defeat

Inevitably the eloquent defender of monarchy's overthrow was in acute danger when Charles II, son of the executed Charles I, regained the throne in 1660. Milton was harassed and imprisoned; his seditious books were publically burned; but he was included in a general pardon. In 1663 he married Elizabeth Minshell. In 1667, Paradise Lost, his long-planned epic on the fall of man, was published. In 1671 its sequel, Paradise Regained, appeared in one volume with Samson Agonistes, a tragedy modeled on Greek drama and the Book of Job. Milton also published some previously written prose works on grammar, logic, and early British history; his Prolusions with some familiar letters; and an enlarged edition of his earlier Poems. In 1673 he reentered public controversy with Of True Religion, a brief defense of Protestantism. Before his death about Nov. 8, 1674, he was planning to publish writings that appeared posthumously: his Latin state papers (1676) and a short history of Moscovia (1682). In 1694 his nephew Edward Phillips published a life of his uncle with an English translation of the state papers.

In the early 19th century the Latin manuscript of Milton's Christian Doctrine was discovered and translated (1825). In it he systematically set out to disencumber scriptural interpretation from misinterpretation by discovering what the Bible itself said on such matters as predestination, angels, and saving faith. One of his central convictions was that what God accommodated to limited human understandings was sufficient and that man should not impose on what God left vague a precision unjustified by what He revealed.

Paradise Lost was not suspected of unorthodoxy by centuries of Protestant readers, and, except for a few jabs at Roman Catholicism, it has universally appealed to Christians. However, because Satan is portrayed with a rebelliousness against the nature of things that dissidents find attractive, the poets William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley and other "Satanists" alleged that Milton was knowingly or unknowingly on the side of the devils. Their notion is evidence of the epic's tremendous imaginative power. In majestic blank-verse paragraphs it relates the whole of history from the Son's generation, through the war in heaven, the fall of the rebel angels, the creation, and man's fall, to a vision of the future, Satan's final defeat, and the establishment of Christ's kingdom. Milton did not intend most of it to be taken literally: it is largely a product of his imagination, inspired by, but not directly based on, the Bible. Paradise Lost is a fictionalized, imaginative attempt to dramatize approximations of complex truths. Underlying the fictive is Milton's effort to convey to his fellowmen some insight into God's wisdom and providence.

Paradise Regained, a far shorter epic, treats the rejection by Jesus of Satan's temptations. Its central point is that the true hero conquers not by force but by humility and faith in God. Like the two epics and Comus, Samson Agonistes treats the theme of temptation, dramatizing how the Hebrew strong man overtrusted himself and, like Eve and Adam, yielded to passion and seeming self-interest.

Reputation and Influence

For a few decades after his death, Milton was damned as a rebel and divorcer. But since then reformers and revolutionaries have been inspired by his works, especially Areopagitica. His influence on poets has been tremendous, though not always beneficial. John Dryden partially based his Achitophel on Milton's Satan and so admired Paradise Lost that he recast it as an opera, The Fall of Man. Joseph Addison in the Spectator demonstrated that Milton ranked with Homer and Virgil. Alexander Pope delightfully satirized some features of Paradise Lost in The Rape of the Lock. In The Lives of the Poets Samuel Johnson somewhat grudgingly conceded Milton's achievement as a poet but was so prejudiced by his royalist, Anglican sympathies that he portrayed Milton as a domestic tyrant. In general, 18th-century poets lauded him for sublimity. William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley exalted his Satan as a romantic rebel. William Wordsworth, viewing the poet as a liberator, wrote, "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour." Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his critical writings praised Milton's artistry and profundity. John Keats and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, were perhaps overinfluenced by his poetry. The Victorians put Paradise Lost alongside the Bible in their parlors for Sunday reading; and Milton's great 19th-century biographer, David Masson, transformed him into Victorian solidity.

Milton's poetic reputation remained high until the 1920s, when there was an adverse reaction from T.S. Eliot and other poet-critics. Somewhat oddly, they condemned his verse chiefly because of its influence. But the academic critics came to the rescue, and since about 1930 Milton studies have been revolutionized. He has been restored to a high eminence, though both his personality and works are still much controverted. Indeed, he has been extraordinarily successful in his aim of stimulating seminal discussion. However, the notion that he was sour and puritanical dies slowly. As a corrective, it is well to remember how his own daughter remembered him: "She said He was Delightful Company, the Life of the Conversation, and That on Account of a Flow of Subject and an Unaffected Chearfulness and Civility."

Further Reading

The standard biography is Milton: A Life (2 vols., 1968), by William Riley Parker. The most inclusive edition is The Works, prepared by general editor Frank Allen Patterson (18 vols., 1931-1938), known as The Columbia Milton. However, for the nonpoetic writings, Complete Prose Works, prepared by general editor Don M. Wolfe (8 vols., 1953 and later), is more reliable. For the poetry, the most accurate texts are provided in editions by Helen Gardner (2 vols., 1952-1955), Douglas Bush (1965), John Carey and Alastair Fowler (heavily annotated, 1968), and John T. Shawcross (rev. ed. 1971). The Prose, edited by J. Max Patrick (1967), includes generous selections, a survey of all the prose works, and annotations. The Student's Milton, edited by F.A. Patterson (1930), gives all the poetry and most of the prose in one volume with few notes (1930). The Complete Poems and Major Prose, edited by Merritt Y. Hughes (1957), is widely used as a textbook.

A brief, sound entree for the beginner is Douglas Bush, John Milton: A Sketch of His Life and Writings (1964). The general reader may prefer John Milton, Englishman, by James Holly Hanford (1949), but students will find wider guidance in A Milton Handbook by Hanford and James A. Taafe (5th ed. 1970).

The best treatment of Milton's prose in its intellectual context is Milton and the Puritan Dilemma by Arthur E. Barker (repr. 1956); he edited Milton: Modern Essays in Criticism (1965), an excellent introduction to 20th-century approaches to the poetry, with guidance for further reading. Milton's Epic Poetry, edited by C.A. Patrides (1967), contains a variety of essays and an annotated reading list.

Except for Shakespeare, more scholarship and criticism is devoted to Milton than to any other English author. In general, works published before about 1930 have been superseded. Among the best are the books by James Holly Hanford, John M. Steadman, Joseph Summers, Stanley Fish, Merritt Y. Hughes, Kester Svendsen, Don Cameron Allen, E. M. W. Tillyard, Rosemond Tuve, William Riley Parker, A. S. P. Woodhouse, F. Michael Krouse, Louis Martz, and Barbara Lewalski; however, this list is highly selective. The biographies, guides, and editions listed above usually suggest further reading. For fuller guidance see Calvin Huckabay, John Milton: An Annotated Bibliography (rev. ed. 1969). □

Milton, John (1608–74), son of John Milton the elder, a scrivener and composer of music. He was educated at St Paul's School and Christ's College, Cambridge, where he wrote poetry in Latin, Italian, and English, on both sacred and secular themes. His first known attempts at English verse, ‘On the Death of a Fair Infant’ and ‘At a Vacation Exercise’, were probably written in 1628. His first distinctively Miltonic work, ‘On the Morning of Christs Nativity’, written in 1629, shows a growing mastery of stanza and structure, an exuberant and at times baroque use of imagery, and the love of resounding proper names so marked in his later work. His fragmentary ‘The Passion’ was probably written in 1630, and the ‘Arcades’ probably in 1632. ‘On Shakespeare’, his two epitaphs for Hobson, the university carrier, and ‘An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester’ belong to 1631. His twin poems, ‘L'Allegro’ and ‘Il Penseroso’, may also have been written at Cambridge. On leaving Cambridge he embarked on an ambitious course of private study at his father's home in preparation for a future as poet or clergyman; his Latin poem ‘Ad Patrem’ (?1634) appears to be an attempt to persuade his father that the two pursuits were reconcilable. His ‘masque’ Comus was published anonymously in 1637, in which year he wrote Lycidas, a pastoral elegy. During the 20 years that elapsed between this and his composition of Paradise Lost, Milton wrote no poetry, apart from some Latin and Italian pieces, and some sonnets, of which the most notable are those ‘On the late Massacre in Piedmont’, on his blindness, on his deceased wife, his addresses to Cromwell, Fairfax, and Vane, and those to Lawes (with whom he had collaborated on the ‘Arcades’ and Comus) and to his young friends and students Edward Lawrence and Cyriack Skinner. From 1638 to 1639 Milton travelled abroad, chiefly in Italy; he met Grotius in Paris and Galileo. His Latin epitaph on his friend Diodati, Epitaphium Damonis, written in 1639, is his finest Latin poem.

His attentions were now diverted by historical events to many years of pamphleteering and political activity, and to a tireless defence of religious, civil, and domestic liberties. In 1641 he published a series of five pamphlets against episcopacy, engaging in controversy with bishops Hall and Ussher, and displaying from the first (Of Reformation in England and the Causes that Hitherto Have Hindered It) a vigorous, colourful Ciceronian prose, and a keenly polemic spirit which could yet rise to visions of apocalyptic grandeur. The Reason of Church Government (1642) was followed by An Apology against a Pamphlet…against Smectymnuus (1642), which contains interesting autobiographical details. In July 1642 Milton married Mary Powell, daughter of Royalist parents; he was 33, she 17. Within six weeks he consented to her going home to her parents near Oxford on condition that she returned by Michaelmas. She did not do so, for reasons perhaps connected with the outbreak of the Civil War. The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643) argues among other points that a true marriage was of mind as well as of body. This pamphlet made him notorious, but he pursued his arguments in three more on the subject of divorce in 1644–5, including Tetrachordon. Of Education, and Areopagitica, his great defence of the liberty of the press, both appeared in 1644. At this time he became aware of his growing blindness; by 1652 he was to be totally blind.

After the execution of Charles I, Milton published The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649). He was appointed Latin secretary to the newly formed Council of State, retaining the post until the Restoration. The State papers he wrote include an interesting series of dispatches (1655–8) on the subject of the expulsion and massacre of the Protestant Vaudois. He replied officially to Eikon Basilike in Eikonoklastes (i.e. Imagebreaker, 1649), and to the Defensio Regia of Salmasius in Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (1651), a work which created a furore on the Continent and was publicly burned in Paris and Toulouse; also to Du Moulin's Clamor in Defensio Secunda (1654). He was now assisted in his secretarial duties successively by G. R. Weckherlin, Philip Meadows, and Marvell. His first wife (having rejoined him in 1645) died in 1652, three days after the birth of their third daughter, and in 1656 he married Katherine Woodcock, then aged 28, who died in 1658. On the eve of the Restoration, he boldly published The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660), a last-minute attempt to defend the ‘Good old Cause’ of republicanism. At the Restoration he went into hiding briefly, then was arrested, fined, and released: D'avenant and Marvell are said to have interceded on his behalf. He now returned to poetry and set about the composition of Paradise Lost (1667). In 1663 he married his third wife, Elizabeth Minshull (who survived him by more than 50 years). Paradise Regained was published in 1671 with Samson Agonistes. In these later years he also published a History of Britain (1670), and a compendium of Ramus's Logic (1672). In 1673 appeared a second edition of his Poems originally published in 1645, including most of his minor verse.

Milton died from ‘gout struck in’ and was buried beside his father in St Giles', Cripplegate. There are full biographies by D. Masson (1859–94) and W. R. Parker (1968). Milton's towering stature as a writer was recognized early. Although appreciated as a master of polemical prose as well as of subtle lyric harmony, his reputation rests largely on Paradise Lost, which Dryden (who made a rhymed version of it) was describing by 1677 as ‘one of the greatest, most noble and sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced’. Poets and critics in the 18th cent. were profoundly influenced by Milton's use of blank verse (previously confined largely to drama) and his treatment of the sublime, and he inspired many serious and burlesque imitations and adaptations.

Milton, John (1608–74), poet and controversialist. He early won a high reputation for his scholarship and literary gifts: his Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity dates from 1629. In 1641 he joined the Presbyterians, but his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), pleading for the solubility of marriage, caused a breach. Its publication without a licence from the censor led the case to be submitted to Parliament and drew from Milton his celebrated Areopagitica (1644) in defence of the freedom of the press. From this time his religious views tended towards the Independents, and from 1649 he supported the new government. In 1651 he went blind. Despite his admiration for O. Cromwell, he disagreed with the ecclesiastical policy of his later years which ran counter to Milton's main idea of a complete disestablishment of Churches everywhere. With the fall of his religious and political hopes, he turned again to poetry. In his greatest work, Paradise Lost (q.v., published 1667), he undertook to ‘justify the ways of God to men’ and to show the cause of evil and injustice in the world. In 1671 appeared both its sequel, Paradise Regained, which deals with the Temptation of Christ, and Samson Agonistes, describing the last hours of Samson ‘before the prison in Gaza’; here the blind hero partly represented Milton himself.

Milton, John (1608–74) English poet. Milton first major pieces are the masque Comus (1634), and the pastoral elergy Lycidas (1637). He was committed to reform of the Church of England, and his pamphlet Of Reformation in England (1641) attacked episcopacy. A champion of the revolutionary forces in the English Civil War (1642–51), his Areopagitica (1644) is a classic argument for freedom of the press. Milton's defence of regicides in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) earned him a position in Cromwell's Commonwealth government. Blind from 1652, Milton was forced into hiding after the Restoration (1660). Paradise Lost, perhaps the greatest epic poem in English, was first published in 10 books (1667). In 1674, he produced a revised edition in 12 books. Written in blank-verse, it relates the theological stories of Satan's rebellion against God, and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Its sequel, Paradise Regained (1671), was published in four books, and describes Christ's temptation.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton

Milton, John (1608–74). Poet and controversialist. Hostile to Archbishop W. Laud's high churchmanship and the ‘hireling shepherds’, he supported the parliamentarians in the Civil War and served as Latin Secretary under the Commonwealth. Favouring the disestablishment of all Churches, he came to disagree with Cromwell's later ecclesiastical policy. Difficult relationships with his first wife probably occasioned his sympathetic approach to marriage problems in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643). A prolific writer, he published works against episcopacy and wrote vigorously in support of the freedom of the press (Areopagitica, 1644). He became totally blind in 1651. His monumental Paradise Lost (1667) undertakes to ‘justify the ways of God to man’ and to show the cause of evil and injustice in the world.