John Milton

John Milton, English poet

John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674) was a poet and political revolutionary who is best known for assisting in the overthrow of Charles I and later writing what many consider to be the first and greatest epic poem in English, Paradise Lost. Mitlon is generally considered to be one of the most learned of English poets, having a fluent command of Latin, Koine, Homeric, and Attic Greek, Hebrew, and Old English. The influences of these ancient languages infused Milton's poetry with a unique (and sometimes frustratingly complicated) syntax which, though written only 400 years ago, often reads as if it were written by an ancient Biblical prophet or historian, and has led some of Milton's critics to joke that he wrote his poems in Latin with an English vocabulary. Although sometimes derided for being too difficult, Milton's enormous influence on English verse cannot be ignored. For hundreds of years after his death it was Milton, not Shakespeare, who was considered the quintessential poet of England. To this day, any poet writing in English who attempts to write an epic must contend with the voice of Milton.

Life

John Milton's eponymous father (c. 1562 – 1647) moved to London around 1583 having been disinherited by his devout Catholic father Richard Milton, a wealthy landowner in Oxfordshire, on account of revealing his Protestantism. Around 1600, the poet's father married Sara Jeffrey (1572 – 1637), and the poet was born on December 9, 1608, in Cheapside, London, England.

Milton was educated at St Paul's School, London. He was originally destined for a ministerial career, but his independent spirit led him to give this up. He matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1625 and studied there for seven years before he graduated as Master of Arts cum laude on July 3, 1632. At Cambridge, Milton tutored the American theologian Roger Williams in Hebrew, in exchange for lessons in Dutch. There is evidence to suggest that Milton’s experiences at Cambridge were not altogether positive and were later to contribute to his views on education; Milton found the university system's focus on scholastic logic arid and not connected enough with human concerns. On graduating from Christ's College, Milton undertook six years of self-directed private study in both the ancient and modern disciplines of theology, philosophy, history, politics, literature and science, in preparation for his prospective poetical career. As a result of such intensive study, Milton is considered to be among the most learned of all English poets. In a Latin poem, possibly composed in the mid-1630s, Milton thanks his father for supporting him during this period.

After completing this private study in early 1638, Milton embarked on a tour of France and Italy in May of the same year, meeting with the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei during his journeys. This was cut short 13 months later by what he later termed 'sad tidings' of civil war in England. In June 1642, Milton married 16 year-old Mary Powell. A month later, she visited her family and did not return for several years, causing Milton great distress and an attempt to divorce himself from her. When she returned, however, the couple lived together happily, raising four children, until Mary's tragic death.

In the early 1640s, having returned to England, Milton began to work as a tutor and dreamed of writing an epic Arthurian romance. His dreams would be side-tracked, however, by his sympathy with the Puritan and Republican causes and his growing distaste for King Charles I. He would spend almost all of his energy over the next twenty years as a pamphleteer and political activist. The choice to lead a political career was very difficult for Milton, who all throughout continued to dream of a life of poetry and the arts, even as he embarked "in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes" to do what he felt, for the sake of moral responsibility, he was bound to do.

On February 13, 1649, King Charles I was beheaded by order of parliament. Within months, Milton was invited by Oliver Cromwell to become Secretary of Foreign Languages in the Commonwealth's new Council of State. During this time Milton continued to publish pamphlets refuting the criticisms of royalists. The most famous of these, perhaps, was a small pamphlet entitled Eikonoklastes, written in response to the royalist pamphlet Eikon Basilike that had been compiled from the King's own papers. In 1651, Milton's eyesight, which had been declining throughout his life, failed him completely; the great poet would spend the rest of his life completely blind.

Unfortunately, Milton's efforts supporting the Commonwealth were to prove fruitless. In 1660 a confused and divided Parliament would vote to restore Charles' son, King Charles II, to the throne. Milton lamented the English people "now choosing them a captain back for Egypt", but could do nothing. As soon as Charles II reassumed power, his Restoration government swiftly executed almost all of the Commonwealth's leading dignitaries, including Cromwell. Milton was in serious danger, and in the summer of 1660 a warrant was put out for his arrest. He went immediately into hiding and, although eligible for a pardon under the Act of Oblivion, was arrested in December. Thanks to the intercession of Milton's friends, notably the poet Andrew Marvell who had been elected to a seat in Parliament and spoke for Milton on his behalf during his trial.

Spared from almost certain execution, Milton would spend his remaining years, despite being blind, old, impoverished, and completely forgotten, composing some of the greatest poems of his age.

Career

As a writer, Milton spent his early years devoted almost entirely to prose work in the service of the Puritan and Parliamentary cause, and his collected prose is over four times the size of his collected poetry. These works, notably Of Education and Eikonoklastes are not particularly stellar examples of English prose style; but they serve as an invaluable introduction to the evolution of Milton's thought, both as a poet and as a political activist. In general, as a young man Milton was a sensual and emotional poet and thinker, who, after being disillusioned due to his work with the Commonwealth, eventually gravitated towards more idealistic and mystical attitudes.

While studying at Cambridge Milton was most powerfully influenced by the sensual poetry of Ovid and the Roman lyrical poets. Their influence is evident in Milton's early poetry—most of which, coincidentally, was written in Latin—which has a lush, rhymed, evocative style. Milton's first major poem, On The Morning of Christ's Nativity, written while at Cambridge at age 21, is one of the finest examples of this early style. The poem, with its overtly religious subject matter, also reflects Milton's attitudes towards education, which he felt needed to re-emphasize religious studies in addition to scholasticism:

This is the month, and this the happy morn,

Wherein the Son of Heav'n's Eternal King,

Of wedded Maid and Virgin Mother born,

Our great redemption from above did bring;

For so the holy sages once did sing

That He our deadly forfeit should release,

And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.

That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,

And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty,

Wherewith He wont at Heav'n's high council-table

To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,

He laid aside; and, here with us to be,

Forsook the courts of everlasting day,

And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.

Say, Heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein

Afford a present to the Infant God?

Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain,

To welcome Him to this His new abode,

Now while the Heaven, by the sun's team untrod,

Hath took no print of the approaching light,

And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?

See how from far upon the eastern road

The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:

O run, prevent them with thy humble ode,

And lay it lowly at His blessed feet;

Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,

And join thy voice unto the Angel choir,

From out his secret altar touched with hallowed fire.

Milton's middle period as a poet began in the years after his graduation from Cambridge but before his work in the revolution, which he spent mostly at his father's home and abroad, voraciously reading in order to obtain the humanitarian education he felt he had not received from the university system. During this time Milton learned Italian, and became powerfully influenced by the poetry of Petrarch and Dante. Attracted by the musicality and inventiveness of the Italian masters, Milton began writing poems which, in contrast to his late great epics in unrhymed blank verse, are surprisingly song-like and refreshingly easy to read.

The greatest work of this period is, without a doubt, the short elegy Lycidas, written by Milton in memory of his friend Edward King who had drowned at sea. Like all of Milton's works, it is influenced strongly by his extensive knowledge of ancient poetry. "Lycidas" is a name that was often used in the pastoral poems of ancient Rome to indicate an innocent shepherd, a sort of stock character, who in this case stands in for Edward King. It is the first Miltonic poem to explicitly take up the issue which would form the center of Milton's poetry for the rest of his life: the problem of the existence of evil in a world which, Milton believed, was fundamentally good. In the poem Milton wrestles with death—not only that of his friend, but the possibility of his own. How, the narrator in Lycidas seems to ask, can ones life be justified if, like Edward King, one is killed off before one has had time to accomplish whatever great work might be in store? Although Milton struggles mightily with these issues, he concludes the poem, with a vision of Lycidas lifted off into heaven, on a note of ecstatic and almost mystical revelation that would only become more prominent in his later works:

Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more,

For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,

Sunk though he be beneath the watry floar,

So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed,

And yet anon repairs his drooping head,

And tricks his beams, and with new spangled Ore,

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky:

So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,

Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves

Where other groves, and other streams along,

With Nectar pure his oozy Lock's he laves,

And hears the unexpressive nuptiall Song,

In the blest Kingdoms meek of joy and love.

There entertain him all the Saints above,

In solemn troops, and sweet Societies

That sing, and singing in their glory move,

And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.

Now Lycidas the Shepherds weep no more;

Hence forth thou art the Genius of the shore,

In thy large recompense, and shalt be good

To all that wander in that perilous flood.

Milton then lived in retirement, devoting himself once more to poetical work, and publishing Paradise Lost in 1667, the epic by which he attained universal fame (blind and impoverished, he sold the publishing rights to this work on April 27 that year for £10), to be followed by Paradise Regained, together with Samson Agonistes, a drama on the Greek model, in 1671.

Milton penned Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained through dictation because of his blindness. This required him to store vast portions of the poems in his memory for oral recitation—all the more remarkable considering how much planning such complex works would require, even on paper, yet Milton did the organizing without such tactile aids.

Milton later in life

Despite the comprehensive scope of Milton's intellectual enquiry, crucial influences upon Milton’s literary work can be easily found and include the Biblical books of Genesis, Job, and Psalms, as well as Homer, Virgil, and Lucan. Milton’s favourite historian was Sallust; however, though Milton's work often betrays his classical and biblical influences, allusions to Spenser, Sidney, Donne, and Shakespeare also are detectable; some commentators have suggested that Milton also sought to undermine the tropes and style of cavalier poets such as John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester and Sir John Suckling in the conversations of Adam and Eve. Milton's literary career cast such a formidable shadow over English poetry in the 18th and 19th centuries that he was often judged favourably against all other English poets, including Shakespeare. We can point to Lucy Hutchinson's epic poem about the fall of Humanity, Order and Disorder (1679), and John Dryden's The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man: an Opera (1677) as evidence of an immediate cultural influence.

The unparalleled scope of Paradise Lost, his masterpiece, sees Milton justifying the ways of God to men, and the poem also depicts the creation of the universe, earth, and humanity; conveys the origin of sin, death, and evil; imagines events in Hell, the Kingdom of Heaven, the garden of Eden, and the sacred history of Israel; engages with political ideas of tyranny, liberty and justice; and defends theological positions on predestination, free will, and salvation. Milton's influence on the literature of the Romantic era was profound. John Keats found the yoke of Milton's style debilitating; he exclaimed that "Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful or rather artist's humour." Keats felt that Paradise Lost was a "beautiful and grand curiosity," but his own unfinished attempt at epic poetry, Hyperion, is said to have suffered from Keats's failed attempt to cultivate a distinct epic voice. The Victorian age witnessed a continuation of Milton's influence; George Eliot and Thomas Hardy being particularly inspired by Milton's poetry and biography. By contrast, the 20th century, owing primarily to the critical efforts of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, witnessed a reduction in Milton's stature. Aside from his importance to literary history, Milton's career has impacted upon the modern world in other ways. Milton coined many familiar modern words; in Paradise Lost readers were confronted by neologisms like dreary, pandæmonium, acclaim, rebuff, self-esteem, unaided, impassive, enslaved, jubilant, serried, solaced, and satanic. In terms of politics, Milton's Areopagitica and republican writings were consulted during the drafting of the Constitution of the United States of America. More recently, there has been renewed interest in the poet's greatest work following the publication of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, which is heavily based on Paradise Lost.

The John Milton Society for the Blind was founded in 1928 by Helen Keller to develop an interdenominational ministry that would bring spiritual guidance and religious literature to deaf and blind persons.

Trivia

• A 1668 edition of Paradise Lost, reported to be Milton's personal copy, is now housed in the archives of the University of Western Ontario.
• John Milton was born on Bread Street, the same road where The Myrmaid Tavern was located, where William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were often seen drinking.

Bibliography

• Il Penseroso (1633)
• Comus (1634)
• Lycidas (1638)
• Of Reformation (1641)
• Of Prelatical Episcopacy (1641)
• Animadversions (1641)
• The Reason for Church Government (1642)
• Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)
• Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643)
• Of Education (1644)
• Judgement of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce (1644)
• Areopagitica (1644)
• Tetrachordon (1645)
• Colasterion (1645)
• L'Allegro (1645)
• Poems of Mr John Milton, Both English and Latin (1645)
• The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)
• Eikonoklastes (1649)
• Defensio pro Populo Anglicano (1651)
• Defensio Seconda (1654)
• A treatise of Civil Power (1659)
• The Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings from the Church (1659)
• Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1659)
• Brief Notes Upon a Late Sermon (1660)
• Paradise Lost (1667)
• Accedence Commenced Grammar (1669)
• History of Britain (1670)
• Samson Agonistes (1671)
• Paradise Regained (1671)
• Art of Logic (1672)
• Of True Religion (1673)
• Poems, &c, Upon Several Occasions (1673)
• Epistolae Familiaries (1674)
• Prolusiones (1674)

External links

• Milton Reading Room – online collection of all of Milton's poetry and selections of his prose
• "Milton and De Doctrina Christiana" by Gordon Campbell et al., 1996
• "The masque in Milton's Arcades and Comus" by Gilbert McInnis
• Milton links

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