And God said, Let the waters generate, Reptile with spawn abundant, living soul: And let fowl fly above the earth, with wings Displayed on the open firmament of heaven. And God created the great whales, and each Soul living, each that crept, which plenteously The waters generated by their kinds, And every bird of wing after his kind; And saw that it was good, and blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, multiply, and In the seas And lakes and running streams the waters fill; And let the fowl be multiplied on the earth. ‘ John Milton (1608-1674), antics poet. Paradise Lost (l. BC. VII, l. 387-398). FM. The Complete Poetry of John Milton.
John T. Scarecrows, De. (1963, rev. De. 1971 ) Doubleday ‘Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source Of human offspring, sole propriety, In paradise of all things common else. By thee adulterous lust was driven from men Among the bestial herds to range, by thee Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure, Relations dear, and all the charities Of father, son, and brother first were known. Far be It, that I should write thee sin or blame. Of think thee unfitting holiest place, Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets, Whose bed Is undefiled and chaste pronounced, Present, or past, as saints and patriarchs used.
Here love his golden shafts employs, here lights His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings, Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile Of harlots, loveless, Joyless, endeared, Casual fruition, nor in court amours Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball, Or serenade, which the starved lover sings To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain. These lulled by Nightingales embracing slept, And on their naked limbs the flowery roof Showered roses, which the morn repaired. Sleep on, Blest pair; and O yet happiest If ye seek No happier state, and know to know no more. ” john Milton (1608-1674), antics poet. Readies Lost (l. BC. IV, l. 750-775)… The Complete Poetry of John Milton. John T. Scarecrows, De. (1963, rev. De. 19 ‘And God Be fruitful, multiply, and in the seas And let the fowl be multiplied on the earth. ” John Milton (1608-1674), British poet. Paradise Lost (l. BC. VI’, l. 387-398). FM. The Complete Poetry of John Milton. John T. Scarecrows, De. (1963, popular Poems An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poe… An Epitaph On The Marchioness Of Winches… Another On The Same Arcades At a Solemn Music At A Vacation Exercise In The College, At A Vatican Exercise (excerpt) Combs (excerpts) Carjack, Whose Grandkids
From ‘Arcades’ From ‘Samson Agonies’ I How Soon Hath Time Hymn on the Morning of Chrism’s Nativity II Penrose More poems of John Milton В» Biography of John Milton John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth (republic) of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost. Million’s poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day.
Writing in English, Latin, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Replicating, (written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship) is among history’s most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and freedom of the press. William Hallway’s 1796 biography called him the “greatest English author”, and he remains generally regarded “as one of the preeminent writers in the English language”; though critical reception has oscillated in the centuries since his death (often on account of his republicanism).
Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as “a poem which… Tit respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind”. Though Johnson (a Tory and recipient of royal patronage) described his politics as those of an “acrimonious and surly republican”. Because of his republicanism, Milton has been the subject of centuries of British partisanship (a “nonconformist” biography by John Tolland, a hostile account by Anthony Г Wood etc. ).
Biography The phases of Million’s life parallel the major historical and political divisions in Stuart Britain. Under the increasingly personal rule of Charles I and its breakdown in institutional confusion and war, Milton studied, traveled, wrote poetry mostly for private circulation, and launched a career as pamphleteer and publicist. Under the Commonwealth of England, from being thought dangerously radical and even heretical, the shift in accepted attitudes in government placed him in public office, and he even acted as an official spokesman in certain of his publications.
The Restoration of 1660 deprived Milton, now completely blind, of his public platform, but this period saw him complete most of his major works of poetry. Million’s views developed from his very extensive reading, as well as travel and experience, from his student days of the asses to the English Revolution. By the time of his death in 1674, Milton was impoverished and on the margins of English intellectual life, yet unrepentant for his political choices, and of Europe-wide fame. John Milton was born on Bread Street, London, on 9 December 1608, as the son of the composer John Milton and his wife Sarah Jeffrey.
The senior John Milton (1562-1647) moved to London around 1 583 after being disinherited by his devout Catholic father, Richard Milton, for embracing Protestantism. In London, the senior John Milton reared Sarah Jeffrey (1572-1637), the poet’s mother, and found lasting financial success as a scrivener. He lived in, and worked from, a house on Bread Street, where the Mermaid Tavern was located in Capsized. The elder Milton was noted for his skill as a musical composer, and this talent left Milton with a lifetime appreciation for music and friendship with musicians such as Henry Laces.
Million’s father’s prosperity provided his eldest son with a private tutor, Thomas Young, and then a place at SST Pall’s School in London. There he began the study of Latin and Greek, and the classical languages left an imprint on his poetry in English he wrote also in Italian and Latin). His first datable compositions are two psalms done at age 15 at Long Pennington. One contemporary source is the Brief Lives of John Aubrey, an uneven compilation including first-hand reports.
In the work, Aubrey quotes Christopher, Million’s younger brother: “When he was young, he studied very hard and sat up very late, commonly till twelve or one o’clock at night”. Milton matriculated at Chrism’s College, Cambridge, in 1625 and graduated with a B. A. In 1629, ranking fourth of 24 honors graduates that year in the University of Cambridge. Preparing to become an Anglican priest, he stayed on to obtain his Master of Arts degree on 3 July 1632. Milton was probably rusticated for quarrelling in his first year with his tutor, William Chapel.
He was certainly at home in the Lent Term 1626; there he wrote his Elegiac Prima, a first Latin elegy, to Charles Oddity, a friend from SST Pall’s. Based on remarks of John Aubrey, Chapel “whip” Milton. This story is now disputed. Certainly Milton disliked Chapel. Christopher Hill cautiously notes that Milton was “apparently” rusticated, and that the differences between Chapel and Milton may have been either religious or personal, as far as we can know. Another factor, possibly, was the plague, by which Cambridge was badly affected in 1625.
Later in 1626 Million’s tutor was Nathaniel Doves. At Cambridge Milton was on good terms with Edward King, for whom he later wrote Lucidly. He also befriended Anglo-American dissident and theologian, Roger Williams. Milton tutored Williams in Hebrew in exchange for lessons in Dutch. Otherwise at Cambridge he developed a reputation for poetic skill and general erudition, but experienced alienation from his peers and university life as a whole. Watching his fellow students attempting comedy upon the college stage, he later observed ‘they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools’.
Milton, due to his hair, which he wore long, and his general delicacy of manner, was known as the “Lady of Chrism’s”. Debates on abstruse topics, conducted in Latin. His own corpus is not devoid of humor, notably his sixth prolusion and his epitaphs on the death of Thomas Hobnobs. While at Cambridge he wrote a number of his well-known shorter English poems, among them On the Morning of Chrism’s Nativity, his Epitaph on the admirable Dramatic Poet, W. Shakespeare, his first poem to appear in print, Allegro and II Penrose. Study, Poetry, and Travel Upon receiving his M. A. N 1632, Milton retired to Hammerheads, his father’s new home since the previous year. He also lived at Horton, Berkshire, from 1635 and undertook six years of self-directed private study. Christopher Hill points out that this was not retreat into a rural or pastoral idyll at all: Hammerheads was then a “suburban village” falling into the orbit of London, and even Horton was becoming deforested, and suffered from the plague. He read both ancient and modern works of theology, philosophy, history, politics, literature and science, in preparation for a prospective poetical career.
Million’s intellectual development can be charted via entries in his commonplace book (like a scrapbook), now in the British Library. As a result of such intensive study, Milton is considered to be among the most learned of all English poets; in addition to his years of private study, Milton had command of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Italian from his school and undergraduate days; he also added Old English to his linguistic repertoire in the asses while researching his History of Britain, and probably acquired proficiency in Dutch soon after.
Milton continued to write poetry during this period of study: his Arcades and Combs ere both commissioned for masques composed for noble patrons, connections of the Edgerton family, and performed in 1632 and 1634 respectively. Combs argues for the virtuousness of temperance and chastity. He contributed his pastoral elegy Lucidly to a memorial collection for one of his Cambridge classmates. Drafts of these poems are preserved in Million’s poetry notebook, known as the Trinity Manuscript because it is now kept at Trinity College, Cambridge. In May 1638, Milton embarked upon a tour of France and Italy that lasted up to July or August 1639.
His travels supplemented his study with new and direct experience of artistic and religious traditions, especially Roman Catholicism. He met famous theorists and intellectuals of the time, and was able to display his poetic skills. For specific details of what happened within Million’s “grand tour”, there appears to be just one primary source: Million’s own Defenses Seconds. Although there are other records, including some letters and some references in his other prose tracts, the bulk of the information about the tour comes from a work that, according to Barbara his sterling reputation with the learned of Europe. In [Florence], which I have always admired above all others because of the elegance, to Just of its tongue, but also of its wit, I lingered for about two months. There I at once became the friend of many gentlemen eminent in rank and learning, whose private academies I frequented -? a Florentine institution which deserves great praise not only for promoting humane studies but also for encouraging friendly intercourse. – Million’s account of Florence in Defenses Seconds He first went to Calais, and then on to Paris, riding horseback, with a letter from diplomat Henry Watson to ambassador John Accustomed.
Through Accustomed, Milton met Hugo Grottos, a Dutch law philosopher, playwright and poet. Milton left France non after this meeting. He traveled south, from Nice to Genoa, and then to Lovelorn and Pisa. He reached Florence in July 1638. While there, Milton enjoyed many of the sites and structures of the city. His candor of manner and erudite neo-Latin poetry earned him friends in Florentine intellectual circles, and he met the astronomer Galileo, who was under virtual house arrest at Arctic, as well as others.
Milton probably visited the Florentine Academy and the Academia Della Crusts along with smaller academies in the area including the Apatite and the Spotlight. He left Florence in September to continue to Rome. With the connections from Florence, Milton was able to have easy access to Romeos intellectual society. His poetic abilities impressed those like Giovanni Sailing, who praised Milton within an epigram. In late October, Milton, despite his dislike for the Society of Jesus, attended a dinner given by the English College, Rome, meeting English Catholics who were also guests, theologian Henry Holder and the poet Patrick Cary.
He also attended musical events, including oratorios, operas and melodramas. Milton left for Naples toward the end of November, where he stayed only for a month because of the Spanish intro. During that time he was introduced to Giovanni Battista Manson, patron to both Torque Tasks and to Giovanni Battista Marino. Originally Milton wanted to leave Naples in order to travel to Sicily, and then on to Greece, but he returned to England during the summer of 1639 because of what he claimed, in Defenses Seconds, were “sad tidings of civil war in England. Matters became more complicated when Milton received word that Oddity, his childhood friend, had died. Milton in fact stayed another seven months on the continent, and spent time at Geneva with Diktat’s uncle after he returned to Rome. In Defenses Seconds, Milton proclaimed he was warned against a return to Rome because of his frankness about religion, but he stayed in the city for two months and was able to experience Carnival and meet Lukas Holster, a Vatican librarian, who guided Milton through its collection.
He was introduced to Cardinal Francesco Barbering who invited Milton to an opera hosted by the Cardinal. Around March Milton traveled once again to Florence, staying there for two months, attending further meetings of the academies, and spent time with friends. After leaving Florence he traveled through model of Republicanism, later important in his political writings, but he soon found another model when he traveled to Geneva. From Switzerland, Milton traveled to Paris and then to Calais before finally arriving back in England in either July or August 1639.
Civil War, Prose Tracts, and Marriage On returning to England, where the Bishops’ Wars presaged further armed conflict, Milton began to write prose tracts against episcopacy, in the service of the Puritan and Parliamentary cause. Million’s first foray into polemics was Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England (1641), followed by Of Prelatic Episcopacy, he two defenses of Smuttiness (a group of Presbyterian divines named from their initials: the “TTY” belonged to Million’s old tutor Thomas Young), and The Reason of Church-Government Urged against Prelate.
With frequent passages of real eloquence lighting up the rough controversial style of the period, and deploying a wide knowledge of church history, he vigorously attacked the High-church party of the Church of England and their leader, William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. Though supported by his father’s investments, at this time Milton became a private schoolmaster, educating his nephews and other children of the well-to-do. This experience, and discussions with educational reformer Samuel Hartley, led him to write in 1644 his short tract, Of Education, urging a reform of the national universities.
In June 1643 Milton paid a visit to the manor house at Forest Hill, Exosphere, and returned with a 16-year-old bride, Mary Powell. A month later, finding life difficult with the severe 35-year-old schoolmaster and pamphleteer, Mary returned to her family. Because of the outbreak of the Civil War, she did not return until 1645; in the meantime her desertion prompted Milton, over the next three years, to publish a rise of pamphlets arguing for the legality and morality of divorce. Anna Beer, one of Million’s most recent biographers, points to a lack of evidence and the dangers of cynicism in urging that it was not necessarily the case that the private life so animated the public polemicist. ) In 1643 Milton had a brush with the authorities over these writings, in parallel with Wheezier Woodward, who had more trouble. It was the hostile response accorded the divorce tracts that spurred Milton to write Replicating, his celebrated attack on pre-printing censorship.
Secretary for Foreign Tongues With the parliamentary victory in the Civil War, Milton used his pen in defense of the republican principles represented by the Commonwealth. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) defended popular government and implicitly sanctioned the regicide; Million’s political reputation got him appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues by the Council of State in March 1649. Though Million’s main Job description called upon to produce propaganda for the regime and to serve as a censor.
In October 1649 he published Sensationalist, an explicit defense of the regicide, in response to the Xenon Basilisk, a phenomenal best-seller popularly attributed to Charles I that portrayed the King as an innocent Christian martyr. A month after Milton had tried to break this powerful image of Charles I (the literal translation of Sensationalist is ‘the image breaker’), the exiled Charles II and his party published a defense of monarchy, Defenses Regina Pro Carol Promo, written by the leading humanist Claudia Salamis.
By January of the following year, Milton was ordered to write a defense of the English people by the Council of State. Given the European audience and the English Republic’s desire to establish diplomatic and cultural astigmatic, Milton worked more slowly than usual, as he drew on the learning marshaled by his years of study to compose a riposte. On 24 February 1652 Milton published his Latin defense of the English People, Defenses Pro Populous Anglicans, also known as the First Defense.
Million’s pure Latin prose and evident learning, exemplified in the First Defense, quickly made him a European reputation, and the work ran to numerous editions. In 1654, in response to an anonymous Royalist tract “Regis sanguine clamor”, a work that made many personal attacks on Milton, he completed a second defense of the English nation, Defenses seconds, which praised Oliver Cromwell, now Lord Protector, while exhorting him to remain true to the principles of the Revolution.
Alexander Moors, to whom Milton wrongly attributed the Clamor (in fact by Peter du Million), published an attack on Milton, in response to which Milton published the autobiographical Defenses pro SE in 1655. In addition to these literary defenses of the Commonwealth and his character, Milton continued to translate official correspondence into Latin. By 1654 Milton had become totally blind, probably due to the onset of glaucoma. This forced him to dictate his verse and prose to amanuenses (helpers), one of whom was the poet Andrew Marvel.
One of his best-known sonnets, On His Blindness, is presumed to date from this period. Family Milton and Mary Powell (1625-1652) had four children: Anne (born 7 July 1646) Mary (born 25 October 1648) John (16 March 1651 -June 1652) Deborah (2 May 1652 – His first wife, Mary Powell, died on 5 May 1652 from complications following Deborah birth. Million’s daughters survived to adulthood, but he had always a strained relationship with them. On 12 November 1656, Milton was married again, to Katherine Woodcock.
She died on 3 February 1658, less than four months after giving birth to a daughter, Katherine, Milton married for a third time on 24 February 1662, to Elizabeth Mannishly (1638- 1728), the niece of Thomas Mannishly, a wealthy apothecary and philanthropist in Manchester. Despite a 31 -year age gap, the marriage seemed happy, according to John Aubrey, and was to last more than 11 years until Million’s death. (A plaque on the wall of Numskull’s House in Manchester describes Elizabeth as Million’s “3rd and Best wife” Two nephews, John Phillips and Edward Phillips, were well known as writers.
They ere sons of Million’s sister Anne. John acted as a secretary, and Edward was Million’s first biographer. The Restoration Though Cromwell death in 1658 caused the English Republic to collapse into feuding military and political factions, Milton stubbornly clung to the beliefs that had originally inspired him to write for the Commonwealth. In 1659 he published A Treatise of Civil Power, attacking the concept of a state-dominated church (the position known as Restaurants), as well as Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove hirelings, denouncing corrupt practices in church governance.
As the Republic disintegrated, Milton wrote several proposals to retain a non- monarchical government against the wishes of parliament, soldiers and the people: A Letter to a Friend, Concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth, written in October 1659, was a response to General Lamberts recent dissolution of the Rump Parliament Proposals of certain expedients for the preventing of a civil war now feared, written in November 1659 The Ready and Easy Way to Establishing a Free Commonwealth, in two editions, responded to General Monk’s march towards London to restore the Long Parliament which led to the restoration of the monarchy).
The work is an impassioned, bitter, and futile Jeremiad damning the English people for backsliding from the cause of liberty and advocating the establishment of an authoritarian rule by an oligarchy set up by unelected parliament. Upon the Restoration in May 1660, Milton went into hiding for his life, while a warrant was issued for his arrest and his writings burnt. He re-emerged after a general pardon was issued, but was nevertheless arrested and briefly imprisoned before influential friends, such as Marvel, now an PM, intervened.
On 24 February 1663 Milton remarried, for a third and final time, a Waistcoats, Cheshire-born woman Elizabeth (Betty) Minimums, then aged 24, and spent the remaining decade of his life living quietly in London, only retiring to a cottage – Million’s Cottage – in Cachalot SST. Giles, his only extant home, during the Great Plague of London. Textbook, Art of Logic, and a History of Britain. His only explicitly political tracts were the 1672 Of True Religion, arguing for toleration (except for Catholics), and a translation of a Polish tract advocating an elective monarchy.
Both these works were offered to in the Exclusion debate – the attempt to exclude the heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, from the throne of England because he was Roman Catholic – that would preoccupy politics in the asses and ‘ass and precipitate the formation of the Whig party and the Glorious Revolution. Milton died of kidney failure on 8 November 1674 and was buried in the church of SST Giles Cripplingly; according to an early biographer, his funeral was attended by “his learned and great Friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the Vulgar. Published Poetry Million’s poetry was slow to see the light of day, at least under his name. His first published poem was On Shakespeare (1630), anonymously included in the Second Folio edition of Shakespeare. In the midst of the excitement attending the possibility of establishing a new English government, Milton collected his work in 1645 Poems. The anonymous edition of Combs was published in 1637, and the publication of Lucidly in 1638 in Justas Eduardo King Unafraid was signed J.
M. Otherwise the 1645 collection was the only poetry of his to see print, until Paradise Lost appeared in 1667. Paradise Lost Million’s magnum opus, the blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost, was composed by he blind and impoverished Milton from 1658 to 1664 (first edition) with small but significant revisions published in 1674 (second edition). As a blind poet, Milton dictated his verse to a series of aides in his employ.
It reflects his personal despair at the failure of the Revolution, yet affirms an ultimate optimism in human potential. Milton encoded many references to his unyielding support for the “Good Old Cause”. On 27 April 1667, Milton sold the publication rights to Paradise Lost to publisher Samuel Simmons for E, equivalent to approximately E,400 income in 2008, with a rather E to be paid if and when each print run of between 1,300 and 1,500 copies sold out.