John Milton
John Milton (December 9, 1608 - November 8, 1674) was an English poet, most famous for his blank verse epic Paradise Lost.
He was the son of a scrivener of strong Puritan
tendencies, and was educated at St. Paul's School,
London, and at Christ's College, Cambridge (1625-32).
While still at Cambridge he wrote some fine poems,
among them the "Ode on the Morning of Christ's
Nativity" and the octosyllabics L'Allegro and Il Penseroso.
He was originally destined to a ministerial
career, but his independent spirit led him to
"prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of
speaking bought and begun with servitude and
forswearing." He spent five quiet years at Horton
in Buckinghamshire, reading and writing. To this
period belong "Arcades",
"Comus", and "Lycidas", all breathing the lofty spirit
of his religious convictions.
In 1638 and 1639 he
traveled on the continent, coming into contact with
such men as Grotius, Galileo, and Lucas Holete,
but was recalled by a rumor of the outbreak of
the armed struggle for liberty at home.
The next
twenty years of his life were devoted almost entirely
to prose work in the service of the Puritan cause.
In 1641 and 1642 appeared his tractates
Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England, Of
Prelatical Episcopacy, the two defenses of Smectymnuus,
and The Reason of Church Government Urged
against Prelaty. With frequent passages of real
eloquence lighting up the rough controversial style
of the period, and with a wide knowledge of
ecclesiastical antiquity, he struck weighty blows at the
intolerant High-church party which seemed to
dominate the Church of England.
The ill-success
of his first marriage, with the daughter of a Royalist
squire in Oxfordshire, who left him in a month,
led him to write four tracts dealing with divorce,
the first entitled The Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce, attacking the English marriage law as it had
been taken over almost unchanged from medieval
Catholicism, and sanctioning divorce on the ground
of incompatibility or childlessness.
His intercourse
with Hartlib and Comenius led him to write in 1644
a short tract on Education, urging a reform of the
national universities; and in the same year
appeared the most popular of his prose writings,
Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed
Printing.
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates
(1649) announced his adhesion to the cause of the
Commonwealth, to which he was made Latin
secretary in March. As part of his duties in this post,
he wrote his Eikonoklastes (1649) in reply to the
Eikon basilike popularly attributed to Charles I,
the first Pro populo Anglicano defensio (1651) against
Salmasius, and in 1654 his Defensio secunda and
Pro se defensio; and his fine Latin style was of
great avail for the drafting of the state papers which
passed between Oliver Cromwell's government and the
continent.
His incessant labours cost him his eyesight,
but he retained his office until the Restoration.
He 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, to be followed by the much
inferior Paradise Regained, together with Samson
Agonistes, a drama on the Greek model, in 1671.
Milton's religious position, partially expressed in
the treatises named above and in his Civil Power in
Ecclesiastical Causes and Considerations touching
the Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings out of
the Church (1659), is most clearly seen in his
posthumous De doctrine Christiana, the
manuscript of which, long lost, was discovered only
in 1823.
His point of view is entirely subjective
and individualistic; his faith is deduced from
Scripture by the inner illumination of the Spirit,
not tied to human traditions. It is not therefore
surprising to find him taking his own view on the
Trinity, the divinity of Christ and the Holy Ghost,
predestination, the creation of the world, etc., as
also in regard to practical questions such as
marriage, infant baptism, and the observance of
Sunday.
What he attempts to give is not a complete
scientific treatment in the modern sense but an
exposition of the clear and universally acceptable
teaching of scripture. In many points he is the
prophet and herald of a new era, a Protestant
individualist and idealist, as well as a typical figure
for the revolutionary cause to which he devoted the
best powers of his life.
Works
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Referenced By
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