INTRODUCTION

LIFE OF MILTON.

MILTON'S life falls into three clearly defined divisions. The first period ends with the poet's return from Italy in 1639; the second at the Restoration in 1660, when release from the fetters of politics enabled him to remind the world that he was a great poet; the third is brought to a close with his death in 1674. Paradise Lost belongs to the last of these periods; but we propose to summarise briefly the main events of all three.

John Milton was born on December 9, 1608, in London. He came, in his own words, ex genere honesto. A family of Miltons had been settled in Oxfordshire since the reign of Elizabeth. The poet's father had been educated at an Oxford school, possibly as a chorister in one of the College choir-schools, and imbibing Anglican sympathies had conformed to the Established Church. For this he was disinherited by his Roman Catholic father. He settled in London, following the profession of scrivener. A scrivener combined the occupations of lawyer and law-stationer. It appears to have been a lucrative calling; certainly John Milton (the poet was named after the father) attained to easy circumstances. He married about 1600, and had six children, of whom several died young. The third child was the poet.

The elder Milton was evidently a man of considerable culture, in particular an accomplished musician, and a composer whose madrigals were deemed worthy of being printed side by side with those of Byrd, Orlando Gibbons and other leading musicians of the time. To him, no doubt, the poet owed the love of music of which we see frequent indications in

the poems1. Realising, too, that in his son lay the promise and possibility of future greatness, John Milton took the utmost pains to have the boy adequately educated; and the lines Ad Patrem show that the ties of affection between father and child were of more than ordinary closeness.

Milton was sent to St Paul's School about the year 1620. Here two influences, apart from those of ordinary school-life, may have affected him particularly. The headmaster was a good English scholar; he published a grammar containing many extracts from English poets, notably Spenser; it is reasonable to assume that he had not a little to do with the encouragement and guidance of Milton's early taste for English poetry. Also, the founder of St Paul's School, Colet, had prescribed as part of the school-course the study of certain early Christian writers, whose influence is said to be directly traceable in Milton's poems and may in some cases have suggested his choice of sacred themes. While at St Paul's, Milton also had a tutor at home, Thomas Young, a Scotchman, afterwards an eminent Puritan divine--the inspirer, doubtless, of much of his pupil's Puritan sympathies. And Milton enjoyed the signal advantage of growing up in the stimulating atmosphere of cultured home-life. Most men do not realise that the word 'culture' signifies anything very definite or desirable before they pass to the University; for Milton, however, home-life meant, from the first, not only broad interests and refinement, but active encouragement towards literature and study. In 1625 he left St Paul's. Of his extant English poems3 only one, On the

1 Milton was very fond of the organ; see Il Penseroso, 161, note. During his residence at Horton Milton made occasional journeys to London to hear, and obtain instruction (probably from Henry Lawes) in, music. It was an age of great musical development. See "Milton's Knowledge of Music" by Mr W. H. Hadow, in Milton Memorial Lectures (1908).

2 See the paper "Milton as Schoolboy and Schoolmaster" by Mr A. F. Leach, read before the British Academy, Dec. 10, 1908. 3 His paraphrases of Psalms cxiv. cxxxvi. scarcely come under this heading. Aubrey says in his quaint Life of Milton: "Anno Domini 1619 he was ten yeares old, as by his picture [the portrait by Cornelius Jansen] and was then a poet."