John Milton
John Milton | |
---|---|
Born | Bread Street, Cheapside, London, England | 9 December 1608
Died | 8 November 1674 Bunhill Row, London, England | (aged 65)
Resting place | St Giles-without-Cripplegate |
Alma mater | Christ's College, Cambridge |
Occupations |
|
Spouses | Mary Powell
(m. 1642; died 1652)Katherine Woodcock
(m. 1656; died 1658)Elizabeth Mynshull (m. 1663) |
Children | 5 |
Writing career | |
Language |
|
Period | |
Genres | |
Subject | Religious and political freedom |
Literary movement | |
Notable works | Paradise Lost Areopagitica Lycidas Samson Agonistes |
Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Council of State | |
In office March 1649 – May 1660 | |
Signature | |
John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, and
Milton achieved fame and recognition during his lifetime; his celebrated Areopagitica (1644), written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship, is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. His desire for freedom extended beyond his philosophy and was reflected in his style, which included his introduction of new words (coined from Latin and Ancient Greek) to the English language. He was the first modern writer to employ unrhymed verse outside of the theatre or translations.
Milton is described as the "greatest English author" by his biographer William Hayley,[3] and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language",[4] 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 ... with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind", though he (a Tory) described Milton's politics as those of an "acrimonious and surly republican".[5] Milton was revered by poets such as William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Hardy.
Phases of Milton's life parallel the major historical and political divisions in Stuart England at the time. In his early years, Milton studied at Christ's College, Cambridge, and then travelled, wrote poetry mostly for private circulation, and launched a career as pamphleteer and publicist under Charles I's increasingly autocratic rule and Britain's breakdown into constitutional confusion and ultimately civil war. While once considered dangerously radical and heretical, Milton contributed to a seismic shift in accepted public opinions during his life that ultimately elevated him to public office in England. The Restoration of 1660 and his loss of vision later deprived Milton much of his public platform, but he used the period to develop many of his major works.
Milton's views developed from extensive reading, travel, and experience that began with his days as a student at Cambridge in the 1620s and continued through the English Civil War, which started in 1642 and continued until 1651.[6] By the time of his death in 1674, Milton was impoverished and on the margins of English intellectual life but famous throughout Europe and unrepentant for political choices that placed him at odds with governing authorities.
Early life and education
John Milton was born in Bread Street, London, on 9 December 1608, the son of composer John Milton and his wife Sarah Jeffrey. The senior John Milton (1562–1647) moved to London around 1583 after being disinherited by his devout Catholic father Richard "the Ranger" Milton for embracing Protestantism.[7] In London, the senior John Milton married Sarah Jeffrey (1572–1637) and found lasting financial success as a scrivener.[8] He lived in and worked from a house in Cheapside at Bread Street, where the Mermaid Tavern was located. The elder Milton was noted for his skill as a composer of music, and this talent left his son with a lifelong appreciation for music and friendships with musicians such as Henry Lawes.[9]
The prosperity of Milton's father allowed his eldest son to obtain a private tutor,
Milton's first datable compositions are two psalms written at age 15 at Long Bennington. One contemporary source is Brief Lives of John Aubrey, an uneven compilation including first-hand reports. In the work, Aubrey quotes Christopher, Milton'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". Aubrey adds, "His complexion exceeding faire—he was so faire that they called him the Lady of Christ's College."[11]
In 1625, Milton gained entry to Christ's College at the University of Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA in 1629,[12] ranking fourth of 24 honours graduates that year in the University of Cambridge.[13] Preparing, at that time, to become an Anglican priest, he stayed on at Cambridge where he received his MA on 3 July 1632.
Milton may have been rusticated (suspended) in his first year at Cambridge for quarrelling with his tutor, Bishop William Chappell. He was certainly at home in London in the Lent Term 1626; there he wrote Elegia Prima, his first Latin elegy, to Charles Diodati, a friend from St Paul's. Based on remarks of John Aubrey, Chappell "whipt" Milton.[11] This story is now disputed, though certainly Milton disliked Chappell.[14] Historian Christopher Hill notes that Milton was apparently rusticated, and that the differences between Chappell and Milton may have been either religious or personal.[15] It is also possible that, like Isaac Newton four decades later, Milton was sent home from Cambridge because of the plague, which impacted Cambridge significantly in 1625.
At Cambridge, Milton was on good terms with
Milton also was disdainful of the university curriculum, which consisted of stilted formal debates conducted in Latin on abstruse topics. His own corpus is not devoid of humour, notably his sixth prolusion and his epitaphs on the death of Thomas Hobson. While at Cambridge, he wrote a number of his well-known shorter English poems, including "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity", "Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare" (his first poem to appear in print), L'Allegro, and Il Penseroso.
Study, poetry, and travel
It appears in all his writings that he had the usual concomitant of great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not without some contempt of others; for scarcely any man ever wrote so much, and praised so few. Of his praise he was very frugal; as he set its value high, and considered his mention of a name as a security against the waste of time, and a certain preservative from oblivion.[18]
After receiving his MA, Milton moved to Hammersmith, 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. Hill argues that this was not retreat into a rural idyll; Hammersmith was then a "suburban village" falling into the orbit of London, and even Horton was becoming deforested and suffered from the plague.[19] He read both ancient and modern works of theology, philosophy, history, politics, literature, and science in preparation for a prospective poetical career. Milton'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 1650s while researching his History of Britain, and probably acquired proficiency in Dutch soon after.[20]
Milton continued to write poetry during this period of study; his
In May 1638, accompanied by a manservant, Milton embarked upon a tour of France and Italy for 15 months that lasted until July or August 1639.
He first went to
In [Florence], which I have always admired above all others because of the elegance, not 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.[24]
— Milton's account of Florence in Defensio Secunda
He left Florence in September to continue to Rome. With the connections from Florence, Milton was able to have easy access to Rome's intellectual society. His poetic abilities impressed those like Giovanni Salzilli, who praised Milton within an epigram. In late October, Milton attended a dinner given by the
Originally, Milton wanted to leave Naples in order to travel to
Civil war, prose tracts, and marriage
On returning to England where the
He was supported by his father's investments, but Milton became a private schoolmaster at this time, educating his nephews and other children of the well-to-do. This experience and discussions with educational reformer Samuel Hartlib led him to write his short tract Of Education in 1644, urging a reform of the national universities.
In June 1642, Milton paid a visit to the manor house at Forest Hill, Oxfordshire, and, aged 34, married the 17-year-old Mary Powell.[31][32] The marriage got off to a poor start as Mary did not adapt to Milton's austere lifestyle or get along with his nephews. Milton found her intellectually unsatisfying and disliked the royalist views she had absorbed from her family. It is also speculated that she refused to consummate the marriage. Mary soon returned home to her parents and did not come back until 1645, partly because of the outbreak of the Civil War.[31]
In the meantime, her desertion prompted Milton to publish a series of pamphlets over the next three years arguing for the legality and morality of divorce beyond grounds of adultery. (Anna Beer, author of a 2008 biography of Milton, 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 polemicising.) In 1643, Milton had a brush with the authorities over these writings, in parallel with Hezekiah Woodward, who had more trouble.[33] It was the hostile response accorded the divorce tracts that spurred Milton to write Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parlament of England, his celebrated attack on pre-printing censorship. In Areopagitica, Milton aligns himself with the parliamentary cause, and he also begins to synthesize the ideal of neo-Roman liberty with that of Christian liberty. Milton also courted another woman during this time; we know nothing of her except that her name was Davis and she turned him down. However, it was enough to induce Mary Powell into returning to him which she did unexpectedly by begging him to take her back. They had two daughters in quick succession following their reconciliation.[34][35]
Secretary for Foreign Tongues
With the Parliamentary victory in the Civil War, Milton used his pen in defence of the republican principles represented by the Commonwealth. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) defended the right of the people to hold their rulers to account, and implicitly sanctioned the regicide; Milton's political reputation got him appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues by the Council of State in March 1649. His main job description was to compose the English Republic's foreign correspondence in Latin and other languages, but he also was called upon to produce propaganda for the regime and to serve as a censor.[36]
In October 1649, he published Eikonoklastes, an explicit defence of the regicide, in response to the Eikon Basilike, a phenomenal best-seller popularly attributed to Charles I that portrayed the King as an innocent Christian martyr. A month later the exiled Charles II and his party published the defence of monarchy Defensio Regia pro Carolo Primo, written by leading humanist Claudius Salmasius. By January of the following year, Milton was ordered to write a defence of the English people by the Council of State. Milton worked more slowly than usual, given the European audience and the English Republic's desire to establish diplomatic and cultural legitimacy, as he drew on the learning marshalled by his years of study to compose a riposte.
On 24 February 1652, Milton published his Latin defence of the English people Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, also known as the First Defence. Milton's pure Latin prose and evident learning exemplified in the First Defence quickly made him a European reputation, and the work ran to numerous editions.[38] He addressed his Sonnet 16 to 'The Lord Generall Cromwell in May 1652' beginning "Cromwell, our chief of men ...", although it was not published until 1654.[39]
In 1654, Milton completed the second defence of the English nation Defensio secunda in response to an anonymous Royalist tract "Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum Adversus Parricidas Anglicanos" [The Cry of the Royal Blood to Heaven Against the English Parricides], a work that made many personal attacks on Milton.[40] The second defence praised Oliver Cromwell, now Lord Protector, while exhorting him to remain true to the principles of the Revolution. Alexander Morus, to whom Milton wrongly attributed the Clamor (in fact by Peter du Moulin), published an attack on Milton, in response to which Milton published the autobiographical Defensio pro se in 1655. Milton held the appointment of Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Commonwealth Council of State until 1660, although after he had become totally blind, most of the work was done by his deputies, Georg Rudolph Wecklein, then Philip Meadows, and from 1657 by the poet Andrew Marvell.[41]
By 1652, Milton had become totally blind;[42] the cause of his blindness is debated but bilateral retinal detachment or glaucoma are most likely.[43] His blindness forced him to dictate his verse and prose to amanuenses who copied them out for him; one of these was Andrew Marvell. One of his best-known sonnets, When I Consider How My Light is Spent, titled by a later editor, John Newton, "On His Blindness", is presumed to date from this period.[44]
The Restoration
Cromwell's death in 1658 caused the English Republic to collapse into feuding military and political factions. Milton, however, stubbornly clung to the beliefs that had originally inspired him to write for the Commonwealth. In 1659, he published
- A Letter to a Friend, Concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth, written in October 1659, was a response to General Lambert's 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 Monck'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 oligarchyset up by an unelected parliament.
Upon the
During this period, Milton published several minor prose works, such as the grammar textbook Art of Logic and a History of Britain. His only explicitly political tracts were the 1672 Of True Religion, arguing for
Death
Milton died on 8 November 1674 and was buried in the church of St Giles-without-Cripplegate, Fore Street, London.[47] However, sources differ as to whether the cause of death was consumption or gout.[47][48] 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."[49] A monument was added in 1793, sculpted by John Bacon the Elder.
Family
Milton and his first wife Mary Powell (1625–1652) had four children:[50]
- Anne (born 29 July 1646)
- Mary (born 25 October 1648)
- John (16 March 1651 – June 1652)
- Deborah (2 May 1652 – 10 August 1727[51])
Mary Powell died on 5 May 1652 from complications following Deborah's birth. Milton's daughters survived to adulthood, but he always had a strained relationship with them.
On 12 November 1656, Milton was married to Katherine Woodcock at St Margaret's, Westminster.[52] She died on 3 February 1658, less than four months after giving birth to her daughter Katherine, who also died.
Milton married for a third time on 24 February 1663 to Elizabeth Mynshull or Minshull (1638–1728), the niece of Thomas Mynshull, a wealthy apothecary and philanthropist in Manchester. The marriage took place at St Mary Aldermary in the City of London. Despite a 31-year age gap, the marriage seemed happy, according to John Aubrey, and lasted more than 12 years until Milton's death. (A plaque on the wall of Mynshull's House in Manchester describes Elizabeth as Milton's "3rd and Best wife".) Samuel Johnson, however, claims that Mynshull was "a domestic companion and attendant" and Milton's nephew Edward Phillips relates that Mynshull "oppressed his children in his lifetime, and cheated them at his death".[53]
His nephews, Edward and John Phillips (sons of Milton's sister Anne), were educated by Milton and became writers themselves. John acted as a secretary, and Edward was Milton's first biographer.
Poetry
Milton'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
Paradise Lost
Milton's
On 27 April 1667,[56] Milton sold the publication rights for Paradise Lost to publisher Samuel Simmons for £5 (equivalent to approximately £770 in 2015 purchasing power),[57] with a further £5 to be paid if and when each print run sold out of between 1,300 and 1,500 copies.[58] The first run was a quarto edition priced at three shillings per copy (about £23 in 2015 purchasing power equivalent), published in August 1667, and it sold out in eighteen months.[59]
Milton followed up the publication Paradise Lost with its sequel Paradise Regained, which was published alongside the tragedy Samson Agonistes in 1671. Both of these works also reflect Milton's post-Restoration political situation. Just before his death in 1674, Milton supervised a second edition of Paradise Lost, accompanied by an explanation of "why the poem rhymes not", and prefatory verses by Andrew Marvell. In 1673, Milton republished his 1645 Poems, as well as a collection of his letters and the Latin prolusions from his Cambridge days.
Views
An unfinished religious manifesto, De doctrina christiana, probably written by Milton, lays out many of his heterodox theological views, and was not discovered and published until 1823. Milton's key beliefs were idiosyncratic, not those of an identifiable group or faction, and often they go well beyond the orthodoxy of the time. Their tone, however, stemmed from the Puritan emphasis on the centrality and inviolability of conscience.[60] He was his own man, but he was anticipated by Henry Robinson in Areopagitica.[clarification needed]
Philosophy
While Milton's beliefs are generally considered to be consistent with Protestant Christianity, Stephen Fallon argues that by the late 1650s, Milton may have at least toyed with the idea of
Political thought
Milton was a "passionately individual Christian Humanist poet."[62] He appears on the pages of seventeenth century English Puritanism, an age characterized as "the world turned upside down."[63] He was a Puritan and yet was unwilling to surrender conscience to party positions on public policy. Thus, Milton's political thought, driven by competing convictions, a Reformed faith and a Humanist spirit, led to enigmatic outcomes.
Milton's apparently contradictory stance on the vital problems of his age, arose from religious contestations, to the questions of the divine rights of kings. In both the cases, he seems in control, taking stock of the situation arising from the polarization of the English society on religious and political lines. He fought with the Puritans against the Cavaliers i.e. the King's party, and helped win the day. But the very same constitutional and republican polity, when tried to curtail freedom of speech, Milton, given his humanistic zeal, wrote Areopagitica . . . [sic][64]
‘some of humanity’s first scriptures on freedom of speech.’ 'Allow honest arguments to ignore attacks. It is foolish to doubt the power of education and leave others waiting. Letting it become impossible to cope. I have seen cases where people can refuse to show up and make themselves known in public competitions.[65]
Areopagitica was written in response to the Licensing Order, in November 1644.[66]
Milton's political thought may be best categorized according to respective periods in his life and times. The years 1641–42 were dedicated to church politics and the struggle against episcopacy. After his divorce writings, Areopagitica, and a gap, he wrote in 1649–54 in the aftermath of the execution of Charles I, and in polemic justification of the regicide and the existing Parliamentarian regime. Then in 1659–60 he foresaw the Restoration and wrote to head it off.[67]
Milton's own beliefs were in some cases unpopular, particularly his commitment to republicanism. In coming centuries, Milton would be claimed as an early apostle of liberalism.[68] According to James Tully:
... with Locke as with Milton, republican and contraction conceptions of political freedom join hands in common opposition to the disengaged and passive subjection offered by absolutists such as Hobbes and Robert Filmer.[69]
A friend and ally in the pamphlet wars was
He praised
Nigel Smith writes that... John Streater, and the form of republicanism he stood for, was a fulfilment of Milton's most optimistic ideas of free speech and of public heroism [...][78]
As
Theology
John Milton was neither a clergyman nor a theologian; however, theology, and particularly English Calvinism, formed the palette on which he created his greatest thoughts. Milton wrestled with the great doctrines of the Church amidst the theological crosswinds of his age. The great poet was undoubtedly Reformed (though his grandfather, Richard "the Ranger" Milton had been Roman Catholic).[81][7] However, Milton's Calvinism had to find expression in a broad-spirited Humanism. Like many Renaissance artists before him, Milton attempted to integrate Christian theology with classical modes. In his early poems, the poet narrator expresses a tension between vice and virtue, the latter invariably related to Protestantism. In Comus, Milton may make ironic use of the Caroline court masque by elevating notions of purity and virtue over the conventions of court revelry and superstition. In his later poems, Milton's theological concerns become more explicit.
His use of biblical citation was wide-ranging; Harris Fletcher, standing at the beginning of the intensification of the study of the use of scripture in Milton's work (poetry and prose, in all languages Milton mastered), notes that typically Milton clipped and adapted biblical quotations to suit the purpose, giving precise chapter and verse only in texts for a more specialized readership. As for the plenitude of Milton's quotations from scripture, Fletcher comments, "For this work, I have in all actually collated about twenty-five hundred of the five to ten thousand direct Biblical quotations which appear therein".[82] Milton's customary English Bible was the Authorized King James.[83] When citing and writing in other languages, he usually employed the Latin translation by Immanuel Tremellius, though "he was equipped to read the Bible in Latin, in Greek, and in Hebrew, including the Targumim or Aramaic paraphrases of the Old Testament, and the Syriac version of the New, together with the available commentaries of those several versions".[82]
Milton embraced many heterodox Christian theological views. He has been accused of rejecting the
In his 1641 treatise,
Through the
The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 began a new phase in Milton's work. In Paradise Lost,
Despite the Restoration of the monarchy, Milton did not lose his personal faith; Samson shows how the loss of national salvation did not necessarily preclude the salvation of the individual, while Paradise Regained expresses Milton's continuing belief in the promise of Christian salvation through Jesus Christ.
Though he maintained his personal faith in spite of the defeats suffered by his cause, the
Milton had come to stand apart from all sects, though apparently finding the Quakers most congenial. He never went to any religious services in his later years. When a servant brought back accounts of sermons from nonconformist meetings, Milton became so sarcastic that the man at last gave up his place.
Writing of the enigmatic and often conflicting views of Milton in the Puritan age, David Daiches wrote,
"Christian and Humanist, Protestant, patriot and heir of the golden ages of Greece and Rome, he faced what appeared to him to be the birth-pangs of a new and regenerate England with high excitement and idealistic optimism."[62]
A fair theological summary may be that John Milton was a Puritan, though his tendency to press further for liberty of conscience, sometimes out of conviction and often out of mere intellectual curiosity, made the great man, at least, a vital if not uncomfortable ally in the broader Puritan movement.[64][81]
Religious toleration
Milton called in the
Divorce
Milton wrote The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce in 1643, at the beginning of the English Civil War. In August of that year, he presented his thoughts to the
Milton's thinking on divorce caused him considerable trouble with the authorities. An orthodox Presbyterian view of the time was that Milton's views on divorce constituted a one-man heresy:
The fervently Presbyterian Edwards had included Milton's divorce tracts in his list in Gangraena of heretical publications that threatened the religious and moral fabric of the nation; Milton responded by mocking him as "shallow Edwards" in the satirical sonnet "On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament", usually dated to the latter half of 1646.[95]
Even here, though, his originality is qualified: Thomas Gataker had already identified "mutual solace" as a principal goal in marriage.[96] Milton abandoned his campaign to legitimise divorce after 1645, but he expressed support for polygamy in the De Doctrina Christiana, the theological treatise that provides the clearest evidence for his views.[97]
Milton wrote during a period when thoughts about divorce were anything but simplistic; rather, there was active debate among thinkers and intellectuals at the time. However, Milton's basic approval of divorce within strict parameters set by the biblical witness was typical of many influential Christian intellectuals, particularly the Westminster divines. Milton addressed the Assembly on the matter of divorce in August 1643,[98] at a moment when the Assembly was beginning to form its opinion on the matter. In the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Milton argued that divorce was a private matter, not a legal or ecclesiastical one. Neither the Assembly nor Parliament condemned Milton or his ideas. In fact, when the Westminster Assembly wrote the Westminster Confession of Faith they allowed for divorce ('Of Marriage and Divorce,' Chapter 24, Section 5) in cases of infidelity or abandonment. Thus, the Christian community, at least a majority within the 'Puritan' sub-set, approved of Milton's views.
Nevertheless, reaction among Puritans to Milton's views on divorce was mixed. Herbert Palmer, a member of the Westminster Assembly, condemned Milton in the strongest possible language:
If any plead Conscience ... for divorce for other causes than Christ and His Apostles mention; Of which a wicked booke is abroad and uncensured, though deserving to be burnt, whose Author, hath been so impudent as to set his Name to it, and dedicate it to your selves ... will you grant a Toleration for all this?
— The Glasse of God's Providence Towards His Faithfull Ones, 1644, p. 54.[99]
Palmer expressed his disapproval in a sermon addressed to the Westminster Assembly. The Scottish commissioner Robert Baillie described Palmer's sermon as one "of the most Scottish and free sermons that ever I heard any where."[100]
History
History was particularly important for the political class of the period, and Lewalski considers that Milton "more than most illustrates" a remark of Thomas Hobbes on the weight placed at the time on the classical Latin historical writers Tacitus, Livy, Sallust and Cicero, and their republican attitudes.[101] Milton himself wrote that "Worthy deeds are not often destitute of worthy relaters", in Book II of his History of Britain. A sense of history mattered greatly to him:[102]
The course of human history, the immediate impact of the civil disorders, and his own traumatic personal life, are all regarded by Milton as typical of the predicament he describes as "the misery that has bin since Adam".[103]
Legacy and influence
Once Paradise Lost was published, Milton's stature as epic poet was immediately recognised. He cast a formidable shadow over English poetry in the 18th and 19th centuries; he was often judged equal or superior to all other English poets, including
In 2008, John Milton Passage, a short passage by Bread Street into St Mary-le-Bow Churchyard in London, was unveiled.[108]
Early reception of the poetry
John Dryden, an early enthusiast, in 1677 began the trend of describing Milton as the poet of the sublime.[109] Dryden's The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man: an Opera (1677) is evidence of an immediate cultural influence. In 1695, Patrick Hume became the first editor of Paradise Lost, providing an extensive apparatus of annotation and commentary, particularly chasing down allusions.[110]
In 1732, the classical scholar Richard Bentley offered a corrected version of Paradise Lost.[111] Bentley was considered presumptuous and was attacked in the following year by Zachary Pearce. Christopher Ricks judges that, as critic, Bentley was both acute and wrong-headed, and "incorrigibly eccentric"; William Empson also finds Pearce to be more sympathetic to Bentley's underlying line of thought than is warranted.[112][113]
There was an early, partial translation of Paradise Lost into German by Theodore Haak and based on that a standard verse translation by Ernest Gottlieb von Berge. A subsequent prose translation by Johann Jakob Bodmer was very popular; it influenced Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. The German-language Milton tradition returned to England in the person of the artist Henry Fuseli.
Many Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century revered and commented on Milton's poetry and non-poetical works. In addition to John Dryden, among them were
William Blake
William Blake considered Milton the major English poet. Blake placed Edmund Spenser as Milton's precursor, and saw himself as Milton's poetical son.[117] In his Milton: A Poem in Two Books, Blake uses Milton as a spiritual guide and a symbol of poetic inspiration.[citation needed]
Romantic theory
Edmund Burke was a theorist of the sublime, and he regarded Milton's description of Hell as exemplary of sublimity as an aesthetic concept. For Burke, it was to set alongside mountain-tops, a storm at sea, and infinity.[118] In The Beautiful and the Sublime, he wrote: "No person seems better to have understood the secret of heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expression, in their strongest light, by the force of a judicious obscurity than Milton."[119]
The Romantic poets valued his exploration of blank verse, but for the most part rejected his religiosity. William Wordsworth began his sonnet "London, 1802" with "Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour"[120] and modelled The Prelude, his own blank verse epic, on Paradise Lost. John Keats found the yoke of Milton's style uncongenial;[121] he exclaimed that "Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful or rather artist's humour."[122] Keats felt that Paradise Lost was a "beautiful and grand curiosity", but his own unfinished attempt at epic poetry, Hyperion, was unsatisfactory to the author because, amongst other things, it had too many "Miltonic inversions".[122] In The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar note that Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is, in the view of many critics, "one of the key 'Romantic' readings of Paradise Lost."[123]
Later legacy
The Victorian age witnessed a continuation of Milton's influence. Thomas Carlyle declared him the "moral king of English literature,"[124] while George Eliot[125] and Thomas Hardy were particularly inspired by Milton's poetry and biography. Hostile 20th-century criticism by T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound did not reduce Milton's stature.[126] F. R. Leavis, in The Common Pursuit, responded to the points made by Eliot, in particular the claim that "the study of Milton could be of no help: it was only a hindrance", by arguing, "As if it were a matter of deciding not to study Milton! The problem, rather, was to escape from an influence that was so difficult to escape from because it was unrecognized, belonging, as it did, to the climate of the habitual and 'natural'."[127] Harold Bloom, in The Anxiety of Influence, wrote that "Milton is the central problem in any theory and history of poetic influence in English [...]".[128]
Milton's Areopagitica is still cited as relevant to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.[129] A quotation from Areopagitica—"A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life"—is displayed in many public libraries, including the New York Public Library.
The title of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is derived from a quotation, "His dark materials to create more worlds", line 915 of Book II in Paradise Lost. Pullman was concerned to produce a version of Milton's poem accessible to teenagers,[130] and has spoken of Milton as "our greatest public poet".[131]
Titles of a number of other well-known literary works are also derived from Milton's writings. Examples include Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, Aldous Huxley's Eyeless in Gaza, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, and William Golding's Darkness Visible.[132]
T. S. Eliot believed that "of no other poet is it so difficult to consider the poetry simply as poetry, without our theological and political dispositions ... making unlawful entry".[133]
Literary legacy
Milton's use of blank verse, in addition to his stylistic innovations (such as grandiloquence of voice and vision, peculiar diction and phraseology) influenced later poets. At the time, poetic blank verse was considered distinct from its use in verse drama, and Paradise Lost was taken as a unique exemplar.[134] Said Isaac Watts in 1734, "Mr. Milton is esteemed the parent and author of blank verse among us".[135] "Miltonic verse" might be synonymous for a century with blank verse as poetry, a new poetic terrain independent from both the drama and the heroic couplet.
Lack of rhyme was sometimes taken as Milton's defining innovation. He himself considered the rhymeless quality of Paradise Lost to be an extension of his own personal liberty:
This neglect then of Rhime ... is to be esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing.[136]
This pursuit of freedom was largely a reaction against conservative values entrenched within the rigid heroic couplet.[137] Within a dominant culture that stressed elegance and finish, he granted primacy to freedom, breadth and imaginative suggestiveness, eventually developed into the romantic vision of sublime terror. Reaction to Milton's poetic worldview included, grudgingly, acknowledgement of the poet's resemblance to classical writers (Greek and Roman poetry being unrhymed). Blank verse came to be a recognised medium for religious works and for translations of the classics. Unrhymed lyrics like Collins' Ode to Evening (in the meter of Milton's translation of Horace's Ode to Pyrrha) were not uncommon after 1740.[138]
A second aspect of Milton's blank verse was the use of unconventional rhythm:
His blank-verse paragraph, and his audacious and victorious attempt to combine blank and rhymed verse with paragraphic effect in Lycidas, lay down indestructible models and patterns of English verse-rhythm, as distinguished from the narrower and more strait-laced forms of English metre.[139]
Before Milton, "the sense of regular rhythm ... had been knocked into the English head so securely that it was part of their nature".
Milton's pursuit of liberty extended into his vocabulary as well. It included many Latinate
Musical settings
Milton's ode At a solemn Musick was set for choir and orchestra as Blest Pair of Sirens by Hubert Parry (1848–1918), and Milton's poem On the Morning of Christ's Nativity was set as a large-scale choral work by Cyril Rootham (1875–1938). Milton also wrote the hymn Let us with a gladsome mind, a versification of Psalm 136. His 'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso', with additional material, were magnificently set by Handel (1740).
Works
This section needs additional citations for verification. (April 2017) |
Poetry and drama
- 1629: On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
- 1630: On Shakespeare
- 1631: On Arriving at the Age of Twenty-Three
- 1632: L'Allegro
- 1632: Il Penseroso
- 1634: Comus (a masque)
- 1637: Lycidas
- 1645: Poems of Mr John Milton, Both English and Latin
- 1652: When I Consider How My Light is Spent (Commonly referred to as "On his blindness", though Milton did not use this title)[a]
- 1655: On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
- 1667: Paradise Lost
- 1671: Paradise Regained
- 1671: Samson Agonistes
- 1673: Poems, &c, Upon Several Occasions
- Arcades: a masque. (date is unknown).
- On his Deceased wife, To The Nightingale, On reaching the Age of twenty four.
Prose
- Of Reformation (1641)
- Of Prelatical Episcopacy (1641)
- Animadversions (1641)
- The Reason of Church-Government Urged against Prelaty (1642)
- Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)
- Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643)
- Judgement of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce (1644)
- Of Education (1644)
- Areopagitica (1644)
- Tetrachordon (1645)
- Colasterion (1645)
- The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)
- Eikonoklastes (1649)
- Defensio pro Populo Anglicano [First Defence] (1651)
- Defensio Secunda [Second Defence] (1654)
- A Treatise of Civil Power (1659)
- The Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings from the Church (1659)
- The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660)
- Brief Notes Upon a Late Sermon (1660)
- Accedence Commenced Grammar (1669)
- The History of Britain (1670)
- Artis logicae plenior institutio [Art of Logic] (1672)
- Of True Religion (1673)
- Epistolae Familiaries (1674)
- Prolusiones (1674)
- A brief History of Moscovia, and other less known Countries lying Eastward of Russia as far as Cathay, gathered from the writings of several Eye-witnesses (1682)
- De Doctrina Christiana (1823)
Notes
- ^ "When I consider how my light is spent" is one of the best known of Milton's sonnets. The last three lines (concluding with "They also serve who only stand and wait") are particularly well known, though rarely in context. The poem may have been written as early as 1652, although most scholars believe it was composed sometime between June and October 1655, when Milton's blindness was essentially complete.
References
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- ^ Rogers, John. "Paradise Lost, Book I". YouTube. Archived from the original on 30 October 2021.
- ^ McCalman 2001 p. 605.
- ^ Contemporary Literary Criticism. "Milton, John – Introduction" Archived 1 December 2009 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Murphy, Arthur (1837). The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: An essay on the life and genius of Samuel Johnson. New York, NY: George Dearborn.
- ^ Masson 1859 pp. v–vi.
- ^ a b Jenks, Tudor (1905). In the Days of Milton. New York: A.S. Barnes & Company. pp. 35–36.
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- ^ Lewalski 2003 p. 3.
- ^ Skerpan-Wheeler, Elizabeth. "John Milton." British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500–1660: Second Series. Ed. Edward A. Malone. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Dictionary of Literary Biography Vol. 281. Literature Resource Center.
- ^ a b Dick 1962 pp. 270–275.
- ^ "Milton, John (MLTN624J)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ Hunter 1980 p. 99.
- ^ Wedgwood 1961 p. 178.
- ^ Hill 1977 p. 34.
- ^ Pfeiffer, Robert H. (April 1955). "The Teaching of Hebrew in Colonial America". The Jewish Quarterly Review. pp. 363–73
- ^ Milton 1959 pp. 887–888.
- ^ Johnson 1826 Vol. I. p. 64.
- ^ Hill 1977 p. 38.
- ^ Lewalski 2003 p. 103.
- ^ Chaney 1985 and 2000.
- ^ Lewalski 2003 pp. 87–88.
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- ^ Milton 1959 Vol. IV part I. pp. 615–617.
- ^ Chaney 1985 and 2000 and Lewalski p. 96.
- ^ Chaney 1985 p. 244–251 and Chaney 2000 p. 313.
- ^ Lewalski 2003 pp. 94–98.
- ^ Lewalski 2003 p. 98.
- ^ Milton 1959 Vol. IV part I pp. 618–619.
- ^ Lewalski 2003 pp. 99–109.
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/18800. Retrieved 25 October 2013. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ Lobel 1957 pp. 122–134.
- ^ Lewalski 2003 pp. 181–182, 600.
- ^ Ann Hughes, 'Milton, Areopagitica, and the Parliamentary Cause', The Oxford Handbook of Milton, ed. Nicholas McDowell and Nigel Smith, Oxford University Press, 2009
- ^ Blair Hoxby, 'Areopagitica and Liberty', The Oxford Handbook of Milton, ed. Nicholas McDowell and Nigel Smith, Oxford University Press, 2009
- ^ C. Sullivan, 'Milton and the Beginning of Civil Service', in Literature in the Public Service (2013), Ch. 2.
- ^ Stephen, Leslie (1894). "Milton, John (1608-1674)". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 38. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 32.
- ^ von Maltzahn 1999 p. 239.
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- ^ "Milton appointed Latin Secretary | History Today". www.historytoday.com. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
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- ^ "Milton's Works". Milton's Works. Christ's College Cambridge. 3 February 2017. Archived from the original on 4 February 2017. Retrieved 3 February 2017.
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- ^ a b Walter Thornbury, 'Cripplegate', in Old and New London: Volume 2 (London, 1878), pp. 229-245. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol2/pp229-245 Archived 9 July 2020 at the Wayback Machine [accessed 7 July 2020].
- ^ "John Milton - Samson Agonistes". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 14 September 2021.
- ^ Toland 1932 p. 193.
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- ^ The Monthly Mirror: Reflecting Men and Manners. Edinburgh: Harding & Wright. 1810. p. 49 – via Google Books.
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- ^ Johnson 1826 Vol. I 86.
- ^ Flood, Alison, When Milton met Shakespeare: poet's notes on Bard appear to have been found Archived 18 September 2019 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian, 16 September 2019
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- ^ See, for instance, Barker, Arthur. Milton and the Puritan Dilemma, 1641–1660. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1942: 338 and passim; Wolfe, Don M. Milton in the Puritan Revolution. New York: T. Nelson and Sons, 1941: 19.
- ^ Stephen Fallon, Milton Among the Philosophers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 81.
- ^ a b Daiches, David (1960). A Critical History of English Literature, Vol. I. London: Seeker & Warburg. p. 457.
- ISBN 978-0140137323.
- ^ a b Khan, Abdul Hamid (July–September 2016). "The Conflict of Puritanism in Milton: An Analysis" (PDF). The Dialogue. XI: 355–356 – via Qurtuba University.
- )
- ^ Pepine, Mara. "Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parlament of England". European Liberal Forum. Retrieved 2 August 2022.
- ^ Blair Worden, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell and Marchamont Nedham (2007), p. 154.
- ^ Milton and Republicanism, ed. David Armitage, Armand Himy, and Quentin Skinner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
- ^ James Tully, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts (1993), p. 301.
- ^ Austin Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate (1982), p. 34.
- ^ Worden p. 149.
- ^ Austin Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate (1982), p. 101.
- G. E. Aylmer(editor), The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement 1646–1660 (1972), p. 17.
- ^ Christopher Hill, God's Englishman (1972 edition), p. 200.
- ^ To S r Henry Vane the younger. – The Poetical Works of John Milton.
- Project MUSE 23648.
- ^ William Riley Parker and Gordon Campbell, Milton (1996), p. 444.
- ^ Nigel Smith, Popular Republicanism in the 1650s: John Streater's 'heroick mechanics', p. 154, in David Armitage, Armand Himy, Quentin Skinner (editors), Milton and Republicanism (1998).
- ^ Blair Worden, Literature and Politics in Cromwellian England: John Milton, Andrew Marvell and Marchamont Nedham (2007), Ch. 14, Milton and the Good Old Cause.
- ^ Austin Woolrych, Last Quest for Settlement 1657–1660, p. 202, in G. E. Aylmer (editor), The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement 1646–1660 (1972), p. 17.
- ^ ISBN 978-0813122915.
- ^ JSTOR 27703025.
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- ^ Lewalski, Life of Milton, p. 253.
- ^ William Bridges Hunter, A Milton Encyclopedia (1980), Vol. VIII, p. 13.
- ^ John Milton, The Prose Works of John Milton: With a Biographical Introduction by Rufus Wilmot Griswold. In Two Volumes (Philadelphia: John W. Moore, 1847). Vol. 1. The Prose Works of John Milton, Biographical introduction
- ^ W.F. Draper, "The Religious Life and Opinions of John Milton." In "The Bibliotheca Sacra and Biblical Repository," Volume 17 (1860) p. 38.
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- ^ Walter S. H. Lim, John Milton, Radical Politics, and Biblical Republicanism (2006), p. 141.
- ^ John Rogers, The Matter of Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. xi.
- ^ Hill, C. Milton and the English Revolution. Faber & Faber. 1977. pp. 155–157
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- ^ "Nicholas McDowell, Family Politics; Or, How John Phillips Read His Uncle's Satirical Sonnets, Milton Quarterly Vol. 42 Issue 1, pp. 1–21. Published online: 17 April 2008".[permanent dead link]
- ^ Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (1977), p. 127.
- ^ John Milton, The Christian Doctrine in Complete Poems and Major Prose, ed. Merritt Hughes (Hackett: Indianapolis, 2003), pp. 994–1000; Leo Miller, John Milton among the Polygamophiles (New York: Loewenthal Press, 1974).
- ^ "Milton: Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce - Notes". Archived from the original on 4 July 2013. Retrieved 10 May 2013.
- ^ Ernest Sirluck, "Introduction", Complete Prose Works of John Milton, New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1959, II, 103
- ^ Baillie, Letters and Journals, Edinburgh, 1841, II, 220.
- ^ Lewalski, Life of Milton, p. 199.
- ^ Nicholas Von Maltzahn, Milton's History of Britain: republican historiography in the English Revolution, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991
- ^ Timothy Kenyon, Utopian Communism and Political Thought in Early Modern England (1989), p. 34.
- ^ Kevin Sharpe, Remapping Early Modern England: The Culture of Seventeenth-century Politics (2000), p. 7.
- J. P. Kenyon, Revolution Principles (1977), p. 77.
- ISBN 978-0195315882, pp. 51, 136ff
- ^ Zagorin, Perez (2002). "The World of Milton Scholarship". Virginia Quarterly Review. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
- ISBN 978-0745953106.
- ^ Al-Zubi, Hasan A. (2007). "Audience and human nature in the poetry of Milton and Dryden/Milton ve Dryden'in siirlerinde izleyici ve insan dogasi". Archived from the original on 24 January 2011. Retrieved 9 December 2008 – via Find Articles.
- ^ Joseph M. Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age (1994), p. 247.
- ^ "Online text of one book". Andromeda.rutgers.edu. Retrieved 4 January 2010.
- ^ Christopher Ricks, Milton's Grand Style (1963), pp. 9, 14, 57.
- ^ William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral (1974 edition), p. 147.
- ^ Nos 267, 273, 279, 285, 291, 297, 303, 309, 315, 321, 327, 333, 339, 345, 351, 357, 363, and 369.
- ^ Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton's Paradise Lost (1734).
- ^ Voltaire, Le Siecle de Louis XIV 2, Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1966, p.66.
- ^ S. Foster Damon, A Blake Dictionary (1973), p. 274.
- ^ Bill Beckley, Sticky Sublime (2001), p. 63.
- ^ Part II, Section I: Adelaide.edu.au .
- ^ "Francis T. Palgrave, ed. (1824–1897). The Golden Treasury. 1875". Bartleby.com. Retrieved 4 January 2010.
- ^ Thomas N. Corns, A Companion to Milton (2003), p. 474.
- ^ ISBN 0198186347.
- ^ Cited from the original in J. Paul Hunter (editor), Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1996), p. 225.
- ^ Birrell, Augustine (1887). "John Milton". Obiter Dicta: Second Series.
- ^ Nardo, Anna K. George Eliot's Dialogue with Milton.
- ^ Printz-Påhlson, Göran. Letters of Blood and Other Works in English. [1] Archived 25 December 2022 at the Wayback Machine pp. 10–14
- ISBN 978-0-571-28122-0.
- ^ Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A theory of poetry (1997), p. 33.
- ^ "Milton's Areopagitica and the Modern First Amendment by Vincent Blasi". Nationalhumanitiescenter.org. Archived from the original on 14 December 2007. Retrieved 4 January 2010.
- ^ "Imitating Milton: The Legacy of Paradise Lost". University of Cambridge. Archived from the original on 1 February 2008. Retrieved 4 January 2010.
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- ^ Rosen, J. "Return to Paradise". The New Yorker, 2 June 2008, pp. 72–76.
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- ^ Saintsbury 1908 ii. 443.
- ^ Watts 1810 iv. 619.
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- ^ Dexter 1922 p. 46.
- ^ Saintsbury 1908 ii. 457.
- ^ Saintsbury 1916 p. 101.
- ^ Johnson 1751 no. 86.
- ^ Dexter 1922 p. 57.
- ^ Saintsbury 1908 ii. 458–459.
- ^ Dexter 1922 p. 59.
- ^ Saintsbury 1916 p. 114.
- ^ Gray 1748 Observations on English Metre.
- OCLC 1530446.
- ^ They included "self-same", "hue", "minstrelsy", "murky", "carol", and "chaunt". Among Milton's naturalized Latin words were "humid", "orient", "hostil", "facil", "fervid", "jubilant", "ire", "bland", "reluctant", "palpable", "fragil", and "ornate". Peck 1740 pp. 110–111.
- ^ Scott 1785 63.
- ^ Saintsbury 1908 ii. 468.
Sources
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- Dexter, Raymond. The Influence of Milton on English Poetry. London: Kessinger Publishing. 1922
- Dick, Oliver Lawson. Aubrey's Brief Lives. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1962.
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- Milner, Andrew. John Milton and the English Revolution: A Study in the Sociology of Literature. London: Macmillan, 1981.
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- Rosenfeld, Nancy. The Human Satan in Seventeenth-Century English Literature: From Milton to Rochester. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.
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External links
- Works by John Milton in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
- Works by John Milton at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about John Milton at Internet Archive
- Works by John Milton at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)