9 December 1608 A.D. John Milton
Born—Anglican-Turn-Presbyterian-Turn-Independentist; Poet,
Pamphleteer, Historian, Author of Paradise
Lost (1667), Paradise Regained (1671),
Samson Agonistes (1671)
John Milton, (born Dec. 9,
1608, London, Eng.—died Nov. 8?,
1674, London?), English poet, pamphleteer, and historian, considered
the most significant English author after William Shakespeare.
Milton
is best known for Paradise Lost,
widely regarded as the greatest epic poem in English. Together
with Paradise Regained
and Samson Agonistes,
it confirms Milton’s reputation as one of the greatest English poets. In his
prose works Milton advocated the abolition of the Church of England and the execution of King
Charles I. From the beginning of
the English Civil Wars
in 1642 to long after the restoration of Charles II as king in 1660, he
espoused in all his works a political philosophy that opposed tyranny and
state-sanctioned religion. His influence extended
not only through the civil wars and interregnum but also to the American and
French revolutions. In his works on theology, he valued liberty of
conscience, the paramount importance of Scripture as a guide in matters of
faith, and religious toleration toward dissidents. As a civil servant, Milton
became the voice of the English Commonwealth after 1649 through his handling of
its international correspondence and his defense of the government against polemical attacks
from abroad.
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Milton’s paternal grandfather, Richard, was a staunch
Roman Catholic who expelled his son John, the poet’s father, from the family
home in Oxfordshire for reading an English (i.e., Protestant) Bible. Banished
and disinherited, Milton’s father established in London a business as a
scrivener, preparing documents for legal transactions. He was also a
moneylender, and he negotiated with creditors to arrange for loans on behalf of
his clients. He and his wife, Sara Jeffrey, whose father was a merchant tailor,
had three children who survived their early years: Anne, the oldest, followed
by John and Christopher. Though Christopher became a lawyer, a Royalist, and
perhaps a Roman Catholic, he maintained throughout his life a cordial
relationship with his older brother. After the Stuart monarchy was restored in
1660, Christopher, among others, may have interceded to prevent the execution
of his brother.
The
elder John Milton, who fostered cultural interests as a musician and composer,
enrolled his son John at St. Paul’s School, probably in 1620, and employed
tutors to supplement his son’s formal education. Milton was privately tutored
by Thomas Young, a Scottish Presbyterian who may have influenced his gifted
student in religion and politics while they maintained contact across
subsequent decades. At St. Paul’s Milton befriended Charles
Diodati, a fellow student who would become his confidant through young
adulthood. During his early years, Milton may have heard sermons by the poet John Donne, dean of St. Paul’s
Cathedral, which was within view of his school. Educated in Latin and Greek
there, Milton in due course acquired proficiency in other languages, especially
Italian, in which he composed some sonnets and which he spoke as proficiently
as a native Italian, according to the testimony of Florentines whom he
befriended during his travel abroad in 1638–39.
Milton enrolled at Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1625,
presumably to be educated for the ministry. A year later he was “rusticated,”
or temporarily expelled, for a period of time because of a conflict with one of
his tutors, the logician William Chappell. He was later reinstated under
another tutor, Nathaniel Tovey. In 1629 Milton was awarded a Bachelor of Arts
degree, and in 1632 he received a Master of Arts degree. Despite his initial
intent to enter the ministry, Milton did not do so, a situation that has not been
fully explained. Possible reasons are that Milton lacked respect for his fellow
students who were planning to become ministers but whom he considered
ill-equipped academically or that his Puritan inclinations, which became more
radical as he matured, caused him to dislike the hierarchy of the established
church and its insistence on uniformity of worship; perhaps, too, his
self-evident disaffection impelled the Church of England to reject him for the
ministry.
Overall,
Milton was displeased with Cambridge, possibly because study there emphasized Scholasticism, which he found
stultifying to the imagination. Moreover, in correspondence with a former tutor
at St. Paul’s School, Alexander Gill, Milton complained about a lack of
friendship with fellow students. They called him the “Lady of Christ’s
College,” perhaps because of his fair complexion, delicate features, and auburn
hair. Nonetheless, Milton excelled academically. At Cambridge he composed
several academic exercises called prolusions, which were
presented as oratorical performances in the manner of a debate. In such
exercises, students applied their learning in logic and rhetoric, among other
disciplines. Milton authorized publication of seven of his prolusions, composed
and recited in Latin, in 1674, the year of his death.
In
1632, after seven years at Cambridge, Milton returned to his family home, now
in Hammersmith, on the outskirts of London. Three years later, perhaps because
of an outbreak of the plague, the family relocated to
a more pastoral setting, Horton, in Buckinghamshire. In these two locations,
Milton spent approximately six years in studious retirement, during which he
read Greek and Latin authors chiefly. Without gainful employment, Milton was
supported by his father during this period.
Travel abroad
In
1638, accompanied by a manservant, Milton undertook a tour of the Continent for
about 15 months, most of which he spent in Italy, primarily Rome and Florence.
The Florentine academies especially appealed to Milton, and he befriended young
members of the Italian literati, whose similar humanistic interests he found
gratifying. Invigorated by their admiration for him, he corresponded with his
Italian friends after his return to England, though he never saw them again.
While in Florence, Milton also met with Galileo, who was under virtual house
arrest. The circumstances of this extraordinary meeting, whereby a young
Englishman about 30 years old gained access to the aged and blind astronomer,
are unknown. (Galileo would become the only contemporary whom Milton mentioned
by name in Paradise Lost.) While in Italy, Milton learned of the death
in 1638 of Charles Diodati, his closest boyhood companion from St. Paul’s
School, possibly a victim of the plague; he also learned of impending civil war
in England, news that caused him to return home sooner than anticipated. Back
in England, Milton took up residence in London, not far from Bread Street,
where he had been born. In his household were John and Edward Phillips—sons of
his sister, Anne—whom he tutored. Upon his return he composed an elegy in Latin, “Epitaphium Damonis” (“Damon’s Epitaph”), which commemorated
Diodati.
Early translations and poems
By the time he
returned to England in 1639, Milton had manifested remarkable talent as a
linguist and translator and extraordinary versatility as a poet. While at St.
Paul’s, as a 15-year-old student, Milton had translated Psalm 114 from the
original Hebrew, a text that recounts the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt.
This translation into English was a poetic paraphrase in heroic
couplets (rhymed iambic pentameter), and later he translated and
paraphrased the same psalm into Greek. Beginning such work early in his
boyhood, he continued it into adulthood, especially from 1648 to 1653, a period
when he was also composing pamphlets against the Church of England and the
monarchy. Also in his early youth Milton composed letters in Latin verse. These
letters, which range over many topics, are called elegies because they employ
elegiac metre—a verse form, Classical in origin, that consists of couplets, the
first line dactylic hexameter, the second dactylic pentameter. Milton’s first elegy,
“Elegia prima ad Carolum Diodatum,” was a letter to Diodati, who was a student
at Oxford while Milton attended Cambridge. But Milton’s letter was written from
London in 1626, during his period of rustication; in the poem he anticipates
his reinstatement, when he will “go back to the reedy fens of the Cam and
return again to the hum of the noisy school.”
Another early poem
in Latin is “In Quintum Novembris” (“On
the Fifth of November”), which Milton composed in 1626 at Cambridge.
The poem celebrates the anniversary of the failed Gunpowder
Plot of 1605, when Guy Fawkes was discovered preparing to detonate
explosives at the opening of Parliament, an event in which King James
I and his family would participate. On the event’s
anniversary, university students typically composed poems that attacked Roman
Catholics for their involvement in treachery of this kind. The papacy and the
Catholic nations on the Continent also came under attack. Milton’s poem
includes two larger themes that would later inform Paradise Lost: that
the evil perpetrated by sinful humankind may be counteracted by Providence and
that God will bring greater goodness out of evil. Throughout his career, Milton
inveighed against Catholicism, though during his travels in Italy in 1638–39 he
developed cordial personal relationships with Catholics, including high-ranking
officials who oversaw the library at the Vatican.
In 1628 Milton
composed an occasional poem, “On the Death of a Fair
Infant Dying of a Cough,” which mourns the loss of his niece Anne, the daughter
of his older sister. Milton tenderly commemorates the child, who was two years
old. The poem’s conceits, Classical allusions, and theological overtones emphasize that the child
entered the supernal realm because the human condition, having been enlightened
by her brief presence, was ill-suited to bear her any longer.
In this early
period, Milton’s principal poems included “On
the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” “On
Shakespeare,” and the so-called companion poems “L’Allegro” and “Il
Penseroso.” Milton’s sixth elegy (“Elegia sexta”), a verse letter in Latin sent to Diodati in December
1629, provides valuable insight into his conception of “On the Morning of
Christ’s Nativity.” Informing Diodati of his literary activity, Milton recounts
that he is
singing
the heaven-descended King, the bringer of peace, and the blessed times promised
in the sacred books—the infant cries of our God and his stabling under a mean
roof who, with his Father, governs the realms above.
The advent of the
Christ child, he continues, results in the pagan gods being “destroyed in their
own shrines.” In effect, Milton likens Christ to the source of light that, by
dispelling the darkness of paganism, initiates the onset of Christianity and silences the pagan oracles. Milton’s summary in the sixth elegy makes
clear his central argument in “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”: that the
Godhead’s descent and humiliation is crucial to the Christ child’s triumph.
Through this exercise of humility, the Godhead on behalf of humankind becomes
victorious over the powers of death and darkness.
“On
Shakespeare,” though composed in 1630, first appeared anonymously as one of the
many encomiums in the Second Folio (1632) of Shakespeare’s
plays. It was Milton’s first published poem in English. In the 16-line epigram Milton contends that no man-made monument is a suitable tribute to
Shakespeare’s achievement. According to Milton, Shakespeare himself created the
most enduring monument to befit his genius: the readers of the plays, who,
transfixed with awe and wonder, become living monuments, a process renewed at
each generation through the panorama of time. “L’Allegro”
and “Il
Penseroso,” written about 1631, may reflect the dialectic that
informed the prolusions that Milton composed at Cambridge. The former
celebrates the activities of daytime, and the latter muses on the sights,
sounds, and emotions associated with darkness. The former describes a lively
and sanguine personality, whereas the latter dwells on a pensive, even
melancholic, temperament. In their complementary interaction, the poems may
dramatize how a wholesome personality blends aspects of mirth and melancholy.
Some commentators suggest that Milton may be allegorically portraying his own
personality in “Il Penseroso” and Diodati’s more outgoing and carefree
disposition in “L’Allegro.” If such is the case, then in their friendship
Diodati provided the balance that offset Milton’s marked temperament of
studious retirement.
Milton’s most
important early poems, Comus and “Lycidas,” are major literary achievements, to the extent that his
reputation as an author would have been secure by 1640 even without his later
works. Comus, a dramatic entertainment, or masque,
is also called A Mask; it was first published as A Maske Presented at
Ludlow Castle in 1638, but, since the late 17th century, it has typically
been called by the name of its most vivid character, the villainous Comus.
Performed in 1634 on Michaelmas (September 29) at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, Comus
celebrates the installation of John Egerton, earl of Bridgewater and Viscount
Brackley and a member of Charles I’s Privy Council, as lord president of Wales.
In addition to various English and Welsh dignitaries, the installation was
attended by Egerton’s wife and children; the latter—Alice (15 years old), John
(11), and Thomas (9)—all had parts in the dramatic entertainment. Other
characters include Thyrsis, an attendant spirit to the children; Sabrina, a
nymph of the River Severn; and Comus, a necromancer and seducer. Henry
Lawes, who played the part of Thyrsis, was a musician and composer,
the music teacher of the Egerton children, and the composer of the music for
the songs of Comus. Presumably Lawes invited Milton to write the masque, which not only consists of songs and dialogue but also features dances,
scenery, and stage properties.
The masque develops
the theme of a journey through the woods by the three Egerton children, in the
course of which the daughter, called “the Lady,” is separated from her
brothers. While alone, she encounters Comus, who is disguised as a villager and
who claims that he will lead her to her brothers. Deceived by his amiable
countenance, the Lady follows him, only to be victimized by his necromancy.
Seated on an enchanted chair, she is immobilized, and Comus accosts her while
with one hand he holds a necromancer’s wand and with the other he offers a
vessel with a drink that would overpower her. Within view at his palace is an
array of cuisine intended to arouse the Lady’s appetites and desires. Despite
being restrained against her will, she continues to exercise right reason (recta
ratio) in her disputation with Comus, thereby manifesting her
freedom of mind. Whereas the would-be seducer argues that appetites and desires
issuing from one’s nature are “natural” and therefore licit, the Lady contends
that only rational self-control is enlightened and virtuous. To be
self-indulgent and intemperate, she adds, is to forfeit one’s higher nature and
to yield to baser impulses. In this debate the Lady and Comus signify,
respectively, soul and body, ratio and libido, sublimation and
sensualism, virtue and vice, moral rectitude and immoral depravity. In line
with the theme of the journey that distinguishes Comus, the Lady has
been deceived by the guile of a treacherous character, temporarily waylaid, and
besieged by sophistry that is disguised as wisdom. As she continues to assert
her freedom of mind and to exercise her free will by resistance, even defiance,
she is rescued by the attendant spirit and her brothers. Ultimately, she and
her brothers are reunited with their parents in a triumphal celebration, which
signifies the heavenly bliss awaiting the wayfaring soul that prevails over
trials and travails, whether these are the threats posed by overt evil or the
blandishments of temptation.
Late in 1637 Milton
composed a pastoral
elegy called “Lycidas,”
which commemorates the death of a fellow student at Cambridge, Edward King, who
drowned while crossing the Irish Sea. Published in 1638 in Justa
Edouardo King Naufrago (“Obsequies in Memory of
Edward King”), a compilation of elegies by Cambridge students, “Lycidas” is one
of several poems in English, whereas most of the others are in Greek and Latin.
As a pastoral elegy—often considered the most outstanding example of the
genre—Milton’s poem is richly allegorical. King is called Lycidas, a shepherd’s
name that recurs in Classical elegies. By choosing this name, Milton signals
his participation in the tradition of memorializing a loved one through
pastoral poetry, a practice that may be traced from ancient Greek Sicily through Roman culture and into the Christian Middle Ages and early Renaissance. The poem’s speaker, a persona for Milton’s own voice, is a fellow
shepherd who mourns the loss of a friend with whom he shared duties in tending
sheep. The pastoral allegory of the poem conveys that King and Milton were
colleagues whose studious interests and academic activities were similar. In
the course of commemorating King, the speaker challenges divine justice
obliquely. Through allegory, the speaker accuses God of unjustly punishing the
young, selfless King, whose premature death ended a career that would have
unfolded in stark contrast to the majority of the ministers and bishops of the
Church of England, whom the speaker condemns as depraved, materialistic, and
selfish.
Informing the poem
is satire of the episcopacy and ministry, which Milton heightens through
invective and the use of odious metaphors, thereby anticipating his later
diatribes against the Church of England in the antiprelatical tracts of the
1640s. Likening bishops to vermin infesting sheep and consuming their innards,
Milton depicts the prelates in stark contrast to the ideal of the Good Shepherd
that is recounted in the Gospel According to John. In this context, the speaker
weighs the worldly success of the prelates and ministers against King’s death
by drowning. The imagery of the poem depicts King being resurrected in a
process of lustration from the waters in which he was immersed. Burnished by
the sun’s rays at dawn, King resplendently ascends heavenward to his eternal
reward. The prelates and ministers, though prospering on earth, will encounter
St. Peter in the afterlife, who will smite them in an act of retributive justice.
Though Milton dwells on King’s vocation as a minister, he also acknowledges
that his Cambridge colleague was a poet whose death prevented him from
establishing a literary reputation. Many commentators suggest that, in King,
Milton created an alter ego, with King’s premature death reminding Milton that
the vicissitudes of fate can interrupt long-standing aspirations and deny the
fulfillment of one’s talents, whether ministerial or poetic.
Antiprelatical tracts
Having returned
from abroad in 1639, Milton turned his attention from poetry to prose. In doing
so, he entered the controversies surrounding the abolition of the Church of
England and of the Royalist government, at times replying to, and often
attacking vehemently, English and Continental polemicists who targeted him as
the apologist of radical religious and political dissent. In 1641–42 Milton
composed five tracts on the reformation of church government. One of these
tracts, Of Reformation, examines the historical
changes in the Church of England since its inception under King Henry
VIII and criticizes the continuing resemblances between the
Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, especially the hierarchy in
ecclesiastical government. In this tract and others, Milton also calls
attention to resemblances between the ecclesiastical and political hierarchies
in England, suggesting that the monarchical civil government influences the
similar structure of the church. He likewise decries the unduly complicated
arguments of theologians, whereas he praises the simplicity and clarity of
Scripture.
In another tract
from this period, The Reason of Church Government,
Milton appears to endorse Scottish Presbyterianism as a replacement for the
episcopal hierarchy of the Church of England. A few years thereafter, he came
to realize that Presbyterianism could be as inflexible as the Church of England
in matters of theology, and he became more independent from established
religion of all kinds, arguing for the primacy of Scripture and for the
conscience of each believer as the guide to interpretation. In another tract
from the period 1641–42, An Apology Against a Pamphlet, Milton verges on
autobiography as he refutes scurrilous allegations attributed to Bishop Joseph
Hall.
Soon after these
controversies, Milton became embroiled in another conflict, one in his domestic
life. Having married Mary Powell in 1642, Milton was a
few months afterward deserted by his wife, who returned to her family’s
residence in Oxfordshire. The reason for their separation is unknown, though
perhaps Mary adhered to the Royalist inclinations of her family whereas her
husband was progressively anti-Royalist. Or perhaps the discrepancy in their
ages—he was 34, she was 17—led to a lack of mutual understanding. During her
absence of approximately three years, Milton may have been planning marriage to
another woman. But after Mary’s return, she and Milton evidently overcame the
causes of their estrangement. Three daughters (Anne, Mary, and Deborah) were
born, but a son, John, died at age one. Milton’s wife died in 1652 after giving
birth to Deborah.
During his domestic
strife and after his wife’s desertion, Milton probably began to frame the
arguments of four prose tracts: The
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643, enlarged 2nd ed.
1644), The Judgment of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce (1644), Tetrachordon
(1645), and Colasterion (1645). Whether or not his personal experience
with Mary affected his views on marriage, Milton mounts a cogent, radical
argument for divorce, an argument informed by the concepts of personal liberty
and individual volition, the latter being instrumental in maintaining or ending
a marriage. For Milton, marriage depends on the compatibility of the partners,
and to maintain a marriage that is without mutual love and sympathy violates
one’s personal liberty. In such circumstances, the marriage has already ceased.
In his later divorce tracts, Milton buttresses his arguments with citations of
scholars, such as the 16th-century reformer Martin
Bucer, and with biblical passages that he marshals as proof
texts.
Tracts on education and free expression
About the time that
the first and second editions of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce
appeared, Milton published Of
Education (1644). In line with the ideal of the Renaissance
gentleman, Milton outlines a curriculum emphasizing the Greek and Latin
languages not merely in and of themselves but as the means to learn directly
the wisdom of Classical antiquity in literature, philosophy, and politics. The curriculum, which mirrors Milton’s own
education at St. Paul’s, is intended to equip a gentleman to perform “all the
offices, both private and public, of peace and war.” Aimed at the nobility, not
commoners, Milton’s plan does not include public education. Nor does it include
a university education, possible evidence of Milton’s dissatisfaction with
Cambridge.
The most renowned
tract by Milton is Areopagitica
(1644), which opposes governmental licensing of publications or procedures of censorship.
Milton contends that governments insisting on the expression of uniform beliefs
are tyrannical. In his tract, he investigates historical examples of censorship, which, he argues, invariably emanate from repressive governments. The aim
of Areopagitica, he explains, is to promote knowledge, test experience, and strive for the
truth without any hindrances. Milton composed it after the manner of a
Classical oration of the same title by Isocrates, directed to the Areopagus, or Athenian council. Informed by Milton’s
knowledge of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria
and of orations by Demosthenes and Cicero, Areopagitica is a product of the very kind of learning that Milton
advocates in Of Education. It is ultimately a fierce, passionate defense
of the freedom
of speech:
For
books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them
to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are…. Who kills a man kills
a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills
reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.
Antimonarchical tracts
Counterbalancing
the antiprelatical tracts of 1641–42 are the antimonarchical polemics of
1649–55. Composed after Milton had become allied to those who sought to form an
English republic, The
Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)—probably written before
and during the trial of King Charles
I though not published until after his death on Jan. 30,
1649—urges the abolition of tyrannical kingship and the execution of tyrants.
The treatise cites a range of authorities from Classical antiquity, Scripture,
the Fathers of the Church, political philosophers of the early modern era, and
Reformation theologians, all of whom support such extreme—but just, according
to Milton—measures to punish tyrants. Thereafter, Milton was appointed
secretary for foreign tongues (also called Latin secretary) for the Council of
State, the executive body of the Commonwealth under Oliver
Cromwell. Milton was entrusted with the duties of translating
foreign correspondence, drafting replies, composing papers in which national
and international affairs of state were addressed, and serving as an apologist
for the Commonwealth against attacks from abroad.
In this role as an
apologist, Milton received the Council of State’s assignment to refute Eikon Basilike (“Image of the
King”), which was published in 1649 within days of the king’s beheading.
Subtitled The True Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His
Solitudes and Sufferings, Eikon
Basilike portrays the late king as pious, contemplative, caring
toward his subjects, and gentle toward his family. Though putatively a personal
account by Charles himself, the work was written by one of his supporters,
Bishop John Gauden, and was very effective in arousing sympathy in England and
on the Continent for the king, whom some perceived as a martyr. In his rebuttal, Eikonoklastes (1649; “Image-Breaker”), Milton shatters the image of the king projected
in Eikon Basilike. Accusing Charles
of hypocrisy, Milton cites Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard, duke of
Gloucester, in Richard
III as an analogue that drives home how treachery is
disguised by the pretense of piety.
Soon afterward,
Milton participated in major controversies against two polemicists on the
Continent: Claudius
Salmasius (Claude de Saumaise), a Frenchman, and Alexander More
(Morus), who was Scottish-French. Charles
II, while living in exile in France, is thought to have
enlisted Salmasius to compose a Latin tract intended for a Continental audience
that would indict the Englishmen who tried and executed Charles I. Universally
acknowledged as a reputable scholar, Salmasius posed a formidable challenge to
Milton, whose task was to refute his argument. Often imbued with personal
invective, Milton’s Defense
of the English People Against Salmasius
(1651), a Latin tract, fastens on inconsistencies in Salmasius’s argument.
Milton echoes much of what he had propounded in earlier tracts: that the
execution of a monarch is supported by authorities from Classical antiquity to
the early modern era and that public necessity and the tyrannical nature of
Charles I’s sovereignty justified his death.
In 1652 an
anonymous Continental author published another Latin polemic, The Cry of the King’s Blood to Heaven Against the English
Parricides. Milton’s refutation in Latin, The
Second Defense of the English People by John Milton, Englishman, in Reply to an
Infamous Book Entitled “Cry of the King’s Blood”
(1654), contains many autobiographical passages intended to counteract the
polemic’s vitriolic attacks on his personal life. Milton also mounts an
eloquent, idealistic, and impassioned defense of English patriotism and liberty
while he extols the leaders of the Commonwealth. The most poignant passages,
however, are reserved for himself. Soon after the publication of Defense
of the English People, Milton had become
totally blind, probably from glaucoma. The Cry of the King’s Blood
asserts that Milton’s blindness is God’s means of punishing him for his sins. Milton, however, replies
that his blindness is a trial that has been visited upon him, an affliction
that he is enduring under the approval of the Lord, who has granted him, in
turn, special inner illumination, a gift that distinguishes him from others.
Works on history and theology
Three extraordinary
prose
works highlight the depth of Milton’s erudition and the scope of his interests.
History
of Britain (1670) was long in the making, for it reflects
extensive reading that he began as a very young man. Presumably because he
initially contemplated an epic centring upon British history and the heroic
involvement of the legendary king Arthur, Milton researched early accounts of Britain, ranging across records from
the Anglo-Saxon era through works by the Venerable Bede and Geoffrey
of Monmouth and into 16th- and 17th-century accounts by Raphael
Holinshed and William
Camden, along with many others. All the while, Milton
critically evaluated his sources for their veracity. Because his own research
and writing were interrupted by his service in Cromwell’s government, History
of Britain remained incomplete even at publication, for the account ends
with the Norman Conquest.
Artis
Logicae (1672; “Art of Logic”) was composed
in Latin, perhaps to gain the attention also of a Continental audience. It is a
textbook derived from the logic of Petrus
Ramus, a 16th-century French scholar whose work reflected the
impact of Renaissance humanism
on the so-called medieval trivium: the
arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Countering the orthodox
Aristotelian approach to logic, Ramus adduced a number of methods by which to
reorganize the arts of the trivium. Milton’s textbook is a redaction of Ramus’s
methods.
De
Doctrina Christiana (“On Christian Doctrine”) was
probably composed between 1655 and 1660, though Milton never completed it. The
unfinished manuscript was discovered in the Public Record Office in London in
1823, translated from Latin into English by Charles Sumner and published in
1825 as A
Treatise on Christian Doctrine. The comprehensive
and systematic theology presented in this work reflects Milton’s close
engagement with Scripture, from which he draws numerous proof texts in order to
buttress his concepts of the Godhead and of moral theology, among others. Like
his historical account of Britain and his textbook on logic, this work is
highly derivative, for many of its ideas are traceable to works by Protestant
thinkers, such as the Reformed theologian John Wolleb (Johannes Wollebius). Milton also drew on other
theologians, notably the English Puritans William Perkins and his student William
Ames. Though Milton did not agree with all elements of their
theology, like them he tended to subordinate the Son to the Father and to
oppose the trinitarian orthodoxy of Roman
Catholicism.
Major poems
Blind and once a
widower, Milton married Katherine Woodcock in 1656. Their marriage lasted only
15 months: she died within months of the birth of their child. He wedded
Elizabeth Minshull in 1663, who, along with the daughters from his first
marriage, assisted him with his personal needs, read from books at his request,
and served as an amanuensis to record verses that he dictated. In the era after
the Restoration, Milton published his three major poems, though he had begun
work on two of them, Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, many
years earlier.
Abandoning his
earlier plan to compose an epic
on Arthur, Milton instead turned to biblical subject matter and to a Christian
idea of heroism. In Paradise Lost—first published in 10 books in 1667 and then in 12 books in 1674, at a
length of almost 11,000 lines—Milton observed but adapted a number of the
Classical epic conventions that distinguish works such as Homer’s The
Iliad and The Odyssey and Virgil’s The Aeneid.
Among these
conventions is a focus on the elevated subjects of war, love, and heroism. In
Book 6 Milton describes the battle between the good
and evil angels; the defeat of the latter results in their expulsion
from heaven. In the battle, the Son (Jesus Christ) is invincible in his
onslaught against Satan and his cohorts. But Milton’s emphasis is less on the
Son as a warrior and more on his love for humankind; the Father, in his
celestial dialogue with the Son, foresees the sinfulness of Adam
and Eve, and the Son chooses to become incarnate and to suffer
humbly to redeem them. Though his role as saviour of fallen
humankind is not enacted in the epic, Adam and Eve before their expulsion from
Eden learn of the future redemptive ministry of Jesus, the exemplary gesture of
self-sacrificing love. The Son’s selfless love contrasts strikingly with the
selfish love of the heroes of Classical epics, who are distinguished by their
valour on the battlefield, which is usually incited by pride and vainglory.
Their strength and skills on the battlefield and their acquisition of the
spoils of war also issue from hate, anger, revenge, greed, and covetousness. If
Classical epics deem their protagonists heroic for their extreme passions, even
vices, the Son in Paradise Lost
exemplifies Christian heroism both through his meekness and magnanimity and
through his patience and fortitude.
Like many Classical
epics, Paradise Lost invokes a muse,
whom Milton identifies at the outset of the poem:
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Horeb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the heav’ns and earth
Rose out of chaos; or if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God: I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
This muse is the
Judaeo-Christian Godhead. Citing manifestations of the Godhead atop Horeb and
Sinai, Milton seeks inspiration comparable to that visited upon Moses, to whom is ascribed the composition of the book of Genesis. Much as Moses
was inspired to recount what he did not witness, so also Milton seeks
inspiration to write about biblical events. Recalling Classical epics, in which
the haunts of the muses are not only mountaintops but also waterways, Milton
cites Siloa’s brook, where in the New Testament a blind man acquired sight
after going there to wash off the clay and spittle placed over his eyes by
Jesus. Likewise, Milton seeks inspiration to enable him to envision and narrate
events to which he and all human beings are blind unless chosen for
enlightenment by the Godhead. With his reference to “the Aonian mount,” or Mt.
Helicon in Greece, Milton deliberately invites comparison with Classical
antecedents. He avers that his work will supersede these predecessors and will
accomplish what has not yet been achieved: a biblical epic in English.
Paradise
Lost also directly invokes Classical epics by beginning its
action in
medias res. Book 1 recounts the aftermath of the war in heaven,
which is described only later, in Book 6. At the outset of the epic, the
consequences of the loss of the war include the expulsion of the fallen angels
from heaven and their descent into hell, a place of infernal torment. With the
punishment of the fallen angels having been described early in the epic, Milton
in later books recounts how and why their disobedience occurred. Disobedience
and its consequences, therefore, come to the fore in Raphael’s instruction of
Adam and Eve, who (especially in Books 6 and 8) are admonished to remain
obedient. By examining the sinfulness of Satan in thought and in deed, Milton
positions this part of his narrative close to the temptation of Eve. This
arrangement enables Milton to highlight how and why Satan, who inhabits a
serpent to seduce Eve in Book 9, induces in her the inordinate pride that
brought about his own downfall. Satan arouses in Eve a comparable state of
mind, which is enacted in her partaking of the forbidden fruit, an act of
disobedience.
Milton’s epic
begins in the hellish underworld and returns there after Satan has tempted Eve
to disobedience. In line with Classical depictions of the underworld, Milton
emphasizes its darkness, for hell’s fires, which are ashen gray, inflict pain
but do not provide light. The torments of hell (“on all sides round”) also
suggest a location like an active volcano. In the Classical tradition, Typhon,
who revolted against Jove, was driven down to earth by a thunderbolt,
incarcerated under Mt. Aetna in Sicily, and tormented by the fire of this
active volcano. Accommodating this Classical analogue to his Christian
perception, Milton renders hell chiefly according to biblical accounts, most
notably the book of Revelation. The poem’s depictions of hell also echo the
epic convention of a descent into the underworld.
Throughout Paradise
Lost Milton uses a grand style aptly suited to the elevated subject matter
and tone. In a prefatory note, Milton describes the poem’s metre as “English heroic verse without rhyme,” which approximates “that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil
in Latin.” Rejecting rhyme as “the jingling sound of like endings,” Milton prefers a measure that is
not end-stopped, so that he may employ enjambment (run-on lines) with “the sense variously drawn out from one verse into
another.” The grand style that he adopts consists of unrhymed iambic pentameter
(blank
verse) and features sonorous rhythms pulsating through and beyond
one verse into the next. By composing his biblical epic in this measure, he
invites comparison with works by Classical forebears. Without using punctuation
at the end of many verses, Milton also creates voluble units of rhythm and
sense that go well beyond the limitations he perceived in rhymed verse.
Milton also employs
other elements of a grand style, most notably epic
similes. These explicit comparisons introduced by “like” or “as”
proliferate across Paradise Lost. Milton tends to add one comparison
after another, each one protracted. Accordingly, in one long passage in Book 1,
Satan’s shield is likened to the Moon as viewed through Galileo’s
telescope; his spear is larger than the mast of a flagship; the fallen angels
outstretched on the lake of fire after their expulsion from heaven “lay entranced
/ Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks / In Vallombrosa” (literally
“Shady Valley,” outside Florence). The fallen angels resemble, moreover, the
Egyptian cavalry that pursued the Israelites into the parted Red Sea, after
which the collapse of the walls of water inundated the Egyptians and left the
pharaoh’s chariots and charioteers weltering like flotsam.
Paradise
Lost is ultimately not only about the downfall of Adam and
Eve but also about the clash between Satan and the Son. Many readers have
admired Satan’s splendid recklessness, if not heroism, in confronting the
Godhead. Satan’s defiance, anger, willfulness, and resourcefulness define a
character who strives never to yield. In many ways Satan is heroic when
compared to such Classical prototypes as Achilles, Odysseus, and Aeneas and to
similar protagonists in medieval and Renaissance epics. In sum, his traits
reflect theirs.
But Milton composed
a biblical epic in order to debunk Classical heroism and to extol Christian
heroism, exemplified by the Son. Notwithstanding his victory in the battle
against the fallen angels, the Son is more heroic because he is willing to
undergo voluntary humiliation, a sign of his consummate love for humankind. He
foreknows that he will become incarnate in order to suffer death, a selfless
act whereby humankind will be redeemed. By such an act, moreover, the Son
fulfills what Milton calls the “great argument” of his poem: to “justify the
ways of God to man,” as Milton writes in Book 1. Despite Satan’s success against
Adam and Eve, the hope of regeneration after sinfulness is provided by the
Son’s self-sacrifice. Such hope and opportunity enable humankind to cooperate
with the Godhead so as to defeat Satan, avoid damnation, overcome death, and
ascend heavenward. Satan’s wiles, therefore, are thwarted by members of a
regenerate humankind who choose to participate in the redemptive act that the
Son has undertaken on their behalf.
Milton’s last two
poems were published in one volume in 1671. Paradise Regained, a brief
epic in four books, was followed by Samson Agonistes, a dramatic poem
not intended for the stage. One story of the composition of Paradise
Regained derives from Thomas Ellwood, a Quaker who
read to the blind Milton and was tutored by him. Ellwood recounts that Milton
gave him the manuscript of Paradise Lost for examination, and, upon returning it to the poet, who was then residing
at Chalfont St. Giles, he commented, “Thou hast said much here of Paradise
lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?” Visiting Milton after the
poet’s return to London from Chalfont St. Giles, Ellwood records that Milton
showed him the manuscript of the brief epic and remarked: “This is owing to
you; for you put it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont,
which before I had not thought of.” Ellwood’s account is not repeated
elsewhere, however; it remains unclear whether he embellished his role in the
poem’s creation.
Paradise
Regained hearkens back to the Book of Job, whose principal
character is tempted by Satan to forgo his faith in God and to cease exercising
patience and fortitude in the midst of ongoing and ever-increasing adversity.
By adapting the trials of Job and the role of Satan as tempter and by
integrating them with the accounts of Matthew and Luke of Jesus’ temptations in
the wilderness, Milton dramatizes how Jesus
embodies Christian heroism. Less sensational than that of Classical
protagonists and not requiring military action for its manifestation, Christian
heroism is a continuous reaffirmation of faith in God and is manifested in
renewed prayer for patience and fortitude to endure and surmount adversities.
By resisting temptations that pander to one’s impulses toward ease, pleasure,
worldliness, and power, a Christian hero maintains a heavenly orientation that
informs his actions. Satan as the tempter in Paradise Regained fails in
his unceasing endeavours to subvert Jesus by various means in the wilderness.
As powerful as the temptations may be, the sophistry that accompanies them is
even more insidious.
In effect, Paradise
Regained unfolds as a series of debates—an ongoing dialectic—in which Jesus
analyzes and refutes Satan’s arguments. With clarity and cogency, Jesus rebuts
any and all arguments by using recta ratio, always informed by faith in God, his father. Strikingly evident also is
Jesus’ determination, an overwhelming sense of resolve to endure any and all
trials visited upon him. Though Paradise Regained lacks the vast scope
of Paradise Lost, it fulfills its
purpose admirably by pursuing the idea of Christian heroism as a state of mind.
More so than Paradise Lost, it dramatizes the
inner workings of the mind of Jesus, his perception, and the interplay of faith
and reason in his debates with Satan. When Jesus finally dismisses the tempter
at the end of the work, the reader recognizes that the encounters in Paradise
Regained reflect a high degree of psychological verisimilitude.
Like Paradise
Regained, Samson Agonistes focuses on the inner workings of the mind
of the protagonist. This emphasis flies in the face of the biblical
characterization of Samson
in the Book of Judges, which celebrates his physical strength. Milton’s
dramatic poem, however, begins the story of Samson after his downfall—after he has yielded his God-entrusted secret to Dalila
(Delilah), suffered blindness, and become a captive of the Philistines.
Tormented by anguish over his captivity, Samson is depressed by the realization
that he, the prospective liberator of the Israelites, is now a prisoner, blind
and powerless in the hands of his enemies. Samson vacillates from one extreme
to another emotionally and psychologically. He becomes depressed, wallows in
self-pity, and contemplates suicide; he becomes outraged at himself for having
disclosed the secret of his strength; he questions his own nature, whether it
was flawed with excessive strength and too little wisdom so that he was
destined at birth to suffer eventual downfall. When Dalila visits him during
his captivity and offers to minister to him, however, Samson becomes irascible,
rejecting her with a harsh diatribe. In doing so, he dramatizes, unwittingly, the
measure of his progress toward regeneration. Having succumbed to her
previously, he has learned from past experience that Dalila is treacherous.
From that point
onward in Samson Agonistes, Samson is progressively aroused from
depression. He acknowledges that pride in his inordinate strength was a major
factor in his downfall and that his previous sense of invincibility rendered
him unwary of temptation, even to the extent that he became vulnerable to a
woman whose guile charmed him. By the end of the poem, Samson, through
expiation and regeneration, has regained a state of spiritual readiness in
order to serve again as God’s champion. The destruction of the Philistines at
the temple of Dagon results in more deaths than the sum of all previous
casualties inflicted by Samson. Ironically, when he least expected it, Samson
was again chosen to be God’s scourge against the Philistines.
Despite Samson’s
physical feats, Milton depicts him as more heroic during his state of
regeneration. Having lapsed into sinfulness when he violated God’s command not
to disclose the secret of his strength, Samson suffers physically when he is
blinded; he also suffers psychologically because he is enslaved by his enemies.
The focus of Milton’s dramatic poem is ultimately on Samson’s regenerative
process, an inner struggle beset by torment, by the anxiety that God has
rejected him, and by his failure as the would-be liberator of his people.
Unlike the biblical
account in Judges, Samson Agonistes focuses only on the last day of
Samson’s life. Discerning that he was victimized by his own pride, Samson
becomes chastened and humbled. He becomes acutely aware of the necessity to
atone for his sinfulness. In a series of debates not unlike those in Paradise
Regained between the Son and Satan, Samson engages Manoa, his father;
Dalila, his temptress; and Harapha, a stalwart Philistine warrior. In each of
these encounters, Samson’s discourse manifests an upward trajectory, through
atonement and toward regeneration, which culminates in the climactic action at
the temple of Dagon where Samson, again chosen by God, vindicates himself.
Echoing Paradise Lost, which dramatizes the self-sacrifice of the Son, Samson
Agonistes creates in its hero an Old
Testament prefiguration of the very process of regeneration
enabled by the Redeemer and afforded to fallen humankind. In this way,
moreover, Samson exhibits the traits of Christian heroism that Milton elsewhere
emphasized.
But where the Son
of Paradise Regained maintains steadfastly his resistance to temptation,
Samson typifies human vulnerability to downfall. Accordingly, where in Paradise
Regained the Son never loses God’s favour, Samson Agonistes charts
how a victim of temptation can reacquire it. Despite the superficial
resemblance between his muscular, warlike acts of destruction and those of
Classical heroes, Samson is ultimately a Christian hero.
Milton’s later years and death
After the
Restoration and despite jeopardy to himself, Milton continued to advocate
freedom of worship and republicanism for England while he supervised the
publication of his major poems and other works. For a time soon after the
succession of Charles II, Milton was under arrest and menaced by possible execution
for involvement in the regicide and in Cromwell’s government. Although the
circumstances of clemency toward Milton are not fully known, it is likely that
certain figures influential with the regime of Charles II—such as Christopher
Milton, Andrew
Marvell, and William
Davenant—interceded on his behalf. The exact date and location of Milton’s
death remain unknown; he likely died in London on Nov. 8, 1674, from
complications of the gout (possibly renal failure). He was buried inside St.
Giles Cripplegate Church in London.
Fame and reputation
Milton’s fame and
reputation derive chiefly from Paradise Lost, which, when first published in 1667, did not gain wide admiration.
Because of Milton’s political and religious views, only his close friends and
associates commended his epic. Marvell, who assisted Milton when he was Latin
secretary during the interregnum, expressed extraordinary admiration of Paradise
Lost in verses at the outset of the 1674 edition. John
Dryden, after having consulted with Milton and elicited his
approval, adapted the epic to heroic couplets, the measure that characterized
much verse in that era. The result was The State of Innocence and Fall of
Man, an operatic adaptation published in 1677, though never performed. At
the end of the 17th century, admiration of Paradise
Lost extended beyond a small circle. Indeed, five editions of
the poem appeared between 1688 and 1698, three of them in English and two in
Latin; the 1695 edition in English, with Patrick Hume’s commentary and
annotations, is considered the first scholarly edition.
By the early 18th
century, Paradise Lost had begun to draw
more acclaim. Joseph
Addison published a series of essays in The
Spectator (1712) in which he ranked Milton’s epic with the works
of Classical antiquity. Because the Neoclassical movement in poetry, which
emphasized heroic couplets, prevailed in this era, Paradise
Lost was perceived as a magnificent exception in its use of blank
verse. And because its genre was that of a biblical epic, Paradise
Lost was granted unique status. Alexander
Pope, the quintessential Neoclassical poet, borrowed heavily
from the imagery of Milton’s poem and in The Rape of the Lock (1712–14)
constructed a mock-epic that becomes a genial parody of Paradise Lost.
Voltaire lavishly praised Paradise Lost in 1727 when writing of epic poetry. Translations of Milton’s epic into
French, German, and Italian appeared before mid-century. Joseph
Warton in 1756 cited Milton’s splendid topographical settings,
especially Eden in Paradise Lost,
and praised the flights of sublime imagination that elevated readers into
heaven and near the throne of God. In doing so, Warton emphasized two of the
poem’s characteristics—Milton’s celebration of nature and his unbridled
imagination—that would later be highly valued by English Romantic authors. But
by the end of the 18th century, Milton’s reputation had suffered because of Samuel
Johnson, whose critical biography in The
Lives of the Poets (1779–81), while praising the
sublimity of Paradise Lost, disfavoured
Milton’s images from nature, which Johnson attributed not to direct experience
but to derivations from books.
During the early
19th century, Milton became popular among a number of major Romantic authors,
such as William
Blake, Percy
Bysshe Shelley, and Lord
Byron, who in Paradise Lost perceived Satan as a heroic rebel opposing established traditions and God
as a tyrant. Appropriating elements of Milton’s biography and of his works,
these authors created a historical and literary context for their own
revolutionary ideas. Shelley’s Prometheus in Prometheus Unbound (1820),
for instance, is modeled after Milton’s Satan. By the end of the 19th century
and into the early 20th century, however, Milton had yet again fallen into
disfavour. The most influential voice lessening Milton’s reputation was that of
T.S.
Eliot, whose aesthetic interests gravitated toward the Metaphysical
poets, certain Renaissance dramatists, and other
contemporaries of Milton. Eliot complained that Milton’s epic verse lacked
earnest feeling, was “stiff and tortuous,” and was so inflexible that it
discouraged imitation.
Yet another shift
in Milton’s reputation occurred in the late 20th century, when the author,
while still appreciated for his literary and aesthetic achievements in verse,
came to be viewed as a chronicler—even in his poems—of the tensions, conflicts,
and upheavals of 17th-century England. At the same time, however, scholars
often portrayed Milton variously as a forebear of present-day sensitivities and
sensibilities and as an exponent of regressive views. In Paradise Lost,
for instance, the conjugal relationship between Adam and Eve—both before and
after the Fall—is strictly hierarchical, with the husband as overseer of the
wife. But this representation of marriage, considered an expression of Milton’s
regressive views, contrasts with The
Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,
where Milton contends that the basis of marriage is compatibility. If the
partners are no longer compatible, he argues, the marriage is in effect
dissolved. Though such a liberal view of divorce was unacceptable in Milton’s
era, it struck a more responsive chord in those countries where at the turn of
the 21st century marriage was understood as a voluntary union between equals.
By situating Milton’s work within the social, political, and religious currents
of his era, scholars, nevertheless, demonstrated the enduring value and
modern-day relevance of his works.
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