John Milton

John Milton (9 December 1608 – 9 November 1674) was an English poet who is today primarily celebrated for his twelve-book epic poem in English blank verse, Paradise Lost. Other poems for which he is remembered are Comus, a masque (or play with music); and Lycidas, an elegy on the death of a dear friend, and which features prominently, for example, in the “Nestor” episode in James Joyce's Ulysses.

Politics

A leading intellectual of his day, Milton wrote numerous pamphlets on major political issues, such as The Reason of Church Government (1642) and The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660). Married three times, he wrote The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), a pamphlet arguing for the efficacy of divorce in certain situations. He was appointed Latin Secretary (or, Secretary for Foreign Tongues) to the Commonwealth in February 1649, and remained in this official post until the restoration of the Monarchy on 8 May 1660. As a result of his association with Cromwell’s government, and in particular his very public defence of regicide, Milton was imprisoned for a time and only barely avoided the death penalty.

Blindness

At the age of 42 he lost his eyesight completely and had to dictate his ensuing works to various amanuenses; and in various poems, such as at the beginning of Book III of Paradise Lost, the sonnet “Me thought I saw my late espoused Saint”, and his final work, the “dramatic poem” Samson Agonistes, Milton addresses his sad feelings relating to his loss of sight. Perhaps best known of all, for one of the best known last lines in English literature, is his sonnet 19

When I consider how my light is spent,

E're half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide,

Lodg'd with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, least he returning chide,

Doth God exact day labour, light deny'd,

I fondly ask; But patience to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts, who best

Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o're Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and waite.

Paradise Lost

The first edition of Paradise Lost, in ten books, was published in 1667; the now standard twelve book version was published in 1674. On Paradise Lost, literary giant John Dryden described his contemporary’s achievement as “undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced.” The poetry of Milton served as a profound inspiration to the later Romantic poets, particularly Shelley (e.g., Prometheus Unbound), Keats (e.g., the two Hyperion poems) and William Blake (e.g., The Four Zoas). In more recent years T.S. Eliot noted that poets can study Milton “with profit to their poetry and to the English language.” According to Gordon Campbell, "In America, where Christianity is still a vital force, Paradise Lost is valued as the supreme epic of Christendom." In his lifetime Milton received a total of £10.00 for his work on Paradise Lost.

"Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, like Dante, he had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. ... But the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render sullen or fretful. Such as it was when, on the eve of great events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of health and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it continued to be when, after having experienced every calamity which is in incident to our nature, old, poor, sightless and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to die.

Hence it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lost at a time of life when images of beauty and tenderness are in general beginning to fade, even from those minds in which they have not been effaced by anxiety and disappointment, he adorned it with all that is most lovely and delightful in the physical and in the moral world." (from Macaulay's essay on Milton, 1825)

Primary sources

• French, J. M., ed. Life Records of John Milton (5 vol 1949-58)