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. 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, Milton was imprisoned for a time and only barely avoided the death penalty. 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. 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 the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, “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.