John Milton

John Milton, born on 9 December 1608 and dying on 8 November 1674, was an English poet, polemicist, and civil servant. His 1667 epic poem Paradise Lost, composed in blank verse across twelve books, emerged during a period of deep religious change and political turmoil.

The poem deals with humanity’s fall, focusing on Adam and Eve being tempted by the fallen angel Satan and subsequently expelled from the Garden of Eden by God. This work cemented Milton’s status as one of history’s greatest poets. He also worked as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England, serving under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell.

Literary legacy

Milton was well-known and respected during his lifetime. His 1644 work Areopagitica, which argued against pre-publication censorship, remains one of the most powerful and influential defenses of free speech and press freedom ever written. His commitment to liberty went beyond his ideas and showed in his writing style; he introduced new words into English, often drawing from Latin and Ancient Greek. He was also the first modern writer to use unrhymed verse outside of plays or translations.

Biographer William Hayley called Milton the “greatest English author,” and he is still widely seen as one of the most important writers in the English language, even though critical opinion has shifted over the centuries, often because of his republican views. Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as a poem that, in terms of design, could claim first place among human creations, and in performance, second place, though Johnson, a Tory, described Milton’s politics as those of an “acrimonious and surly republican.” Poets like William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Hardy admired him.

Milton’s life can be divided into phases that mirror the major political and historical divisions of Stuart England. In his early years, he studied at Christ’s College, Cambridge, then traveled, wrote poetry mainly for private reading, and began a career as a pamphleteer and publicist during the increasingly autocratic rule of Charles I, as Britain slid into constitutional chaos and then civil war. He was once seen as dangerously radical and heretical, but during his lifetime public opinion shifted so dramatically that he eventually held public office in England. The Restoration in 1660 and his loss of sight later took away much of his public platform, but he used that time to create many of his major works.

Milton’s views grew out of extensive reading, travel, and experience, starting with his student days at Cambridge in the 1620s and continuing through the English Civil War, which began in 1642 and lasted until 1651. By the time he died in 1674, he was poor and on the fringes of English intellectual life, but he was famous across Europe and unrepentant about the political choices that put him at odds with those in power.

Milton is widely considered one of the greatest poets in English literature, though his work has drawn criticism from figures like T. S. Eliot. Some scholars say that only William Shakespeare has had more influence. Johnson praised Milton for his ability to “display the vast, illuminate the splendid, enforce the awful, darken the gloomy and aggravate the dreadful.”

Early life and education

John Milton was born on Bread Street in London on 9 December 1608, the son of composer John Milton and his wife Sarah Jeffrey. The elder John Milton, born in 1562 and dying in 1647, moved to London around 1583 after his devout Catholic father Richard Milton disinherited him for becoming a Protestant.

In London, he married Sarah Jeffrey, born 1572 and dying 1637, and found lasting financial success as a scrivener. He lived and worked from a house in Cheapside on Bread Street, near the Mermaid Tavern. The elder Milton was known for his skill as a music composer, which gave his son a lifelong love of music and friendships with musicians like Henry Lawes.

The family’s prosperity allowed John Milton to have a private tutor, Thomas Young, a Scottish Presbyterian with a master’s degree from the University of St Andrews. Young’s influence introduced the poet to religious radicalism. After tutoring, Milton attended St Paul’s School in London, where he began learning Latin and Greek; these classical languages shaped both his poetry and prose in English, and he also wrote in Latin and Italian.

Milton’s earliest datable works are two psalms he wrote at age 15 in Long Bennington. One contemporary source is John Aubrey’s Brief Lives, an uneven collection of firsthand reports. In it, Aubrey quotes Milton’s younger brother Christopher: “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.”

In 1625, Milton entered Christ’s College at the University of Cambridge, graduating with a BA in 1629, ranking fourth out of 24 honours graduates that year. Preparing to become an Anglican priest, he stayed at Cambridge and received his MA on 3 July 1632. Milton may have been suspended during his first year at Cambridge for arguing with his tutor, Bishop William Chappell. He was certainly at home in London during Lent Term 1626, where he wrote Elegia Prima, his first Latin elegy, to Charles Diodati.