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SKETCH

OF THE

LIFE OF JOHN MILTON.

JOHN MILTON, the most distinguished of English poets, and one whose exertions in the cause of civil and religious liberty must ever entitle him to the grateful regards of his countrymen, was born in Breda Street, December 9, 1608, and received his early education at St. Paul's School. Young Milton was removed at the age of seventeen to Christ's College, Cambridge, and soon distinguished himself by the purity and elegance of his Latin compositions as well as for his general classical attainments.

On leaving college he repaired to his father's residence in Buckinghamshire, where he spent five years in the most diligent study of the Greek and Latin classies; and during this interval he appears to have produced both his exquisite "Masque of Comus," which is stated in the title to have been performed at Ludlow Castle, in 1634, before the Earl of Bridgewater, and some of the principal of his minor poems, of which we may especially notice his "Lycidas," the character of which is pastoral.

In 1638, Milton left England for the purpose of completing his education by foreign travel; and visited in succession Paris, Nice, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Rome, and Naples. Honors from both the learned and the great waited upon the accomplished Englishman wherever he appeared. The state of his native country, however, worn by dissensions, and manifestly on the eve of a great convulsion, appealed too strongly to his patriotic ardor to suffer him to protract his stay abroad; and returning by the way of Geneva, he again reached home after an absence of about fifteen months. He did not now resume his residence with his father. He probably considered that for the unsettled times which were apparently at hand the fit preparation, which it behoved every man to make, was the adoption of some way of earning his bread by his own independent exertions; and hiring a house in St. Bride's church-yard, he opened a seminary for the instruction of youth in the classic languages. The school turning out very successful, he shortly afterwards removed to a house in Aldersgate Street, and in 1641 he published a treatise in favor of the Puritans.

In 1673, Milton married a daughter of Mr. Powell, of Forrest Hill, Oxfordshire, a firm Royalist. This marriage, in its early stage, seemed

very inauspicious; for, either influenced by family considerations, of from want of congeniality in sentiments and feelings, they had only been married a month when his wife deserted him, and returned to her friends. She made no reply to the repeated letters and remonstrances of her husband; which so incensed him, that he formed the resolution to receive her no more; and to justify this resolution, he published several pieces on the subject of divorce. He even proceeded so far as to pay his addresses to a young lady with the design of marrying her. Whilst this marriage was negotiating he was surprised by a visit from his wife, who implored pardon and reconciliation on her knees. This awakened his tenderest affection, and he received her with kindness to his bosom.

Milton's political spirit agreeing with the republican spirit of these times, he strongly supported the cause of the Commonwealth and the destruction of kingly government by several publications on the subject.

In 1645 he published a collection of Latin and English poems. Soon after the death of the King he was advanced by Cromwell to the station of Latin secretary to himself and the parliament; and he continued to hold the latter office till the restoration of Charles II. In 1649, Salmasius, a professor of polite learning at Leyden, and a man of extraordinary literary attainments, produced his "Defensio Regis," to which Milton replied in so forcible a manner that it became difficult to determine whose language was best. After this Milton resided for some time with his family in Whitehall; but his ill health obliged him to take lodgings in the neighborhood of St. James's Park; where his wife died, leaving him three daughters. This painful occurrence was soon succeeded by another still more distressing-his own deprivation of sight. In these melancholy circumstances he directed his attention to another object, and was married to the daughter of a Captain Woodcock, of Hackney. She died within a year, from the same cause as the former wife. Milton has honored her memory in his eighteenth sonnet.

On the King's restoration, he found it necessary to conceal himself till the storm against him was blown over, and the interest of his friends had got him included in the general amnesty. He now retired from the busy scenes of the world, and devoted himself to the completion of his grand poem. For, although his circumstances had suffered by the Restoration, his independent spirit refused to accept any public employment, and he lived in the greatest simplicity in the neighborhood of Bunhill Fields, where we are told he used to sit in a gray coarse cloth coat at the door in the summer, to enjoy the fresh air and receive the visits of persons of distinguished rank and learning.

He had now reached his forty-seventh year; and being free from external interruptions, applied himself to the consideration of three works which had long been reserved for future exertion-an epic poem, the history of his country, and a dictionary of the Latin tongue. Impracti cable as the labor of collecting a dictionary seems to be to a man in a state of blindness, we are told that he prosecuted that design almost to his dying day; the compilers of the "Cambridge Dictionary," published in 1693, availed themselves of three folios he left behind. His historical narrative did not proceed beyond the conquest, from the difficulty, it is probable, of consulting a variety of authorities with the help of other eyes. For the subject of his epic poem, after much deliberation, he determined upon "Paradise Lost"-a project which could only be justi fied by the success that attended it. We have already seen that at the Restoration Milton concealed himself in Bartholomew Close, where he remained till the passing an act of oblivion, which secured his person and

property in common with others; the reason of his being treated with such indulgence cannot be satisfactorily ascertained. About this time he removed to Jewin Street, and married a third wife, who contributed very little to his domestic comfort-she oppressed his children in his lifetime, and defrauded them at his death. From Jewin Street he went to reside in the Artillery Walk, near Bunhill Fields, which concludes the register of his London residences.

While he continued to divide his time between State affairs and his private studies, it was hardly possible for him to accomplish any literary undertaking of great importance; but on quitting the office of Latin secretary, he was left to the free exercise of his mental energies, which could not be employed upon a subject better suited to the extensive range they were accustomed to take than that he had chosen. The "Paradise Lost" is said to have been written at different times, and was sold on the 27th of April, 1667, to Samuel Simmons, for an immediate payment of 51.; with a further agreement for the same sum when 1500 copies of the first edition should be disposed of; and again 51. when the same number should be sold of the second edition; and another 51. after a similar sale of the third. All the editions were limited to 1500 copies. The third edition was published in 1678, and the widow to whom the copy then devolved sold all her claims to Simmons for 87.; whence it will appear that the sum of 281. constituted the entire remuneration for a performance which, while it immortalized the name of the poet, conferred an honor equally imperishable upon the nation signalized for his birth. While he was thus engaged, he was materially assisted by his two daughters, who wrote to his dictation for many hours each day.

Four years after his "Paradise Lost," he published his "Paradise Regained," which was his favorite production-a preference which has ever been opposed to the opinion of the public. In the last year of his life he printed a collection of "Familiar Epistles" in Latin: to these (being too few to form a volume, he added some academical exercises.

In his last retreat, he produced his "Samson Agonistes," a tragedy written on the Greek model. A life of indefatigable study, and which had been exposed to a variety of vicissitudes, now began to draw to a close. Milton had long been afflicted with the gout and other infirmities, and he died without a struggle on the 10th of November, 1674, in the sixty-sixth year of his age. His person was so delicate and beautiful in his youth, that at Cambridge he went by the appellation of "the Lady of Christ's College; " and in Italy the celebrated Giovanni Baptista Manso, who had conferred considerable favors on him, gives a high idea of his beauty in a Latin epigram which has been thus translated:

"So perfect thou in mind, in form, and face,
Thou'rt not of English, but angelic race."

Campbell, the poet, a critic in every shape qualified to form an accurate opinion of the merits of Milton in regard to his powers of versification, furnishes the following remarks on the universality of his genius:"In Milton," he says, "there may be traced obligations to several minor English poets; but his genius had too great a supremacy to belong to any school. Though he acknowledged a filial reverence for Spencer as a poet, he left no Gothic irregular tracery in the design of his own great work, but gave a classical harmony of parts to its stupendous pile. It thus resembles a dome, the vastness of which is at first sight concealed by its symmetry, but which expands more and more to the eye while it is contemplated. His early poetry seems to have neither disturbed nor

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