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SOLD ALSO BY THEOPHILE BARROIS, JUN., RUÉ RICHELIEU; TRUCHY,
BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS; AMYOT, RUE DE LA PAIX; LIBRAIRIE
DES ÉTRANGERS, RUE NEUVE-SAINT-AUGUSTIN; AND FRENCH
AND ENGLISH LIBRARY, RUE VIVIENNE.

1833.

Kreisbibliothek Regensburg

THE LIFE

OF MILTON.

WITH

CRITICISMS ON HIS WORKS,

BY DR. JOHNSON.

JOHN MILTON, the boast of his country, and the admiration of the world, was descended from an honourable family, which had long resided near Thame in Oxfordshire : but the estate annexed to it was forfeited in the perilous times of York and Lancaster. The grandfather of our poet, actuated by that intemperate zeal which is ever excited by bigotry, disinherited the father of our poet, because he renounced the doctrines of the church of Rome, to which his ancestors had been long and warmly attached. Thus deserted, he was reduced to the necessity of exerting his efforts for a support, and accordingly entered on the business of a scrivener, which he prosecuted with such success, as enabled him to retire with a competent fortune. He married a lady of Welsh extraction, by whom, with other children, he had issue, John the Poet.

John Milton, the subject of these memoirs, was born in the city of London, in the year 1608. His father must have been a literary character, as our author addresses him in one of his most elaborate Latin Poems; it was therefore natural for him to be solicitous about the education of his son. He placed him under the private tuition of Thomas Young, a clergyman, to whom, as a token of gratitude for his care and attention, his pupil addressed an Epistolary Elegy, written when he had only attained to the age of twelve years.

Having passed some time at St. Paul's school, to which

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he was sent when he left Mr. Young; he was removed to Cambridge, and admitted a pensioner of Christ's College in the year 1624. He had acquired a proficiency in the Latin language previous to his admission as a student in the University, as is evident from many of his elegiac compositions, produced in his eighteenth year, from which it appears, in the opinion of Dr. Johnson, that he must have then read the Roman authors with very nice discernment. Indeed, it has been remarked, by an eminent literary character, that Milton was the first Englishman who, after the revival of letters, wrote Latin verses with classical elegance.

When he first became a student in the University, he had formed a resolution of devoting himself to the service of the church; but, in course of time, he declined it, from an objection he had to some established rites and ceremonies, to which he must have been under a necessity of subscribing previous to his being admitted into orders. His words upon this occasion are, « Whoever became a clergyman, must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which, unless he took conscientiously, he must perjure himself »> He thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the office of speak✓ing, bought and began with servitude and forswearing.

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Having taken his degree of Master of Arts, in 1652, he left college, and resided five years with his father at Horton in Buckinghamshire, where he wrote his « Arcades; » and in 1634 he produced his « Masque of Comus, » which was presented at Ludlow, then the residence of the Lord President of Wales, and patronized by the Earl of Bridgwater, whose sons and daughters performed in the piece.

The next production of our author was « Lycidas » a monody on the death of his friend Edward King. Milton, in this monody, evinces, as Dr. Johnson observes, his knowledge of the Italian writers, by a mixture of longer and shorter verses, according to the rules of Tuscan poetry.

He left England in 1638, and went to Paris, where he visted the renowned Grotius, who resided at the French court as ambassador from the Queen of Sweden. From Paris he departed for Italy, where, from the knowledge he had acquired of the language and literature of the country, he

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