John Milton
born Dec. 9, 1608, London, Eng.
died Nov. 8?, 1674, London?
English poet, pamphleteer, and historian, considered the most
significant English author after William Shakespeare.
Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, widely regarded as the
greatest epic poem in English. Together with Paradise Regained and
Samson Agonistes, it confirms Milton’s reputation as one of the greatest
English poets. In his prose works Milton advocated the abolition of the
Church of England and the execution of King Charles I. From the
beginning of the English Civil Wars in 1642 to long after the
restoration of Charles II as king in 1660, he espoused in all his works
a political philosophy that opposed tyranny and state-sanctioned
religion. His influence extended not only through the civil wars and
interregnum but also to the American and French revolutions. In his
works on theology, he valued liberty of conscience, the paramount
importance of Scripture as a guide in matters of faith, and religious
toleration toward dissidents. As a civil servant, Milton became the
voice of the English Commonwealth after 1649 through his handling of its
international correspondence and his defense of the government against
polemical attacks from abroad.
Early life and education
Milton’s paternal grandfather, Richard, was a staunch Roman Catholic who
expelled his son John, the poet’s father, from the family home in
Oxfordshire for reading an English (i.e., Protestant) Bible. Banished
and disinherited, Milton’s father established in London a business as a
scrivener, preparing documents for legal transactions. He was also a
moneylender, and he negotiated with creditors to arrange for loans on
behalf of his clients. He and his wife, Sara Jeffrey, whose father was a
merchant tailor, had three children who survived their early years:
Anne, the oldest, followed by John and Christopher. Though Christopher
became a lawyer, a Royalist, and perhaps a Roman Catholic, he maintained
throughout his life a cordial relationship with his older brother. After
the Stuart monarchy was restored in 1660, Christopher, among others, may
have interceded to prevent the execution of his brother.
The elder John Milton, who fostered cultural interests as a musician
and composer, enrolled his son John at St. Paul’s School, probably in
1620, and employed tutors to supplement his son’s formal education.
Milton was privately tutored by Thomas Young, a Scottish Presbyterian
who may have influenced his gifted student in religion and politics
while they maintained contact across subsequent decades. At St. Paul’s
Milton befriended Charles Diodati, a fellow student who would become his
confidant through young adulthood. During his early years, Milton may
have heard sermons by the poet John Donne, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral,
which was within view of his school. Educated in Latin and Greek there,
Milton in due course acquired proficiency in other languages, especially
Italian, in which he composed some sonnets and which he spoke as
proficiently as a native Italian, according to the testimony of
Florentines whom he befriended during his travel abroad in 1638–39.
Milton enrolled at Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1625, presumably
to be educated for the ministry. A year later he was “rusticated,” or
temporarily expelled, for a period of time because of a conflict with
one of his tutors, the logician William Chappell. He was later
reinstated under another tutor, Nathaniel Tovey. In 1629 Milton was
awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree, and in 1632 he received a Master of
Arts degree. Despite his initial intent to enter the ministry, Milton
did not do so, a situation that has not been fully explained. Possible
reasons are that Milton lacked respect for his fellow students who were
planning to become ministers but whom he considered ill-equipped
academically or that his Puritan inclinations, which became more radical
as he matured, caused him to dislike the hierarchy of the established
church and its insistence on uniformity of worship; perhaps, too, his
self-evident disaffection impelled the Church of England to reject him
for the ministry.
Overall, Milton was displeased with Cambridge, possibly because study
there emphasized Scholasticism, which he found stultifying to the
imagination. Moreover, in correspondence with a former tutor at St.
Paul’s School, Alexander Gill, Milton complained about a lack of
friendship with fellow students. They called him the “Lady of Christ’s
College,” perhaps because of his fair complexion, delicate features, and
auburn hair. Nonetheless, Milton excelled academically. At Cambridge he
composed several academic exercises called prolusions, which were
presented as oratorical performances in the manner of a debate. In such
exercises, students applied their learning in logic and rhetoric, among
other disciplines. Milton authorized publication of seven of his
prolusions, composed and recited in Latin, in 1674, the year of his
death.
In 1632, after seven years at Cambridge, Milton returned to his
family home, now in Hammersmith, on the outskirts of London. Three years
later, perhaps because of an outbreak of the plague, the family
relocated to a more pastoral setting, Horton, in Buckinghamshire. In
these two locations, Milton spent approximately six years in studious
retirement, during which he read Greek and Latin authors chiefly.
Without gainful employment, Milton was supported by his father during
this period.
Travel abroad
In 1638, accompanied by a manservant, Milton undertook a tour of the
Continent for about 15 months, most of which he spent in Italy,
primarily Rome and Florence. The Florentine academies especially
appealed to Milton, and he befriended young members of the Italian
literati, whose similar humanistic interests he found gratifying.
Invigorated by their admiration for him, he corresponded with his
Italian friends after his return to England, though he never saw them
again. While in Florence, Milton also met with Galileo, who was under
virtual house arrest. The circumstances of this extraordinary meeting,
whereby a young Englishman about 30 years old gained access to the aged
and blind astronomer, are unknown. (Galileo would become the only
contemporary whom Milton mentioned by name in Paradise Lost.) While in
Italy, Milton learned of the death in 1638 of Charles Diodati, his
closest boyhood companion from St. Paul’s School, possibly a victim of
the plague; he also learned of impending civil war in England, news that
caused him to return home sooner than anticipated. Back in England,
Milton took up residence in London, not far from Bread Street, where he
had been born. In his household were John and Edward Phillips—sons of
his sister, Anne—whom he tutored. Upon his return he composed an elegy
in Latin, Epitaphium Damonis (“Damon’s Epitaph”), which commemorated
Diodati.
Early translations and poems
By the time he returned to England in 1639, Milton had manifested
remarkable talent as a linguist and translator and extraordinary
versatility as a poet. While at St. Paul’s, as a 15-year-old student,
Milton had translated Psalm 114 from the original Hebrew, a text that
recounts the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt. This translation
into English was a poetic paraphrase in heroic couplets (rhymed iambic
pentameter), and later he translated and paraphrased the same psalm into
Greek. Beginning such work early in his boyhood, he continued it into
adulthood, especially from 1648 to 1653, a period when he was also
composing pamphlets against the Church of England and the monarchy. Also
in his early youth Milton composed letters in Latin verse. These
letters, which range over many topics, are called elegies because they
employ elegiac metre—a verse form, Classical in origin, that consists of
couplets, the first line dactylic hexameter, the second dactylic
pentameter. Milton’s first elegy, Elegia prima ad Carolum Diodatum, was
a letter to Diodati, who was a student at Oxford while Milton attended
Cambridge. But Milton’s letter was written from London in 1626, during
his period of rustication; in the poem he anticipates his reinstatement,
when he will “go back to the reedy fens of the Cam and return again to
the hum of the noisy school.”
Another early poem in Latin is In Quintum Novembris (On the Fifth of
November), which Milton composed in 1626 at Cambridge. The poem
celebrates the anniversary of the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when
Guy Fawkes was discovered preparing to detonate explosives at the
opening of Parliament, an event in which King James I and his family
would participate. On the event’s anniversary, university students
typically composed poems that attacked Roman Catholics for their
involvement in treachery of this kind. The papacy and the Catholic
nations on the Continent also came under attack. Milton’s poem includes
two larger themes that would later inform Paradise Lost: that the evil
perpetrated by sinful humankind may be counteracted by Providence and
that God will bring greater goodness out of evil. Throughout his career,
Milton inveighed against Catholicism, though during his travels in Italy
in 1638–39 he developed cordial personal relationships with Catholics,
including high-ranking officials who oversaw the library at the Vatican.
In 1628 Milton composed an occasional poem, On the Death of a Fair
Infant Dying of a Cough, which mourns the loss of his niece Anne, the
daughter of his older sister. Milton tenderly commemorates the child,
who was two years old. The poem’s conceits, Classical allusions, and
theological overtones emphasize that the child entered the supernal
realm because the human condition, having been enlightened by her brief
presence, was ill-suited to bear her any longer.
In this early period, Milton’s principal poems included On the
Morning of Christ’s Nativity, On Shakespeare, and the so-called
companion poems L’Allegro and Il Penseroso. Milton’s sixth elegy (Elegia
sexta), a verse letter in Latin sent to Diodati in December 1629,
provides valuable insight into his conception of On the Morning of
Christ’s Nativity. Informing Diodati of his literary activity, Milton
recounts that he is
singing the heaven-descended King, the bringer of peace, and the
blessed times promised in the sacred books—the infant cries of our God
and his stabling under a mean roof who, with his Father, governs the
realms above.
The advent of the Christ child, he continues, results in the pagan
gods being “destroyed in their own shrines.” In effect, Milton likens
Christ to the source of light that, by dispelling the darkness of
paganism, initiates the onset of Christianity and silences the pagan
oracles. Milton’s summary in the sixth elegy makes clear his central
argument in On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity: that the Godhead’s
descent and humiliation is crucial to the Christ child’s triumph.
Through this exercise of humility, the Godhead on behalf of humankind
becomes victorious over the powers of death and darkness.
On Shakespeare, though composed in 1630, first appeared anonymously
as one of the many encomiums in the Second Folio (1632) of Shakespeare’s
plays. It was Milton’s first published poem in English. In the 16-line
epigram Milton contends that no man-made monument is a suitable tribute
to Shakespeare’s achievement. According to Milton, Shakespeare himself
created the most enduring monument to befit his genius: the readers of
the plays, who, transfixed with awe and wonder, become living monuments,
a process renewed at each generation through the panorama of time.
L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, written about 1631, may reflect the
dialectic that informed the prolusions that Milton composed at
Cambridge. The former celebrates the activities of daytime, and the
latter muses on the sights, sounds, and emotions associated with
darkness. The former describes a lively and sanguine personality,
whereas the latter dwells on a pensive, even melancholic, temperament.
In their complementary interaction, the poems may dramatize how a
wholesome personality blends aspects of mirth and melancholy. Some
commentators suggest that Milton may be allegorically portraying his own
personality in Il Penseroso and Diodati’s more outgoing and carefree
disposition in L’Allegro. If such is the case, then in their friendship
Diodati provided the balance that offset Milton’s marked temperament of
studious retirement.
Comus and Lycidas
Milton’s most important early poems, Comus and Lycidas, are major
literary achievements, to the extent that his reputation as an author
would have been secure by 1640 even without his later works. Comus, a
dramatic entertainment, or masque, is also called A Mask; it was first
published as A Maske Presented at Ludlow Castle in 1638, but, since the
late 17th century, it has typically been called by the name of its most
vivid character, the villainous Comus. Performed in 1634 on Michaelmas
(September 29) at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire, Comus celebrates the
installation of John Egerton, earl of Bridgewater and Viscount Brackley
and a member of Charles I’s Privy Council, as lord president of Wales.
In addition to various English and Welsh dignitaries, the installation
was attended by Egerton’s wife and children; the latter—Alice (15 years
old), John (11), and Thomas (9)—all had parts in the dramatic
entertainment. Other characters include Thyrsis, an attendant spirit to
the children; Sabrina, a nymph of the River Severn; and Comus, a
necromancer and seducer. Henry Lawes, who played the part of Thyrsis,
was a musician and composer, the music teacher of the Egerton children,
and the composer of the music for the songs of Comus. Presumably Lawes
invited Milton to write the masque, which not only consists of songs and
dialogue but also features dances, scenery, and stage properties.
The masque develops the theme of a journey through the woods by the
three Egerton children, in the course of which the daughter, called “the
Lady,” is separated from her brothers. While alone, she encounters
Comus, who is disguised as a villager and who claims that he will lead
her to her brothers. Deceived by his amiable countenance, the Lady
follows him, only to be victimized by his necromancy. Seated on an
enchanted chair, she is immobilized, and Comus accosts her while with
one hand he holds a necromancer’s wand and with the other he offers a
vessel with a drink that would overpower her. Within view at his palace
is an array of cuisine intended to arouse the Lady’s appetites and
desires. Despite being restrained against her will, she continues to
exercise right reason (recta ratio) in her disputation with Comus,
thereby manifesting her freedom of mind. Whereas the would-be seducer
argues that appetites and desires issuing from one’s nature are
“natural” and therefore licit, the Lady contends that only rational
self-control is enlightened and virtuous. To be self-indulgent and
intemperate, she adds, is to forfeit one’s higher nature and to yield to
baser impulses. In this debate the Lady and Comus signify, respectively,
soul and body, ratio and libido, sublimation and sensualism, virtue and
vice, moral rectitude and immoral depravity. In line with the theme of
the journey that distinguishes Comus, the Lady has been deceived by the
guile of a treacherous character, temporarily waylaid, and besieged by
sophistry that is disguised as wisdom. As she continues to assert her
freedom of mind and to exercise her free will by resistance, even
defiance, she is rescued by the attendant spirit and her brothers.
Ultimately, she and her brothers are reunited with their parents in a
triumphal celebration, which signifies the heavenly bliss awaiting the
wayfaring soul that prevails over trials and travails, whether these are
the threats posed by overt evil or the blandishments of temptation.
Late in 1637 Milton composed a pastoral elegy called Lycidas, which
commemorates the death of a fellow student at Cambridge, Edward King,
who drowned while crossing the Irish Sea. Published in 1638 in Justa
Edouardo King Naufrago (“Obsequies in Memory of Edward King”), a
compilation of elegies by Cambridge students, Lycidas is one of several
poems in English, whereas most of the others are in Greek and Latin. As
a pastoral elegy—often considered the most outstanding example of the
genre—Milton’s poem is richly allegorical. King is called Lycidas, a
shepherd’s name that recurs in Classical elegies. By choosing this name,
Milton signals his participation in the tradition of memorializing a
loved one through pastoral poetry, a practice that may be traced from
ancient Greek Sicily through Roman culture and into the Christian Middle
Ages and early Renaissance. The poem’s speaker, a persona for Milton’s
own voice, is a fellow shepherd who mourns the loss of a friend with
whom he shared duties in tending sheep. The pastoral allegory of the
poem conveys that King and Milton were colleagues whose studious
interests and academic activities were similar. In the course of
commemorating King, the speaker challenges divine justice obliquely.
Through allegory, the speaker accuses God of unjustly punishing the
young, selfless King, whose premature death ended a career that would
have unfolded in stark contrast to the majority of the ministers and
bishops of the Church of England, whom the speaker condemns as depraved,
materialistic, and selfish.
Informing the poem is satire of the episcopacy and ministry, which
Milton heightens through invective and the use of odious metaphors,
thereby anticipating his later diatribes against the Church of England
in the antiprelatical tracts of the 1640s. Likening bishops to vermin
infesting sheep and consuming their innards, Milton depicts the prelates
in stark contrast to the ideal of the Good Shepherd that is recounted in
the Gospel According to John. In this context, the speaker weighs the
worldly success of the prelates and ministers against King’s death by
drowning. The imagery of the poem depicts King being resurrected in a
process of lustration from the waters in which he was immersed.
Burnished by the sun’s rays at dawn, King resplendently ascends
heavenward to his eternal reward. The prelates and ministers, though
prospering on earth, will encounter St. Peter in the afterlife, who will
smite them in an act of retributive justice. Though Milton dwells on
King’s vocation as a minister, he also acknowledges that his Cambridge
colleague was a poet whose death prevented him from establishing a
literary reputation. Many commentators suggest that, in King, Milton
created an alter ego, with King’s premature death reminding Milton that
the vicissitudes of fate can interrupt long-standing aspirations and
deny the fulfillment of one’s talents, whether ministerial or poetic.
Antiprelatical tracts
Having returned from abroad in 1639, Milton turned his attention from
poetry to prose. In doing so, he entered the controversies surrounding
the abolition of the Church of England and of the Royalist government,
at times replying to, and often attacking vehemently, English and
Continental polemicists who targeted him as the apologist of radical
religious and political dissent. In 1641–42 Milton composed five tracts
on the reformation of church government. One of these tracts, Of
Reformation, examines the historical changes in the Church of England
since its inception under King Henry VIII and criticizes the continuing
resemblances between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic
Church, especially the hierarchy in ecclesiastical government. In this
tract and others, Milton also calls attention to resemblances between
the ecclesiastical and political hierarchies in England, suggesting that
the monarchical civil government influences the similar structure of the
church. He likewise decries the unduly complicated arguments of
theologians, whereas he praises the simplicity and clarity of Scripture.
In another tract from this period, The Reason of Church Government,
Milton appears to endorse Scottish Presbyterianism as a replacement for
the episcopal hierarchy of the Church of England. A few years
thereafter, he came to realize that Presbyterianism could be as
inflexible as the Church of England in matters of theology, and he
became more independent from established religion of all kinds, arguing
for the primacy of Scripture and for the conscience of each believer as
the guide to interpretation. In another tract from the period 1641–42,
An Apology Against a Pamphlet, Milton verges on autobiography as he
refutes scurrilous allegations attributed to Bishop Joseph Hall.
Divorce tracts
Soon after these controversies, Milton became embroiled in another
conflict, one in his domestic life. Having married Mary Powell in 1642,
Milton was a few months afterward deserted by his wife, who returned to
her family’s residence in Oxfordshire. The reason for their separation
is unknown, though perhaps Mary adhered to the Royalist inclinations of
her family whereas her husband was progressively anti-Royalist. Or
perhaps the discrepancy in their ages—he was 34, she was 17—led to a
lack of mutual understanding. During her absence of approximately three
years, Milton may have been planning marriage to another woman. But
after Mary’s return, she and Milton evidently overcame the causes of
their estrangement. Three daughters (Anne, Mary, and Deborah) were born,
but a son, John, died at age one. Milton’s wife died in 1652 after
giving birth to Deborah.
During his domestic strife and after his wife’s desertion, Milton
probably began to frame the arguments of four prose tracts: The Doctrine
and Discipline of Divorce (1643, enlarged 2nd ed. 1644), The Judgment of
Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce (1644), Tetrachordon (1645), and
Colasterion (1645). Whether or not his personal experience with Mary
affected his views on marriage, Milton mounts a cogent, radical argument
for divorce, an argument informed by the concepts of personal liberty
and individual volition, the latter being instrumental in maintaining or
ending a marriage. For Milton, marriage depends on the compatibility of
the partners, and to maintain a marriage that is without mutual love and
sympathy violates one’s personal liberty. In such circumstances, the
marriage has already ceased. In his later divorce tracts, Milton
buttresses his arguments with citations of scholars, such as the
16th-century reformer Martin Bucer, and with biblical passages that he
marshals as proof texts.
Tracts on education and free expression
About the time that the first and second editions of The Doctrine and
Discipline of Divorce appeared, Milton published Of Education (1644). In
line with the ideal of the Renaissance gentleman, Milton outlines a
curriculum emphasizing the Greek and Latin languages not merely in and
of themselves but as the means to learn directly the wisdom of Classical
antiquity in literature, philosophy, and politics. The curriculum, which
mirrors Milton’s own education at St. Paul’s, is intended to equip a
gentleman to perform “all the offices, both private and public, of peace
and war.” Aimed at the nobility, not commoners, Milton’s plan does not
include public education. Nor does it include a university education,
possible evidence of Milton’s dissatisfaction with Cambridge.
The most renowned tract by Milton is Areopagitica (1644), which
opposes governmental licensing of publications or procedures of
censorship. Milton contends that governments insisting on the expression
of uniform beliefs are tyrannical. In his tract, he investigates
historical examples of censorship, which, he argues, invariably emanate
from repressive governments. The aim of Areopagitica, he explains, is to
promote knowledge, test experience, and strive for the truth without any
hindrances. Milton composed it after the manner of a Classical oration
of the same title by Isocrates, directed to the Areopagus, or Athenian
council. Informed by Milton’s knowledge of Quintilian’s Institutio
oratoria and of orations by Demosthenes and Cicero, Areopagitica is a
product of the very kind of learning that Milton advocates in Of
Education. It is ultimately a fierce, passionate defense of the freedom
of speech:
For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of
life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are….
Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who
destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it
were in the eye.
Antimonarchical tracts
Counterbalancing the antiprelatical tracts of 1641–42 are the
antimonarchical polemics of 1649–55. Composed after Milton had become
allied to those who sought to form an English republic, The Tenure of
Kings and Magistrates (1649)—probably written before and during the
trial of King Charles I though not published until after his death on
Jan. 30, 1649—urges the abolition of tyrannical kingship and the
execution of tyrants. The treatise cites a range of authorities from
Classical antiquity, Scripture, the Fathers of the Church, political
philosophers of the early modern era, and Reformation theologians, all
of whom support such extreme—but just, according to Milton—measures to
punish tyrants. Thereafter, Milton was appointed secretary for foreign
tongues (also called Latin secretary) for the Council of State, the
executive body of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. Milton was
entrusted with the duties of translating foreign correspondence,
drafting replies, composing papers in which national and international
affairs of state were addressed, and serving as an apologist for the
Commonwealth against attacks from abroad.
In this role as an apologist, Milton received the Council of State’s
assignment to refute Eikon Basilike (“Image of the King”), which was
published in 1649 within days of the king’s beheading. Subtitled The
True Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings,
Eikon Basilike portrays the late king as pious, contemplative, caring
toward his subjects, and gentle toward his family. Though putatively a
personal account by Charles himself, the work was written by one of his
supporters, Bishop John Gauden, and was very effective in arousing
sympathy in England and on the Continent for the king, whom some
perceived as a martyr. In his rebuttal, Eikonoklastes (1649;
“Image-Breaker”), Milton shatters the image of the king projected in
Eikon Basilike. Accusing Charles of hypocrisy, Milton cites
Shakespeare’s portrayal of Richard, duke of Gloucester, in Richard III
as an analogue that drives home how treachery is disguised by the
pretense of piety.
Soon afterward, Milton participated in major controversies against
two polemicists on the Continent: Claudius Salmasius (Claude de
Saumaise), a Frenchman, and Alexander More (Morus), who was
Scottish-French. Charles II, while living in exile in France, is thought
to have enlisted Salmasius to compose a Latin tract intended for a
Continental audience that would indict the Englishmen who tried and
executed Charles I. Universally acknowledged as a reputable scholar,
Salmasius posed a formidable challenge to Milton, whose task was to
refute his argument. Often imbued with personal invective, Milton’s
Defense of the English People Against Salmasius (1651), a Latin tract,
fastens on inconsistencies in Salmasius’s argument. Milton echoes much
of what he had propounded in earlier tracts: that the execution of a
monarch is supported by authorities from Classical antiquity to the
early modern era and that public necessity and the tyrannical nature of
Charles I’s sovereignty justified his death.
In 1652 an anonymous Continental author published another Latin
polemic, The Cry of the King’s Blood to Heaven Against the English
Parricides. Milton’s refutation in Latin, The Second Defense of the
English People by John Milton, Englishman, in Reply to an Infamous Book
Entitled “Cry of the King’s Blood” (1654), contains many
autobiographical passages intended to counteract the polemic’s vitriolic
attacks on his personal life. Milton also mounts an eloquent,
idealistic, and impassioned defense of English patriotism and liberty
while he extols the leaders of the Commonwealth. The most poignant
passages, however, are reserved for himself. Soon after the publication
of Defense of the English People, Milton had become totally blind,
probably from glaucoma. The Cry of the King’s Blood asserts that
Milton’s blindness is God’s means of punishing him for his sins. Milton,
however, replies that his blindness is a trial that has been visited
upon him, an affliction that he is enduring under the approval of the
Lord, who has granted him, in turn, special inner illumination, a gift
that distinguishes him from others.
Works on history and theology
Three extraordinary prose works highlight the depth of Milton’s
erudition and the scope of his interests. History of Britain (1670) was
long in the making, for it reflects extensive reading that he began as a
very young man. Presumably because he initially contemplated an epic
centring upon British history and the heroic involvement of the
legendary king Arthur, Milton researched early accounts of Britain,
ranging across records from the Anglo-Saxon era through works by the
Venerable Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth and into 16th- and 17th-century
accounts by Raphael Holinshed and William Camden, along with many
others. All the while, Milton critically evaluated his sources for their
veracity. Because his own research and writing were interrupted by his
service in Cromwell’s government, History of Britain remained incomplete
even at publication, for the account ends with the Norman Conquest.
Artis Logicae (1672; “Art of Logic”) was composed in Latin, perhaps
to gain the attention also of a Continental audience. It is a textbook
derived from the logic of Petrus Ramus, a 16th-century French scholar
whose work reflected the impact of Renaissance humanism on the so-called
medieval trivium: the arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Countering
the orthodox Aristotelian approach to logic, Ramus adduced a number of
methods by which to reorganize the arts of the trivium. Milton’s
textbook is a redaction of Ramus’s methods.
De Doctrina Christiana (“On Christian Doctrine”) was probably
composed between 1655 and 1660, though Milton never completed it. The
unfinished manuscript was discovered in the Public Record Office in
London in 1823, translated from Latin into English by Charles Sumner and
published in 1825 as A Treatise on Christian Doctrine. The comprehensive
and systematic theology presented in this work reflects Milton’s close
engagement with Scripture, from which he draws numerous proof texts in
order to buttress his concepts of the Godhead and of moral theology,
among others. Like his historical account of Britain and his textbook on
logic, this work is highly derivative, for many of its ideas are
traceable to works by Protestant thinkers, such as the Reformed
theologian John Wolleb (Johannes Wollebius). Milton also drew on other
theologians, notably the English Puritans William Perkins and his
student William Ames. Though Milton did not agree with all elements of
their theology, like them he tended to subordinate the Son to the Father
and to oppose the trinitarian orthodoxy of Roman Catholicism.
Major poems
Blind and once a widower, Milton married Katherine Woodcock in 1656.
Their marriage lasted only 15 months: she died within months of the
birth of their child. He wedded Elizabeth Minshull in 1663, who, along
with the daughters from his first marriage, assisted him with his
personal needs, read from books at his request, and served as an
amanuensis to record verses that he dictated. In the era after the
Restoration, Milton published his three major poems, though he had begun
work on two of them, Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, many years
earlier.
Paradise Lost Abandoning his earlier plan to compose an epic on Arthur,
Milton instead turned to biblical subject matter and to a Christian idea
of heroism. In Paradise Lost—first published in 10 books in 1667 and
then in 12 books in 1674, at a length of almost 11,000 lines—Milton
observed but adapted a number of the Classical epic conventions that
distinguish works such as Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey and Virgil’s
The Aeneid.
Among these conventions is a focus on the elevated subjects of war,
love, and heroism. In Book 6 Milton describes the battle between the
good and evil angels; the defeat of the latter results in their
expulsion from heaven. In the battle, the Son (Jesus Christ) is
invincible in his onslaught against Satan and his cohorts. But Milton’s
emphasis is less on the Son as a warrior and more on his love for
humankind; the Father, in his celestial dialogue with the Son, foresees
the sinfulness of Adam and Eve, and the Son chooses to become incarnate
and to suffer humbly to redeem them. Though his role as saviour of
fallen humankind is not enacted in the epic, Adam and Eve before their
expulsion from Eden learn of the future redemptive ministry of Jesus,
the exemplary gesture of self-sacrificing love. The Son’s selfless love
contrasts strikingly with the selfish love of the heroes of Classical
epics, who are distinguished by their valour on the battlefield, which
is usually incited by pride and vainglory. Their strength and skills on
the battlefield and their acquisition of the spoils of war also issue
from hate, anger, revenge, greed, and covetousness. If Classical epics
deem their protagonists heroic for their extreme passions, even vices,
the Son in Paradise Lost exemplifies Christian heroism both through his
meekness and magnanimity and through his patience and fortitude.
Like many Classical epics, Paradise Lost invokes a muse, whom Milton
identifies at the outset of the poem:
Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Horeb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the heav’ns and earth
Rose out of chaos; or if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God: I thence
Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
This muse is the Judaeo-Christian Godhead. Citing manifestations of
the Godhead atop Horeb and Sinai, Milton seeks inspiration comparable to
that visited upon Moses, to whom is ascribed the composition of the book
of Genesis. Much as Moses was inspired to recount what he did not
witness, so also Milton seeks inspiration to write about biblical
events. Recalling Classical epics, in which the haunts of the muses are
not only mountaintops but also waterways, Milton cites Siloa’s brook,
where in the New Testament a blind man acquired sight after going there
to wash off the clay and spittle placed over his eyes by Jesus.
Likewise, Milton seeks inspiration to enable him to envision and narrate
events to which he and all human beings are blind unless chosen for
enlightenment by the Godhead. With his reference to “the Aonian mount,”
or Mt. Helicon in Greece, Milton deliberately invites comparison with
Classical antecedents. He avers that his work will supersede these
predecessors and will accomplish what has not yet been achieved: a
biblical epic in English.
Paradise Lost also directly invokes Classical epics by beginning its
action in medias res. Book 1 recounts the aftermath of the war in
heaven, which is described only later, in Book 6. At the outset of the
epic, the consequences of the loss of the war include the expulsion of
the fallen angels from heaven and their descent into hell, a place of
infernal torment. With the punishment of the fallen angels having been
described early in the epic, Milton in later books recounts how and why
their disobedience occurred. Disobedience and its consequences,
therefore, come to the fore in Raphael’s instruction of Adam and Eve,
who (especially in Books 6 and 8) are admonished to remain obedient. By
examining the sinfulness of Satan in thought and in deed, Milton
positions this part of his narrative close to the temptation of Eve.
This arrangement enables Milton to highlight how and why Satan, who
inhabits a serpent to seduce Eve in Book 9, induces in her the
inordinate pride that brought about his own downfall. Satan arouses in
Eve a comparable state of mind, which is enacted in her partaking of the
forbidden fruit, an act of disobedience.
Milton’s epic begins in the hellish underworld and returns there
after Satan has tempted Eve to disobedience. In line with Classical
depictions of the underworld, Milton emphasizes its darkness, for hell’s
fires, which are ashen gray, inflict pain but do not provide light. The
torments of hell (“on all sides round”) also suggest a location like an
active volcano. In the Classical tradition, Typhon, who revolted against
Jove, was driven down to earth by a thunderbolt, incarcerated under Mt.
Aetna in Sicily, and tormented by the fire of this active volcano.
Accommodating this Classical analogue to his Christian perception,
Milton renders hell chiefly according to biblical accounts, most notably
the book of Revelation. The poem’s depictions of hell also echo the epic
convention of a descent into the underworld.
Throughout Paradise Lost Milton uses a grand style aptly suited to
the elevated subject matter and tone. In a prefatory note, Milton
describes the poem’s metre as “English heroic verse without rhyme,”
which approximates “that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin.”
Rejecting rhyme as “the jingling sound of like endings,” Milton prefers
a measure that is not end-stopped, so that he may employ enjambment
(run-on lines) with “the sense variously drawn out from one verse into
another.” The grand style that he adopts consists of unrhymed iambic
pentameter (blank verse) and features sonorous rhythms pulsating through
and beyond one verse into the next. By composing his biblical epic in
this measure, he invites comparison with works by Classical forebears.
Without using punctuation at the end of many verses, Milton also creates
voluble units of rhythm and sense that go well beyond the limitations he
perceived in rhymed verse.
Milton also employs other elements of a grand style, most notably
epic similes. These explicit comparisons introduced by “like” or “as”
proliferate across Paradise Lost. Milton tends to add one comparison
after another, each one protracted. Accordingly, in one long passage in
Book 1, Satan’s shield is likened to the Moon as viewed through
Galileo’s telescope; his spear is larger than the mast of a flagship;
the fallen angels outstretched on the lake of fire after their expulsion
from heaven “lay entranced / Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the
brooks / In Vallombrosa” (literally “Shady Valley,” outside Florence).
The fallen angels resemble, moreover, the Egyptian cavalry that pursued
the Israelites into the parted Red Sea, after which the collapse of the
walls of water inundated the Egyptians and left the pharaoh’s chariots
and charioteers weltering like flotsam.
Paradise Lost is ultimately not only about the downfall of Adam and
Eve but also about the clash between Satan and the Son. Many readers
have admired Satan’s splendid recklessness, if not heroism, in
confronting the Godhead. Satan’s defiance, anger, willfulness, and
resourcefulness define a character who strives never to yield. In many
ways Satan is heroic when compared to such Classical prototypes as
Achilles, Odysseus, and Aeneas and to similar protagonists in medieval
and Renaissance epics. In sum, his traits reflect theirs.
But Milton composed a biblical epic in order to debunk Classical
heroism and to extol Christian heroism, exemplified by the Son.
Notwithstanding his victory in the battle against the fallen angels, the
Son is more heroic because he is willing to undergo voluntary
humiliation, a sign of his consummate love for humankind. He foreknows
that he will become incarnate in order to suffer death, a selfless act
whereby humankind will be redeemed. By such an act, moreover, the Son
fulfills what Milton calls the “great argument” of his poem: to “justify
the ways of God to man,” as Milton writes in Book 1. Despite Satan’s
success against Adam and Eve, the hope of regeneration after sinfulness
is provided by the Son’s self-sacrifice. Such hope and opportunity
enable humankind to cooperate with the Godhead so as to defeat Satan,
avoid damnation, overcome death, and ascend heavenward. Satan’s wiles,
therefore, are thwarted by members of a regenerate humankind who choose
to participate in the redemptive act that the Son has undertaken on
their behalf.
Paradise Regained Milton’s last two poems were published in one
volume in 1671. Paradise Regained, a brief epic in four books, was
followed by Samson Agonistes, a dramatic poem not intended for the
stage. One story of the composition of Paradise Regained derives from
Thomas Ellwood, a Quaker who read to the blind Milton and was tutored by
him. Ellwood recounts that Milton gave him the manuscript of Paradise
Lost for examination, and, upon returning it to the poet, who was then
residing at Chalfont St. Giles, he commented, “Thou hast said much here
of Paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?” Visiting
Milton after the poet’s return to London from Chalfont St. Giles,
Ellwood records that Milton showed him the manuscript of the brief epic
and remarked: “This is owing to you; for you put it into my head by the
question you put to me at Chalfont, which before I had not thought of.”
Ellwood’s account is not repeated elsewhere, however; it remains unclear
whether he embellished his role in the poem’s creation.
Paradise Regained hearkens back to the Book of Job, whose principal
character is tempted by Satan to forgo his faith in God and to cease
exercising patience and fortitude in the midst of ongoing and
ever-increasing adversity. By adapting the trials of Job and the role of
Satan as tempter and by integrating them with the accounts of Matthew
and Luke of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness, Milton dramatizes how
Jesus embodies Christian heroism. Less sensational than that of
Classical protagonists and not requiring military action for its
manifestation, Christian heroism is a continuous reaffirmation of faith
in God and is manifested in renewed prayer for patience and fortitude to
endure and surmount adversities. By resisting temptations that pander to
one’s impulses toward ease, pleasure, worldliness, and power, a
Christian hero maintains a heavenly orientation that informs his
actions. Satan as the tempter in Paradise Regained fails in his
unceasing endeavours to subvert Jesus by various means in the
wilderness. As powerful as the temptations may be, the sophistry that
accompanies them is even more insidious.
In effect, Paradise Regained unfolds as a series of debates—an
ongoing dialectic—in which Jesus analyzes and refutes Satan’s arguments.
With clarity and cogency, Jesus rebuts any and all arguments by using
recta ratio, always informed by faith in God, his father. Strikingly
evident also is Jesus’ determination, an overwhelming sense of resolve
to endure any and all trials visited upon him. Though Paradise Regained
lacks the vast scope of Paradise Lost, it fulfills its purpose admirably
by pursuing the idea of Christian heroism as a state of mind. More so
than Paradise Lost, it dramatizes the inner workings of the mind of
Jesus, his perception, and the interplay of faith and reason in his
debates with Satan. When Jesus finally dismisses the tempter at the end
of the work, the reader recognizes that the encounters in Paradise
Regained reflect a high degree of psychological verisimilitude.
Samson Agonistes Like Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes focuses on
the inner workings of the mind of the protagonist. This emphasis flies
in the face of the biblical characterization of Samson in the Book of
Judges, which celebrates his physical strength. Milton’s dramatic poem,
however, begins the story of Samson after his downfall—after he has
yielded his God-entrusted secret to Dalila (Delilah), suffered
blindness, and become a captive of the Philistines. Tormented by anguish
over his captivity, Samson is depressed by the realization that he, the
prospective liberator of the Israelites, is now a prisoner, blind and
powerless in the hands of his enemies. Samson vacillates from one
extreme to another emotionally and psychologically. He becomes
depressed, wallows in self-pity, and contemplates suicide; he becomes
outraged at himself for having disclosed the secret of his strength; he
questions his own nature, whether it was flawed with excessive strength
and too little wisdom so that he was destined at birth to suffer
eventual downfall. When Dalila visits him during his captivity and
offers to minister to him, however, Samson becomes irascible, rejecting
her with a harsh diatribe. In doing so, he dramatizes, unwittingly, the
measure of his progress toward regeneration. Having succumbed to her
previously, he has learned from past experience that Dalila is
treacherous.
From that point onward in Samson Agonistes, Samson is progressively
aroused from depression. He acknowledges that pride in his inordinate
strength was a major factor in his downfall and that his previous sense
of invincibility rendered him unwary of temptation, even to the extent
that he became vulnerable to a woman whose guile charmed him. By the end
of the poem, Samson, through expiation and regeneration, has regained a
state of spiritual readiness in order to serve again as God’s champion.
The destruction of the Philistines at the temple of Dagon results in
more deaths than the sum of all previous casualties inflicted by Samson.
Ironically, when he least expected it, Samson was again chosen to be
God’s scourge against the Philistines.
Despite Samson’s physical feats, Milton depicts him as more heroic
during his state of regeneration. Having lapsed into sinfulness when he
violated God’s command not to disclose the secret of his strength,
Samson suffers physically when he is blinded; he also suffers
psychologically because he is enslaved by his enemies. The focus of
Milton’s dramatic poem is ultimately on Samson’s regenerative process,
an inner struggle beset by torment, by the anxiety that God has rejected
him, and by his failure as the would-be liberator of his people.
Unlike the biblical account in Judges, Samson Agonistes focuses only
on the last day of Samson’s life. Discerning that he was victimized by
his own pride, Samson becomes chastened and humbled. He becomes acutely
aware of the necessity to atone for his sinfulness. In a series of
debates not unlike those in Paradise Regained between the Son and Satan,
Samson engages Manoa, his father; Dalila, his temptress; and Harapha, a
stalwart Philistine warrior. In each of these encounters, Samson’s
discourse manifests an upward trajectory, through atonement and toward
regeneration, which culminates in the climactic action at the temple of
Dagon where Samson, again chosen by God, vindicates himself. Echoing
Paradise Lost, which dramatizes the self-sacrifice of the Son, Samson
Agonistes creates in its hero an Old Testament prefiguration of the very
process of regeneration enabled by the Redeemer and afforded to fallen
humankind. In this way, moreover, Samson exhibits the traits of
Christian heroism that Milton elsewhere emphasized.
But where the Son of Paradise Regained maintains steadfastly his
resistance to temptation, Samson typifies human vulnerability to
downfall. Accordingly, where in Paradise Regained the Son never loses
God’s favour, Samson Agonistes charts how a victim of temptation can
reacquire it. Despite the superficial resemblance between his muscular,
warlike acts of destruction and those of Classical heroes, Samson is
ultimately a Christian hero.
Milton’s later years and death
After the Restoration and despite jeopardy to himself, Milton continued
to advocate freedom of worship and republicanism for England while he
supervised the publication of his major poems and other works. For a
time soon after the succession of Charles II, Milton was under arrest
and menaced by possible execution for involvement in the regicide and in
Cromwell’s government. Although the circumstances of clemency toward
Milton are not fully known, it is likely that certain figures
influential with the regime of Charles II—such as Christopher Milton,
Andrew Marvell, and William Davenant—interceded on his behalf. The exact
date and location of Milton’s death remain unknown; he likely died in
London on Nov. 8, 1674, from complications of the gout (possibly renal
failure). He was buried inside St. Giles Cripplegate Church in London.
Fame and reputation
Milton’s fame and reputation derive chiefly from Paradise Lost, which,
when first published in 1667, did not gain wide admiration. Because of
Milton’s political and religious views, only his close friends and
associates commended his epic. Marvell, who assisted Milton when he was
Latin secretary during the interregnum, expressed extraordinary
admiration of Paradise Lost in verses at the outset of the 1674 edition.
John Dryden, after having consulted with Milton and elicited his
approval, adapted the epic to heroic couplets, the measure that
characterized much verse in that era. The result was The State of
Innocence and Fall of Man, an operatic adaptation published in 1677,
though never performed. At the end of the 17th century, admiration of
Paradise Lost extended beyond a small circle. Indeed, five editions of
the poem appeared between 1688 and 1698, three of them in English and
two in Latin; the 1695 edition in English, with Patrick Hume’s
commentary and annotations, is considered the first scholarly edition.
By the early 18th century, Paradise Lost had begun to draw more
acclaim. Joseph Addison published a series of essays in The Spectator
(1712) in which he ranked Milton’s epic with the works of Classical
antiquity. Because the Neoclassical movement in poetry, which emphasized
heroic couplets, prevailed in this era, Paradise Lost was perceived as a
magnificent exception in its use of blank verse. And because its genre
was that of a biblical epic, Paradise Lost was granted unique status.
Alexander Pope, the quintessential Neoclassical poet, borrowed heavily
from the imagery of Milton’s poem and in The Rape of the Lock (1712–14)
constructed a mock-epic that becomes a genial parody of Paradise Lost.
Voltaire lavishly praised Paradise Lost in 1727 when writing of epic
poetry. Translations of Milton’s epic into French, German, and Italian
appeared before mid-century. Joseph Warton in 1756 cited Milton’s
splendid topographical settings, especially Eden in Paradise Lost, and
praised the flights of sublime imagination that elevated readers into
heaven and near the throne of God. In doing so, Warton emphasized two of
the poem’s characteristics—Milton’s celebration of nature and his
unbridled imagination—that would later be highly valued by English
Romantic authors. But by the end of the 18th century, Milton’s
reputation had suffered because of Samuel Johnson, whose critical
biography in The Lives of the Poets (1779–81), while praising the
sublimity of Paradise Lost, disfavoured Milton’s images from nature,
which Johnson attributed not to direct experience but to derivations
from books.
During the early 19th century, Milton became popular among a number
of major Romantic authors, such as William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley,
and Lord Byron, who in Paradise Lost perceived Satan as a heroic rebel
opposing established traditions and God as a tyrant. Appropriating
elements of Milton’s biography and of his works, these authors created a
historical and literary context for their own revolutionary ideas.
Shelley’s Prometheus in Prometheus Unbound (1820), for instance, is
modeled after Milton’s Satan. By the end of the 19th century and into
the early 20th century, however, Milton had yet again fallen into
disfavour. The most influential voice lessening Milton’s reputation was
that of T.S. Eliot, whose aesthetic interests gravitated toward the
Metaphysical poets, certain Renaissance dramatists, and other
contemporaries of Milton. Eliot complained that Milton’s epic verse
lacked earnest feeling, was “stiff and tortuous,” and was so inflexible
that it discouraged imitation.
Yet another shift in Milton’s reputation occurred in the late 20th
century, when the author, while still appreciated for his literary and
aesthetic achievements in verse, came to be viewed as a chronicler—even
in his poems—of the tensions, conflicts, and upheavals of 17th-century
England. At the same time, however, scholars often portrayed Milton
variously as a forebear of present-day sensitivities and sensibilities
and as an exponent of regressive views. In Paradise Lost, for instance,
the conjugal relationship between Adam and Eve—both before and after the
Fall—is strictly hierarchical, with the husband as overseer of the wife.
But this representation of marriage, considered an expression of
Milton’s regressive views, contrasts with The Doctrine and Discipline of
Divorce, where Milton contends that the basis of marriage is
compatibility. If the partners are no longer compatible, he argues, the
marriage is in effect dissolved. Though such a liberal view of divorce
was unacceptable in Milton’s era, it struck a more responsive chord in
those countries where at the turn of the 21st century marriage was
understood as a voluntary union between equals. By situating Milton’s
work within the social, political, and religious currents of his era,
scholars, nevertheless, demonstrated the enduring value and modern-day
relevance of his works.
Albert C. Labriola
Gustave Dore
born Jan. 6, 1832, Strasbourg, Fr.
died Jan. 23, 1883, Paris
French printmaker, one of the most prolific and successful book illustrators
of the late 19th century, whose exuberant and bizarre fantasy created vast
dreamlike scenes widely emulated by Romantic academicians.
In 1847 he went to Paris and from 1848 to 1851 produced weekly lithographic
caricatures for the Journal pour Rire and several albums of lithographs
(1847–54). His later fame rested on his wood-engraved book illustrations.
Employing more than 40 woodcutters, he produced over 90 illustrated books.
Among his finest were an edition of the Oeuvres de Rabelais (1854), Les
Contes drolatiques of Balzac (1855), thelarge folio Bible (1866), and the
Inferno of Dante (1861). He also painted many large compositions of a
religious or historical character and had some success as a sculptor; his
work in those media, however, lacks the spontaneous vivacity of his
illustrations.