by Milton, John
From his brother, Christopher Milton: When he went to school, when he was very young, he studied very hard and sat up very late, commonly till twelve or one o’clock at night, and his father ordered the maid to sit up for him; and in those years (10) composed many copies of verses which might well become a riper age. And was a very hard student in the university, and performed all his exercises there with very good applause. His first tutor there was Mr. Chapell; from whom receiving some unkindness
He went to travel about the year 1638 and was abroad about a year’s space, chiefly in Italy.
[RETURN TO ENGLAND]
Immediately after his return he took a lodging at Mr. Russell’s, a tailor, in St. Bride’s churchyard, and took into his tuition his [Milton’s] sister’s two sons, Edward and John Phillips, the first 10, the other 9 years of age; and in a year’s time made them capable of interpreting a Latin author at sight, etc., and within three years they went through the best of Latin and Greek poets: Lucretius and Manilius
[FIRST WIFE AND CHILDREN]
He married his first wife, Mary Powell of Fosthill,4 at Shotover, in Oxonshire, Anno Domini …; by whom he had four children. [He] hath two daughters living: Deborah was his amanuensis (he taught her Latin, and to read Greeke to him when he had lost his eyesight, which was anno Domini …).
[SEPARATION FROM HIS FIRST WIFE]
She went from him to her mother’s at … in the king’s quarters, near Oxford, anno Domini …; and wrote the Triplechord about divorce.5
Two opinions do not well on the same bolster. She was a … Royalist, and went to her mother to the King’s quarters, near Oxford. I have perhaps so much charity to her that she might not wrong his bed: but what man, especially contemplative, would like to have a young wife environed and stormed by the sons of Mars, and those of the enemy party?
His first wife (Mrs. Powell, a Royalist) was brought up and lived where there was a great deal of company and merriment
[SECOND WIFE]
He had a middle wife, whose name was Katharine Woodcock. No child living by her.
[THIRD WIFE]
He married his second [sic] wife, Elizabeth Minshull, anno … (the year before the sickness): a gentle person, a peaceful and agreeable humor.
[HIS PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT]
He was Latin secretary to the Parliament.
[HIS BLINDNESS]
His sight began to fail him at first upon his writing against Salmasius, and before ’twas full completed one eye absolutely failed. Upon the writing of other books after that, his other eye decayed.
His eyesight was decaying about 20 years before his death. His father read without spectacles at 84. His mother had very weak eyes, and used spectacles presently after she was thirty years old.
[WRITINGS AFTER HIS BLINDNESS]
After he was blind he wrote these following books, viz.: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Grammar, Dictionary (imperfect).
I heard that after he was blind that he was writing a Latin dictionary (in the hands of Moses Pitt). Vidua affirmat6 she gave all his papers (among which this dictionary, imperfect) to his nephew, a sister’s son, that he brought up … Phillips, who lives near the Maypole in the Strand. She has a great many letters by her from learned men, his acquaintance, both of England and beyond the sea.
[HIS LATER RESIDENCES]
He lived in several places, e.g., Holborn near Kingsgate. He died in Bunhill, opposite the Artillery-garden wall.
[HIS DEATH AND BURIAL]
He died of the gout, struck in the 9th or 10th of November, 1674, as appears by his apothecary’s book.
He lies buried in St. Giles Cripplegate, upper end of the chancel at the right hand, vide his gravestone. Memorandum: his stone is now removed, for about two years since (now 1681) the two steps to the communion table were raised. I guess John Speed7 and he lie together.
[PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS]
His harmonical and ingenious soul did lodge in a beautiful and well-proportioned body—“In toto nusquam corpore menda fuit,” Ovid.8
He was a spare man. He was scarce so tall as I am, […] of middle stature.
He had auburn hair. His complexion exceeding fair—he was so fair that they called him the Lady of Christ’s College. Oval face. His eye a dark gray.
He had a delicate tuneable voice, and had good skill. His father instructed him. He had an organ in his house; he played on that most.
Of a very cheerful humor. He would be cheerful even in his gout-fits, and sing.
He was very healthy and free from all diseases: seldom took any physic (only sometimes he took manna):9 only towards his latter end he was visited with the gout, spring and fall.
He had a very good memory; but I believe that his excellent method of thinking and disposing did much to help his memory.
He pronounced the letter R
[PORTRAITS OF HIM]
Write his name in red letters on his pictures, with his widow, to preserve.11
His widow has his picture, drawn very well and like, when a Cambridge-scholar, which ought to be engraven; for the pictures before his books are not at all like him.
[HIS HABITS]
His exercise was chiefly walking.
He was an early riser
At 7 his man came to him again, and then read to him again and wrote till dinner; the writing was as much as the reading. His (2nd) daughter, Deborah, could read to him in Latin, Italian and French, and Greek. [She] married in Dublin to one Mr. Clarke
After dinner he used to walk 3 or 4 hours at a time (he always had a garden where he lived); went to bed about 9.
Temperate man, rarely drank between meals.
Extreme pleasant in his conversation and at dinner, supper, etc; but satirical.
[NOTES ABOUT SOME OF HIS WORKS]
From Mr. E. Phillips:—All the time of writing his Paradise Lost, his vein began at the autumnal equinoctial, and ceased at the vernal or thereabouts (I believe about May); and this was 4 or 5 years of his doing it. He began about 2 years before the king came in, and finished about three years after the king’s restoration.13
In the 4th book of Paradise Lost there are about six verses of Satan’s exclamation to the sun, which Mr. E. Phillips remembers about 15 or 16 years before ever his poem was thought of, which verses were intended for the beginning of a tragedy which he had designed, but was diverted from it by other business.
Whatever he wrote against monarchy was out of no animosity to the king’s person, or out of any faction or interest, but out of a pure zeal to the liberty of mankind, which he thought would be greater under a free state than under a monarchial government. His being so conversant in Livy and the Roman
authors, and the greatness he saw done by the Roman commonwealth, and the virtue of their great commanders induced him to.
From Mr. Abraham Hill:—Memorandum: his sharp writing against Alexander More, of Holland, upon a mistake, notwithstanding he had given him by the ambassador all satisfaction to the contrary: viz. that the book called Clamor was writ by Peter du Moulin. Well, that was all one; he having writ it,14 it should go into the world; one of them was as bad as the other.
Memorandum:—Mr. Theodore Haak. Regiae Societatis Socius, hath translated half his Paradise Lost into High Dutch in such blank verse, which is very well liked of by Germanus Fabricius, Professor at Heidelberg, who sent to Mr. Haak a letter upon this translation: “incredibile est quantum nos omnes affecerit gravitas styli, et copia lectissimorum verborum,”15 etc.—vide the letter.
Mr. John Milton made two admirable panegyrics, as to sublimity of wit, one on Oliver Cromwell, and the other on Thomas, Lord Fairfax, both which his nephew Mr. Phillips hath. But he hath hung back these two years, as to imparting copies to me for the collection of mine […]. Were they made in commendation of the devil, ’twere all one to me: ’tis the 16 that I look after. I have been told that ’tis beyond Waller’s or anything in that kind.17 […]
[HIS ACQUAINTANCE]
He was visited much by learned [men]; more than he did desire.
He was mightily importuned to go into France and Italy. Foreigners came much to see him, and much admired him, and offered to him great preferments to come over to them; and the only inducement of several foreigners that came over into England was chiefly to see Oliver Protector and Mr. John Milton; and would see the house and chamber where he was born. He was much more admired abroad than at home.
His familiar learned acquaintance were Mr. Andrew Marvell, Mr. Skinner, Dr. Pagett, M.D.
Mr.… [Cyriack] Skinner, who was his disciple.
John Dryden, Esq., Poet Laureate, who very much admires him, and went to him to have leave to put his Paradise Lost into a drama in rhyme. Mr. Milton received him civilly, and told him he would give him leave to tag his verses.18
His widow assures me that Mr. T. Hobbes was not one of his acquaintance, that her husband did not like him at all, but he would acknowledge him to be a man of great parts, and a learned man. Their interests and tenets did run counter to each other, vide Mr. Hobbes’ Behemoth.
1. Oriana: Milton’s father contributed a song, “Fair Orian,” to The Triumphs of Oriana (1601), a volume of songs dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I.
2. die Veneris: Venus’s Day, i.e., Friday.
3. I.e., Nathaniel Tovey.
4. I.e., Forest Hill.
5. Triplechord about divorce: most likely Tetrachordon (four strings).
6. Vidua affirmat: His widow maintains.
7. John Speed: author of The History of Great Britain, he is buried in St. Giles, as is John Foxe, author of The Book of Martyrs and Acts and Monuments.
8. 1 Amores 5.18: “There was not a blemish on her body.”
9. manna: a mild laxative.
10. littera canina: dog letter, so called because making a continuous r sound resembles a dog’s growl when threatening attack.
11. A note to himself.
12. Scil.… manè: It is well known (scilicet) … in the morning.
13. I.e., Milton composed his epic between 1658 and 1663.
14. Milton published his Second Defense of the English People (1654), with its attack on More as the author of the Cry of the King’s Blood (Regii Sanguinis Clamor), even after learning that another had written the book.
15. “It is incredible how much the dignity of his style and his most excellent diction have affected all of us.”
16. : loftiness, altitude.
17. We omit here a catalog of Milton’s works.
18. John Dryden’s The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man: An Opera Written in Heroique Verse, based on Paradise Lost, was published in 1677. A tag was an ornamental, metal-tipped lace or string that dangled from a garment.
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
This text of Paradise Lost is based on the second edition of 1674, the last edition published in Milton’s lifetime and the last over which he exerted some degree of control. The qualifier “some degree” is necessary because Renaissance publishers normally introduced their own habits of orthography and punctuation into printed texts. Milton, who is usually assumed to have resisted this practice more than other authors of the period, by no means had his own way in these matters, as we know from the fact that the Pierpont Morgan Library manuscript of Book I of Paradise Lost is more lightly punctuated than the printed version. We have assessed significant variations found in this manuscript, in the first edition of 1667, and in editions subsequent to 1674 on a case-by-case basis, and discussed them in our notes. The virtues of an eclectic approach to editing Milton have been ably set forth by John Creaser (1983, 1984).
We have sought to ease the journey of modern readers. Most of Milton’s capitalizations, italics, and contractions have been removed. Quotation marks came into vogue some years after the death of Milton, and they do not appear in the first two editions of his epic. We have added them. His spelling has been modernized and Americanized; “brigad” becomes “brigade,” and “vigour” becomes “vigor.” But there are important exceptions to these preferences. Our efforts at modernization have been checked by a desire to preserve whenever possible the sound, rhythm, and texture of the poem. We have therefore left archaic words and some original spellings intact; “enow” does not become “enough,” and “highth” does not become “height.” In cases where Milton’s contractions indicate that a syllable voiced in the modern pronunciation of a word is to be elided, as with “flow’ry” at 9.456 or “heav’nly” at 9.457, we have left them alone. Sometimes the final -ed in words such as “fixed” is not voiced, as in “Of Godhead fixed forever firm and sure” (7.586). Where -ed is a voiced syllable, as in “His fixèd seat” (3.669), we have placed an accent mark slanting down from left to right.
Book IV, lines 257 to 290, from the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674). (illustration credit fm4.1)
Punctuation offers especially complex choices for modernizers. For punctuation, or “pointing” as it was called in Milton’s day, serves two purposes at least. It displays the logic of the syntax, aiding a reader in the basic chore of construing sense. But especially in a poetic text, and more especially still in the poetic text of the seventeenth century, punctuation also indicates rhythmic pauses. It is generally assumed, perhaps without much evidence, that a semicolon points to a longer pause than a comma, a colon to a longer pause than a semicolon, and a period to the most pronounced pause of all. Milton’s punctuation is difficult to update for modern readers in both of its functions. For his syntax is not packaged in the modern unit of the sentence. The grammatical shoots of Paradise Lost twist and turn like wanton vines. His verbs can refer back to subjects introduced some ten or more lines before, and what seem at first to be subordinate clauses will often develop complex syntactical lives of their own. On the rhythmic side, many of the commas and semicolons that look superfluous by modern standards could well indicate the sound-patterns of his verse. Some readers would argue that, whenever the two functions of punctuation come into conflict, sound must be sacrificed to sense. But in poetry, as in good prose, sound-patterns are, above and beyond their inherent beauty, meaning-patterns. Countless works of criticism have demonstrated that sound effects in literary language have the power to bear meaning, and we see no reason to doubt these results. Milton, moreover, is widely judged to be a supreme master of this aspect of literary craftsmanship.
Given these concerns, we have sought within a general framework of modernization to respect the punctuation schemes developed by Milton and his publishers. We remove a number of commas. Some are changed to semicolons and periods for the sake of readability. But in places where marking the rhythm seems paramount (see 2.315), we reproduce either closely or exactly the pointing of 1674.
Title page to the second edition of Paradise Lost (1674). (illustration credit fm5.1)
INTRODUCTION TO PREFATORY POEMS
These laudatory poems first prefaced Paradise Lost in 1674. The Latin verses by Samuel Barrow concentrate on the expulsion of Satan and his followers from Heaven and its classical precedents, the defeat and punishment of the Titans and Giants. Given the literary triumph of this section of Paradise Lost, Barrow confidently welcomes Milton onto the stage of world poetry (where he has been ever since). The English verses by Andrew Marvell assert the religious propriety and superior artistry of Milton’s achievement, stressing its capaciousness and aesthetic excellence by invoking the cramped neoclassical canons that prevailed after the Restoration. Aware of Dryden’s desire to rewrite Paradise Lost as a drama in heroic couplets, Marvell detects traces of divine inspiration even in Milton’s blank verse prosody, created like the world itself “in number, weight, and measure.”
Barrow was noted for his affection for Charles I, had been much involved with the political maneuvering of the late 1650s leading to the Restoration, and yet had also been linked with Cromwell. Appointed a physician to Charles II in 1660, he was a discreet, well-connected man of science and a great admirer of Milton. Marvell had a similar history of shifting political allegiance and a well-deserved reputation for discretion. Like Barrow a Royalist sympathizer at the beginning of the English Revolution, he must have adopted the Republican cause by 1653, when Milton recommended him for a position in Cromwell’s government. (He was not appointed until 1657.) After the Restoration, he served ably as member of Parliament for Hull and was widely respected. The participation of Barrow and Marvell in the second edition seems to have been orchestrated as a broad-based appeal to judicious men of learning and affairs on behalf of a poet much maligned for his political crimes. Marvell had earlier come to the aid of the embattled Milton. Immediately after the Restoration, he helped protect the defender of regicide against his enemies and was instrumental in clearing Milton of a supposed debt to the sergeant at arms after his imprisonment in 1660. A decade later, in The Rehearsal Transpos’d, he championed Milton against the scurrilous attack of Samuel Parker.