Milton

Today is the birthday of English poet, pamphleteer, and historian John Milton (1608) (books by this author). When he was blind, impoverished, and living in seclusion in the countryside, Milton wrote Paradise Lost, considered the finest epic poem in English.

Milton was born in Bread Street in London to a solidly middle-class family. His father was a scrivener and composer of church music who doted on his son, providing him with a private tutor. Milton was smart, precocious, and dedicated. He wrote his first psalms at 15. His brother recalled, "When he was young, he studied very hard and sat up very late, commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night."

After attending Christ's College in Cambridge, where he was notorious for his temper and good looks, he underwent six years of intensive independent study, reading literature, mathematics, and languages, eventually teaching himself French, Spanish, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, and Greek. He did a "continental tour" of Europe (1638) and even met the astronomer Galileo, who was then under house arrest. He was also honing his political savvy and upon returning home, began writing tracts and pamphlets on radical topics like freedom of the press and the abolition of the Church of England.

Milton was 34 when he married 17-year-old Mary Powell. He proved to be too strict, though, and she went back home after a month. They were separated for several years and this is when he published his famous Divorce Tracts, which advocated for divorce. When the monarchy was restored in 1660, after the Civil War, Milton was promptly arrested and imprisoned as a traitor. When he was released, he was stripped of his property.

He retreated with his second wife to the countryside, where, completely blind, he began dictating a long poem about the Fall of Man from the Bible. Typically, epic poems were about heroic kings and queens, but Milton decided to write about Adam, Eve, Satan, lustful sex, and shame.

In Paradise Lost, Satan is arrogant and powerful and delivers the now famous line, "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven." Milton sold the copyright for 10 pounds. The first edition sold out within 18 months. The first edition of Paradise Lost comprised 10 books of over 10,000 lines of verse. Book IX is the longest, with 1,189 lines; Book VII is the shortest, with only 640 lines.

Milton was 60 years old when it was published in 1667. During the poem's composition he suffered, gout, depression, and the death of his second wife and infant daughter. Paradise Lost has influenced countless artists and writers, from Salvador Dali to William Blake to Mary Shelley, who was inspired to write Frankenstein after reading Paradise Lost.