LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO FACE JOHN MILTON, 1670, AETAT. 62. From the engraving by Faithorne, after his drawing in crayons, ad vivum Frontispiece JOHN MILTON AS A YOUNG MAN. From the oil painting in the College Hall at Christ's College, Cambridge, by permission of the Master . THE CLAY BUST OF MILTON, said to be the work of Pierce, in the Library at Christ's College, Cambridge, by permission of the Master PORTRAIT OF MILTON, by Pieter van der PAGE FROM MILTON'S BIBLE, on which he PAGE O mighty mouth'd inventor of harmonies, O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity, God-gifted organ-voice of England, Milton, a name to resound for ages; Whose Titan angels, Gabriel, Abdiel, Starr'd from Jehovah's gorgeous armouries, Tower, as the deep-domed empyrëan Rings to the roar of an angel onset— Me rather all that bowery loneliness, The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring, And bloom profuse and cedar arches Charm, as a wanderer out in ocean, Where some refulgent sunset of India Streams o'er a rich ambrosial ocean isle, And crimson-hued the stately palm-woods Whisper in odorous heights of even. TENNYSON. JOHN MILTON BIOGRAPHICAL OHN MILTON was born on December 9th, JOH 1608. He was the son of a scrivener, who resided in Bread Street, in the City of London, at the sign of the Spread Eagle, the sign having probably been adapted from the armorial bearings of the family, which are to be seen on the agreement for "Paradise Lost," sealed by the poet. John Milton's grandfather had been a sturdy Catholic who had suffered considerably at the time of the change of religion, and he had disinherited his son John on account of his having joined the Anglican Church. The family was from Oxfordshire, and John Milton the elder had attended a school in Oxford with a view, it is said, of entering the Church. But on being disinherited he came up to London, and set up as a scrivener close to Cheapside. The poet's mother was a warm-hearted and generous woman, described by her son in the following words: "A most excellent mother, particularly known for her charity through the neigh bourhood." She was nine years the junior of her husband, but almost the only other fact that we know respecting her was that her eyesight was not strong, and before she was thirty she had to use glasses, although her husband read without them up to the age of eighty-four. John Milton the elder was musical, and had written a madrigal, in forty parts, for a Polish prince, who had been so pleased with the composition that he had presented him with a gold chain and medal. The household was both a serious and a musical one, and as the father appears to have been successful in his profession, there was, at least in early days, no lack of means. The lad, it would seem, was destined for the Church, and if the lines written beneath the first engraving of his picture, and usually attributed to his own pen, were his composition, we learn this fact from his own lips in the following words: When I was yet a child, no childish play From his very earliest days, however, his genius for poetry was clearly marked. At the age of ten he had composed some verses, and his two English paraphrases of Psalms CXIV and CXXXVI were made when he was fifteen. A PARAPHRASE ON PSALM CXIV. When the blest seed of Terah's faithful son And passed from Pharian fields to Canaan land, The high, huge-bellied mountains skip like rams Why turned Jordan toward his crystal fountains? That glassy floods from rugged rocks can crush, PSALM CXXXVI. Let us with a gladsome mind Let us blaze his name abroad, O let us his praises tell, Who doth the wrathful tyrants quell; For his, &c. Who with his miracles doth make |