A History of English Literature

distinctly the greatest of English poets except Shakspere, stands John
Milton. His life falls naturally into three periods: 1. Youth and
preparation, 1608-1639, when he wrote his shorter poems. 2. Public life,
1639-1660, when he wrote, or at least published, in poetry, only a few
sonnets. 3. Later years, 1660-1674, of outer defeat, but of chief poetic
achievement, the period of 'Paradise Lost,' 'Paradise Regained,' and
'Samson Agonistes.'
Milton was born in London in December, 1608. His father was a prosperous
scrivener, or lawyer of the humbler sort, and a Puritan, but broad-minded,
and his children were brought up in the love of music, beauty, and
learning. At the age of twelve the future poet was sent to St. Paul's
School, and he tells us that from this time on his devotion to study seldom
allowed him to leave his books earlier than midnight. At sixteen, in 1625,
he entered Cambridge, where he remained during the seven years required for
the M. A. degree, and where he was known as 'the lady of Christ's'
[College], perhaps for his beauty, of which all his life he continued
proud, perhaps for his moral scrupulousness. Milton was never, however, a
conventional prig, and a quarrel with a self-important tutor led at one
time to his informal suspension from the University. His nature, indeed,
had many elements quite inconsistent with the usual vague popular
conception of him. He was always not only inflexible in his devotion to
principle, but--partly, no doubt, from consciousness of his intellectual
superiority--haughty as well as reserved, self-confident, and little
respectful of opinions and feelings that clashed with his own. Nevertheless
in his youth he had plenty of animal spirits and always for his friends
warm human sympathies.
To his college years belong two important poems. His Christmas hymn, the
'Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity,' shows the influence of his early
poetical master, Spenser, and of contemporary pastoral poets, though it
also contains some conceits--truly poetic conceits, however, not exercises
in intellectual cleverness like many of those of Donne and his followers.
With whatever qualifications, it is certainly one of the great English
lyrics, and its union of Renaissance sensuousness with grandeur of
conception and sureness of expression foretell clearly enough at twenty the
poet of 'Paradise Lost.' The sonnet on his twenty-third birthday, further,
is known to almost every reader of poetry as the best short expression in
literature of the dedication of one's life and powers to God.
Milton had planned to enter the ministry, but the growing predominance of
the High-Church party made this impossible for him, and on leaving the
University in 1632 he retired to the country estate which his parents now
occupied at Horton, twenty miles west of London. Here, for nearly six
years, amid surroundings which nourished his poet's love for Nature, he
devoted his time chiefly to further mastery of the whole range of approved
literature, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and English. His poems of these
years also are few, but they too are of the very highest quality.
'L'Allegro' and 'Il Penseroso' are idealized visions, in the tripping
Elizabethan octosyllabic couplet, of the pleasures of suburban life viewed
in moods respectively of light-hearted happiness and of reflection.
'Comus,' the last of the Elizabethan and Jacobean masks, combines an
exquisite poetic beauty and a real dramatic action more substantial than
that of any other mask with a serious moral theme (the security of Virtue)
in a fashion that renders it unique. 'Lycidas' is one of the supreme
English elegies; though the grief which helps to create its power sprang
more from the recent death of the poet's mother than from that of the
nominal subject, his college acquaintance, Edward King, and though in the
hands of a lesser artist the solemn denunciation of the false leaders of