John Milton wrote poetry during the English Renaissance. He was born on 9 December 1608 to John and Sara Milton. Only three of their children survived infancy. Anne was the oldest, John was the middle child, and Christopher was the youngest.
John Milton was educated under a strong Protestant influence and attended Christ's College, Cambridge, with the intention of pursuing a career as a minister. During his college years, Milton produced his poems L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. After leaving Cambridge, Milton changed his mind about his future, and hesitated during many years of study. Instead, he spent time composing poetry, which led to the production of the dramatic verse of Arcades and Comus.
After the death of his mother, Milton left England to tour Europe. Upon returning, Milton was brought into the realm of political writing and he began a career composing political tracts which put forth his views on state and religious matters. He first supported the presbyterian leaders who were lining up in England behind Stephen Marshall; a few years later he would promote more radical views.
Parents Milton's parents were John Milton, Sr. (1562–1647), a composer and scrivener, and his wife Sara Jeffrey (1572–1637).Hill 1979, p. 210. John Milton, Sr.'s business owned many properties and was involved in making loans.Shawcross 1993, p. 17. He was from a yeoman family and was raised in Oxford, where he trained as a chorister. However, when Richard Milton, his father and a staunch Roman Catholic, discovered that John Milton, Sr. had Protestant leanings, he disinherited his son. John Milton, Sr., left for London and became a scrivener apprentice in 1583. Little is known about Sara Jeffrey besides the fact that Paul Jeffrey, her father, was a tailor and her mother Ellen lived with the Miltons until her death in 1611. The two married around 1600 and buried an unnamed child on 12 May 1601.Lewalski 2003, pp. 2–4.
John Milton, Sr., ran his business from his home on Bread Street. He was constantly at work, and only took a partial day off the day his son was born. In 1633, John Milton, Sr. became warden for the Chapel of St Paul. He continued his job as a scrivener until 1636, when he left the Company of Scriveners's Court of Assistants and he moved his family from Hammersmith to Horton.Campbell 2003, p. 487. While not working as a scrivener, John Milton, Sr. composed music, which brought him into a close relationship with other musicians and composers including Henry Lawes, who proved influential in commissioning the young Milton's masques.Lewalski 2003, p. 3. At least twenty of Milton Sr.'s compositions survived, and most of them contain a religious theme. His works were published in many collections, including Thomas Morley's Triumphs of Oriana (1601), William Leighton's The Tears or Lamentations of a Sorrowful Soul (1612) and Thomas Ravenscroft's The Whole Book of Psalms (1621), amongst others. He also composed poetry, and two poems, never published, are known to have existed: a sonnet and a poem dedicated to John Lane.ODNB
Childhood Milton was born 6:30 a.m. on Friday 9 December 1608,Campbell 2003, p. 484. in Cheapside, London along Bread Street, near St. Paul's Cathedral. He was baptised at All Hallows Church on 20 December 1608.Campbell 2003, p. 485. At the time of Milton's birth, his father was 46 and mother 36. He had one older sister Anne; her date of birth is unknown. Milton had three younger siblings: Christopher, baptised 3 December 1615; Sara, baptised 15 July 1612 and died 6 August 1612; and Tabitha, baptised 30 January 1614 and died 3 August 1615.Lewalski 2003, p. 2.
Milton attended church at All Hallows and was influenced by the minister Richard Stock, a Puritan who was anti-Catholic and emphasised the need to read the Bible. In addition to his time at church, he spent most of his early life near St. Paul's Cathedral and was privately tutored. From the ages of 5 and 7, Milton was taught how to read and write in English and Latin, along with arithmetic. Milton was provided with several tutors between the ages of 7 and 12, but one in particular, Thomas Young, would prove influential. Young was a Scottish Presbyterian who had moved south, was highly educated and respected by his peers. Young's religious views affected Milton, and he adopted both Puritan appearances and ideas during his tutoring.Lewalski 2003, pp. 4–5. Young was not the only major figure in Milton's early education; Milton acknowledged his father's care in teaching him many languages, including French, Italian, and Hebrew.Lewalski 2003, p. 11.
After a few years, he was sent to St. Paul's School, which was run by Alexander Gil, William Sound, and Oliver Smythe. Gil had a reputation for scholarship in Greek, Latin, and theology. He was also a proponent of English grammar structures and relied on poetry, including that written by Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney, to discuss the English language. Milton travelled each day between school and home, and his path took him by St Paul's. It is possible that he listened to the sermons put on during this time by John Donne.Lewalski 2003, pp. 6–8. John Aubrey, in Brief Lives, quotes his brother Christopher to describe how Milton spent his time: "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 main to sit up for him".qtd in Masson, 1881 p. 85.Oliver Lawson Dick, Aubrey's Brief Lives (1962 edition), pp. 270–5. Milton later attributed his blindness, in his Defensio Secunda, to the rigorous study that he undertook during this time.Lewalski, p. 6.
There is little evidence about Milton's time at St. Paul's, because the school's records were lost in a fire during the late 17th century. The actual date of Milton's start at the school is uncertain, further than estimate in the range from 1615 to 1622. According to accounts by Edward Phillips, Milton's nephew, and by Christopher Milton, Milton started at the school during his earliest years. However, Phillips states that Milton went to school with his brother, which ambiguous phrasing pushes the date to 1622. Milton, in his Defensio Secunda, claims that he began his deeper studies at the age of 12, which places the date after 1620. While at the school, Milton befriended Charles Diodati, and the two kept up a regular correspondence of letters and poetry. It is certain that the friendship was established Diodati before Diodati left to study at Oxford in early 1623.
Milton composed his first hymn in 1623, and, in 1624, his earliest completed poem, "A Paraphrase on Psalm 114". "A Paraphrase on Psalm 114" describes how the Jews were led by God out of Egypt, the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea, and their eventual arrival in Canaan. The psalm emphasises the importance of the father figure and serves as an early model for the relationship between father and son in Milton's later works, including Paradise Lost (God and Son) and Samson Agonistes (Manoa and Samson).Shawcross 1993, pp. 18–19.
College
On 12 February 1625, Milton was admitted into Christ's College, Cambridge as a minor pensioner. Christ's under Thomas Bainbrigg, Master from 1622, was harmonious on religious questions, a great contrast to the situation some years earlier when Valentine Carey had clashed with William Ames, and the fellowship of 13 included a range of views.Campbell & Corns 2008, p. 26 and p. 392, n. 10. Milton matriculated on 9 April 1625 with William Chappell as his tutor.Campbell 2003, p. 486. He intended, according to the Subscription Book, to become a minister, and his course of study at Cambridge was based around this vocation. More of Milton's studies at Cambridge is unknown, but he did begin to study with Chappell, who was a respected scholar and became a staunch Arminian and Laudian. Milton would have attended lectures by Samuel Collins, Robert Creighton, and Robert Metcalfe, in addition to hearing Richard Sibbes and George Herbert preach.Lewalski, pp. 19–20. The Fellow of Christ's with the greatest reputation for his contemporaries was Joseph Mede,Campbell & Corns 2008, p. 28. but it has not been shown that he had personal influence on Milton. It has been argued that Milton later took from Mede's writings some conceptions on the millennium.Hutton 2003, pp.35–7.
When the plague hit England in August 1625, the University of Cambridge had to be shut down until December. Milton had been there only for a few months before he had an altercation with Chappell and he was rusticated by this time. It is possible that the conflict originated in Chappell's Arminianism conflicting with Milton's Calvinistic views.Lewalski, p. 21. He was suspended temporarily from the college, and returned to London from April to July 1625.Campbell 2003, pp. 486–487. During this period, Milton composed many of his earlier poems; his poems on the Gunpowder Plot, his Hobson poems, and his An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester were written while working on various college exercises. Other poems, such as On the Morning of Christ's Nativity or On Time, Upon the Circumcision, and At a Solemn Music, were written during Milton's free time.Shawcross 1993, p. 18.
When Milton returned in 1626, he changed his tutor, because Chappell had wanted Milton removed from the college completely. His new tutor, Nathaniel Tovey, was a friend to both Diodati's family and to Chappell, which eased the personal problems. Tovey's views were Calvinist, and he was a Ramist in logic, a style followed later by Milton in his Art of Logic.Hill 1977, p. 34. Milton spent time writing Latin verse with other students, including Elegy II, which honoured Richard Ridding after his death 26 September 1626. Another elegy was written for the vice-chancellor, John Gostlin, who died on 21 October 1626. In the poem, Milton relies on Horatian poetics. The poem was placed first among the Latin poems in his 1645 collection. It is possible that the work was partly from an early poem that was then expanded in memory of Gostlin. In Elegy III, Milton honours Lancelot Andrewes, the Bishop of Winchester, who died 25 September 1626. In the poem, he also honours two others, whose deaths compounded his time of mourning, and the many Protestants who died during the Thirty Years War.Lewalski, pp. 21–24.
He received a bachelor's degree in 1629. In 1630, Milton composed "On Shakespeare". The poem became the first poem of Milton's to be published, and it was including anonymously in the Second Folio of Shakespeare's Works.Shawcross 1993, p. 25. During this time, Milton began composing a series of love-sonnets, with seven of the poems written during his college years and a final set of three written after 1642.Shawcross 1993, p. 27. In 1632, he received a master of arts degree. He graduated cum laude, but the route into academia was blocked to him by the Christ's College statutes, there already being a Fellow of London origins, Michael Honywood.Hill 1979, p. 33 n 13; online.
Early writing After graduating from Cambridge, Milton returned to live with his parents in Hammersmith, for a long "studious retirement".Shawcross 1993, p. 13. During this period, extending from 1630 to 1638, Milton hesitated over a career and composed his Arcades, A Mask (better known as Comus, a title it acquired only in 1738 at the hands of John Dalton), and Lycidas.