The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

[Born in London, 1608. Died there, 1674. Aged 66.] The son of a scrivener. In his earliest years he became enamoured of the Muses, wrote exquisite poetry, travelled in Italy, returned hastily on the outbreak of the Civil war, and identified himself with the Republican party. Later in life, and as blindness was deepening upon him, he was appointed by Cromwell Latin Secretary to the Council of State. Retiring from politics on the death of the Protector, he would, under the Restoration, have suffered as a regicide, had not Sir William Davenant, to his great honour, interposed his own favour with the Court. So rescued, Milton withdrew into obscurity and poverty, unnoticed and forgotten. In his solitude and blindness he composed “Paradise Lost,” which he dictated chiefly to his eldest daughter. The poem was sold to a bookseller for ten pounds, and was not very popular during the lifetime of the poet. At one time he took pupils. He was three times married, was devoutly religious, austere in his morals, and simple in his ways of life. He is the great epic poet of England, distinguished by the strength and sublimity of his genius, and hardly less for sensibility to the graceful and beautiful. Laboriously learned, with an admiration as intelligent as devoted, of the great writings preserved from Greek and Roman antiquity, he, more than any other of our poets, has modelled his works on the type of his illustrious predecessors. He has, of all English poets, carried art in his writings to the highest pitch, but neither art nor imitation has tamed the wing of his muse, or impaired his praise of originality. He knew the greatness of his powers, viewing them as a gift to be used to the honour of the Giver; and his one paramount work, the “Paradise Lost,” having for its “great argument,” as he himself says, “to justify the ways of God to men,” must be regarded as his oblation, brought and laid on the Altar. He founded and formed English heroic blank verse,--a measure which, under his hand, rivals in richness and variety the music of his classical masters; and which alone could, by its majestic flow and inexhaustible powers of expression, have sustained the weight and amplitude of his subject. He loved and honoured Shakspeare.