John Milton

John Milton was born in London in December 1608. Milton's father employed private tutors to instruct him in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and modern languages. His father also taught him music. His first published work was a commendatory poem On Shakespeare, dated 1630, which appeared with the second folio of Shakespeare's plays, published in 1632.

in July 1632, Milton gave up his intention of becoming a clergyman because he was unwilling to take the oaths required under the religious policies of Archbishop Laud. He decided to devote himself to literature. After a brief sojourn in Italy, Milton returned to England in July 1639. The collapse of the first of his three marriages in the summer of 1642 prompted a series of pamphlets attacking English marriage law as a relic of medieval Catholicism and advocating the legality and morality of divorce. In 1644 he produced the most celebrated of his prose writings, Areopagitica, written in protest at a parliamentary ordinance of June 1643 which stipulated that all books had to be examined and licensed by a censor before publication. In 1649, Milton wrote The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, in which he declared his support for the republican Commonwealth and advanced the view that the People had the right to depose and punish tyrannical Kings.

He was commissioned to answer various attacks on the Commonwealth and wrote Eikonoklastes ("the Image Breaker") as a counterblast to Eikon Basilike ("the Royal Image").However, Milton refused the Council of State's order to write a refutation of the Leveller pamphlet England's New Chains in 1649, possibly because he felt too much sympathy with the sentiments.

Milton became completely and permanently blind in 1652. When Charles II arrived in London, Milton went into hiding. His name was among those considered for exclusion from the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion. His Defensio and Eikonoklastes were among the books ordered to be burned by the common hangman during the summer of 1660. Although he was arrested and imprisoned for several months, Milton was eventually pardoned for his activities during the Interregnum.

Milton lived quietly after the Restoration, devoting himself to literary pursuits. His epic Paradise Lost, one of the greatest achievements of English literature, was first published in 1667. His last poems, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes were published in 1671. He died in November 1674 shortly after the publication of the second edition of Paradise Lost.

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John Milton

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