Page:Milton - Milton's Paradise Lost, tra il 1882 e il 1891.djvu/9



OHN MILTON was born in London on the 9th of December, 1608. His father, a scrivener by profession, acquired a sufficient fortune to retire and live upon a competent estate, but at the time of the poet's birth he lived in Brant street, near St. Paul's. In early life he had been disinherited by his parents for renouncing the Church of Rome, to which they were firmly devoted.

After having received considerable advantage from the instructions of a private tutor the young Milton was sent to St. Paul's school, where, under the care of Dr. Gill, he applied himself with great zeal to the study of classical literature, in which he made remarkable progress. Such was his industry that he rarely quitted his studies before midnight; this close application occasioned a weakness of the eyes which in later years terminated in total blindness.

In 1624, Milton was admitted to Christ's College, Cambridge. It was here that he wrote his exquisite Hymn on the Nativity, the poems on the Circumcision, Time and The Passion, and some minor pieces. In 1628 he took his B.A., and 1632 his degree of M.A. He declined to take holy orders, and retired to his father's house at Herton, in Buckinghamshire, where for five years he ardently pursued his studies, and produced the beautiful poems L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, Arcades, Comus and Lycidas, and the Sonnet to the Nightingale.

In 1638, Milton's mother died, and he obtained permission from his father to make a tour on the Continent. He was received abroad with distinguished attention and made the acquaintance of many celebrated men, among them Grotius and Galileo. While on his travels he received news of the civil disturbances in England which preceded the establishment of the Commonwealth, and immediately turned his steps homeward, arriving home after an absence of about fifteen months; he took lodgings in London and educated his sister's sons and a few other young pupils. At the same time he threw himself with great ardor into the civil and religious controversies of the time, and continued for several years to pour out a great number of controversial pamphlets, distinguishing himself by his advocacy of republican principles.

In 1643, Milton married Mary, the daughter of Richard Powel, a magistrate in Oxfordshire. Unfortunately, they belonged to opposite political factions. Milton had scarcely been married a month when his wife paid a visit to her relatives, and soon after intimated her intention of not returning to her husband. Stung by her desertion, he wrote several treatises advocating greater leniency in the discipline of divorce, and began to pay his addresses