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| Milton age 21 in 1629, about the time he wrote his Nativity poem |
English poet, theologian, and political radical John Milton was born on December 9,
1608 in Cheapside, London under the sign of the Spread Eagle inn. His father, also named John, came from a
fairly wealth Catholic family but
had been disowned after throwing his lot with the emerging Protestants. He was a
successful and popular composer whose madrigals
dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I
made him comfortable enough to offer John, his very promising second surviving
son, a first class education.
The elder Milton passes his
passion for religion to his son. Young
John was educated at St. Paul’s School
and Christ College, Cambridge with
an eye to joining the Anglican clergy. At school he showed an amazing facility for
languages, both classical and modern. He
mastered Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Old English as
well as Italian, French, Spanish and Dutch. He was soon composing original poetry in
Latin and Italian as well as English.
Milton abandoned his plans to
join the priesthood and determined to self educate himself. He retreated to his father’s ancestral home
in Buckinghamshire for six years of
intensive study. Not only was he said to
have read “every book that could be found in England,” he undertook an
intensive study of the Bible, including familiarity with the earliest available
texts in Hebrew and Greek. While in the
seclusion of his studies, he published his first poems including On the Morning of
Christ’s Nativity, On Shakespeare,
L'Allegro,
Il
Penseroso, and the pastoral elegy Lycidas.
In 1638 Milton embarked on a 16
month tour of France and Italy, where he sought out and met many of the leading
intellectuals, poets, and philosophers of the late Renaissance. Perhaps most
influentially, he met the astronomer
Galileo, whose persecution would inform his later crusades against censorship.
Returning to England, Milton took
a 16 year old wife, Mary Powel. It was not a happy marriage and despite giving
him three daughters the two lived apart most of the time until her death. This unhappy chapter in his life would lead
to writing pamphlets in defense of divorce,
which were a scandalous among his fellow Protestants as with Catholics. Milton married two more times. To a second wife who died in childbirth and
to Elizabeth Minshull in 1662 who
remained at his side through his last years.
When the English Civil War broke out in 1642, Milton largely abandoned his
poetry to throw himself into the struggle as a passionate Puritan and Parliamentarian. He became one of the leading pen men of
Protestants, writing widely circulated tracts.
His pamphlets advocated freedom of the press, populism, and defended the
regicide of Charles I. When Oliver Cromwell came to power in 1746
he was rewarded with the important post of Secretary
for Foreign Tongues under the new Commonwealth
and its official propagandist. Despite
increasing disillusion with Cromwell for his dictatorial ways, Milton continued
to work diligently even as his eyesight failed.
He continued his work even after going totally blind in 1651. His assistant Andrew Marvell read his correspondence for him and took his
dictation. He would continue to rely on
Marvell even after loosing his position.
When the Commonwealth was
overthrown in 1600 and Charles II
installed on the Throne, Milton, who
was famous for his defense of the execution of the King’s father, was arrested
and briefly imprisoned. The king,
however, favored a policy of reconciliation—and privately supported religious
tolerance—and Milton was released upon the payment of a fine and a promise not
to engage in further political writing.
Milton retreated with his family
and the loyal Marvell to Buckinghamshire where he began work on his greatest
achievements—the epic blank verse poems Paradise Lost and Paradise
Regained. By this time Milton
had abandoned Calvinistic Puritanism
and become an Arian, the
crypto-unitarian theology that denied the Trinity
and the idea that Christ was of
the same substance and co-equal with God
the Father. Public expression of
Arianism was considered heresy and blasphemy punishable by death. Undeterred, Milton proclaimed his position in
the very opening lines of his masterpiece, “….till one greater Man Restore us,
and regain the blissful Seat…”
The poem showed Satan as a tragic, almost heroic
figure, while ultimately acknowledging God’s grace and goodness and the agency
of a human Christ as a redeemer. It also
included much thinly veiled political commentary. The publication of Paradise Lost was
delayed by the Black Plague and the Great Fire of London until 1667. Despite the defenders of orthodoxy complaining that Milton had gone mad, the book was a widespread
success. Milton followed with Paradise Regained and the tragedy Samson
Agonistes both published in 1671 but not as successful.
Increasingly frail, Milton spent
his last years trying to put his papers in order in the hopes of the eventual
publication of his complete works. He
died peacefully in Buckinghamshire on November 8, 1674.
Today Milton is regarded second
only to Shakespeare in the pantheon
of British letters. His work was enormously influential on the English Romantic Poets, some of whom
tried their hand at epic poetry as well.
Both his political pamphlets and his poetry were inspirational to the American Founding Fathers, particularly
to Thomas Jefferson and his fellow Virginians. In the 19th
Century cheap popular editions circulated so widely that many began to look
upon the tale of the Fall of Satan as virtual scripture. Even today some Fundamentalists quote from the poem without seeming to realize the
origin of the words—or Milton’s wildly different worldview from their own.
Since it is also the Christmas season, why not include
Milton’s nativity poem? It is an early
effort, written in his 20’s when he was still an orthodox Puritan—religious views
which he would later modify considerably.
Not often seen by non-specialists, it is still worth a peek as an example
of a great, but developing mind. This is
the introduction of a long poem.
Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity
This is the month,
and this the happy morn
Wherein the Son of
Heaven’s Eternal King
Of wedded maid and
virgin mother born,
Our great redemption
from above did bring;
For so the holy
sages once did sing 5
That He our deadly
forfeit should release,
And with His Father
work us a perpetual peace.
That glorious Form,
that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming
blaze of Majesty
Wherewith He wont at
Heaven's high council-table
To sit the midst of
Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and,
here with us to be,
Forsook the courts
of everlasting day,
And chose with us a
darksome house of mortal clay.
Say, heavenly Muse,
shall not thy sacred vein
Afford a present to
the Infant God?
Hast thou no verse,
no hymn, or solemn strain
To welcome Him to
this His new abode,
Now while the
heaven, by the sun’s team untrod,
Hath took no print
of the approaching light,
And all the spangled
host keep watch in squadrons bright?
See how from far,
upon the eastern road,
The star-led wizards
haste with odours sweet:
O run, prevent them
with thy humble ode
And lay it lowly at
His blessed feet;
Have thou the honour
first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice
unto the Angel quire
From out His secret
altar touch’d with hallow’d fire.
—John Milton
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