RELICS OF MILTON.
Milton was born at the Spread Eagle,[7] Bread-street, Cheapside, December 9, 1608; and was buried, November, 1674, in St. Giles’s Church, Cripplegate, without even a stone, in the first instance, to mark his resting-place; but, in 1793, a bust and tablet were set up to his memory by public subscription.
Milton, before he resided in Jewin-gardens, Aldersgate, is believed to have removed to, and “kept school” in a large house on the west side of Aldersgate-street, wherein met the City of London Literary and Scientific Institution, previously to the rebuilding of their premises in 1839.
Milton’s London residences have all, with one exception, disappeared, and cannot be recognised; this is in Petty France, at Westminster, where the poet lived from 1651 to 1659. The lower part of the house is a chandler’s-shop; the parlour, up stairs, looks into St. James’s-park. Here part of Paradise Lost was written. The house belonged to Jeremy Bentham, who caused to be placed on its front a tablet, inscribed, “Sacred to Milton, Prince of Poets.”
In the same glass-case with Shakspeare’s autograph, in the British Museum, is a printed copy of the Elegies on Mr. Edward King, the subject of Lycidas, with some corrections of the text in Milton’s handwriting. Framed and glazed, in the library of Mr. Rogers, the poet, hangs the written agreement between Milton and his publisher, Simmons, for the copyright of his Paradise Lost.—Note-book of 1848.