"By all of Him we have in thee
Leave nothing of myself in me.
Let me so read my life that I
Unto all life of mine may die."
His verse, like that of his contemporaries, is often marred by
fantastic conceits which show the influence of Donne. Although much of
Crashaw's poem, The Weeper, is beautiful, he calls the eyes of Mary
Magdalene:—
"Two walking baths, two weeping motions,
Portable and compendious oceans."
JOHN MILTON, 1608-1674
[Illustration: JOHN MILTON. After a drawing by W. Faithorne, at
Bayfordbury.]
His Youth.—The second greatest English poet was born in London, eight years before the death of Shakespeare. John Milton's father followed the business of a scrivener and drew wills and deeds and invested money for clients. As he prospered at this calling, his family did not suffer for want of money. He was a man of much culture and a musical composer of considerable note.
A portrait of the child at the age of ten, the work of the painter to the court, still exists and shows him to have been "a sweet, serious, round-headed boy," who gave early promise of future greatness. His parents, seeing that he acted as if he was guided by high ideals, had the rare judgment to allow him to follow his own bent. They employed the best teachers to instruct him at home. At the age of sixteen he was fully prepared to enter Christ's College. Cambridge, where he took both the B.A. and M.A. degrees.
[Illustration: JOHN MILTON, AET. 10.]
His Early Manhood and Life at Horton.—In 1632 Milton left Cambridge and went to live with his father in a country home at Horton, about twenty miles west of London. Milton had been intended for the church; but he felt that he could not subscribe to its intolerance, and that he had another mission to perform. His father accordingly provided sufficient funds for maintaining him for over five years at Horton in a life of studious leisure. The poet's greatest biographer, David Masson, says "Until Milton was thirty-two years of age, if even then, he did not earn a penny for himself." Such a course would ruin ninety-nine out of every hundred talented young men; but it was the making of Milton. He spent those years in careful study and in writing his immortal early poems.
[Illustration: VISIT OF MILTON TO THE BLIND GALILEO AT THE VILLA
D'ARCETRI NEAR FLORENCE IN 1638. From the painting by T. Lessi.]