John Milton was the son of John Milton, a scrivener of good repute, in the city of London. He was born in the year 1608, and was carefully educated under the supervision of his father, who was a man of refined taste. He was destined for the Church, and gave great promise of eminence; for he was an assiduous and diligent youth, and was noted for his complete learning and elegant scholarship, at the University of Cambridge, where he obtained his degrees. But he declined to take orders, and refused to subscribe to the articles of faith, considering that so doing was subscribing, slave.
In thus early displaying his independence of opinion in his religious belief, he did but follow the example set him by his father, while he obeyed the honest impulse of his nature; for his father had been disinherited by his grandfather for deserting the Roman Catholic faith.
Shortly after he left the University he retired into the country with his father, who had then relinquished business with a handsome estate; and while there he continued his studies, selecting no particular profession, but devoting himself to the cultivation of all.
It was in these years of sweet scholastic solitude, that he produced his Mask of Comus, than which there is not a nobler poem in any language. This brought him great fame among the polite and refined of the day, and was widely circulated for a while in manuscript; so that when he started on his travels soon after this, (which was in 1638,) he carried with him letters commanding, in his behalf, attention from the most eminent men of the Continent.
He went first to France, and while in Paris was introduced by Lord Scudamore, the English ambassador, to Hugo Grotius, with whom he had a very interesting interview. From Paris he went into Italy, and coming to Florence, in that city he mingled freely with the refined and learned, and, by the elegant displays of his own accomplishments and learning, won the admiration and regard of all. The scholars and wits of that place vied with one another in entertaining him, and celebrated his many merits in their compositions.
With many of those brilliant spirits of that favored land he formed an intimacy, which was continued for years after his return home, as we find by his familiar letters. From Florence he traveled to Rome, and was there again treated with marked kindness and attention by Lucas Holstensius, the librarian of the Vatican, the Cardinal Barberino, and other persons of distinction in that famous city. From Rome he proceeded to Naples, and there made the friendship of the Marquis of Villa, a man of “singular merit and virtue,” and who was afterward celebrated by Milton in a poem, as he had been by Tasso, in his Jerusalem Delivered, and his Dialogue on Friendship. Happy and fortunate lot! thus to be the object of regard, and to have his merits recorded, and his virtues enshrined, for the admiration of posterity, in the works of these great poetic minds!
He had intended, after having thus visited the finest parts of Italy, to go over into Sicily, and thence to Greece; but the news from England of the difficulties between the Parliament and the King changed his mind, and he determined to return home, to mingle with his countrymen in their toil for freedom, thinking it unworthy of him to be loitering away his time in luxurious ease, while his native land was distracted, and his fellow men at home were battling in fierce strife for liberty.
He returned to Rome, notwithstanding the desire of his friends that he should remain away; for by the freedom of his speech when there he had aroused the vindictive feelings of many of his hearers. And to this he was no doubt provoked by having himself seen the dreadful persecution undergone in the prison of the Inquisition, by one of the finest scientific minds the world ever knew—by Galileo—whom he visited when imprisoned for asserting the motion of the earth, and opposing the old notions of the Dominicans and Franciscans.
From Rome he went to Florence; and after being there a while he went to Venice, and from that port he shipped his books and music for England. He then took his route by Verona and Milan, and along the lake of Leman to Geneva; and thence he returned through France the same way he came, and arrived safe in England after an absence of one year and three months, “having seen more, learned more, and conversed with more famous men, and made more real improvement than most others in double the time.”
On his return home, he again devoted himself to the solitude of his study, and to the teaching of several youths (among whom were his nephews) who were intrusted to his care; and in his own house he formed quite an academic institute, where his scholars, like the disciples of the philosophers of old, gathered around him, and by assiduity added to their stores of knowledge, while with his advice and counsel they were purifying and elevating their feelings.