Areopagitica: A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England is a 1644 prose polemical tract by English author John Milton against censorship. Areopagitica is among history's most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to freedom of speech and expression, which was written in opposition to licensing and censorship. It is regarded as one of the most eloquent defences of press freedom ever written because many of its expressed principles form the basis for modern justifications of that right.

Background[link]

Areopagitica was published November 23, 1644, at the height of the English Civil War. It is titled after a speech written by the Athenian orator Isocrates in the 5th century BC. (The Areopagus is a hill in Athens, the site of real and legendary tribunals, and was the name of a council whose power Isocrates hoped to restore). Like Isocrates, Milton had no intention of delivering his speech orally. Instead it was distributed via pamphlet, defying the same publication censorship he argued against. As a Protestant, Milton had supported the Presbyterians in Parliament, but in this work he argued forcefully against the Licensing Order of 1643, in which Parliament required authors to have a license approved by the government before their work could be published.

This issue was personal for Milton as he had suffered censorship himself in his efforts to publish several tracts defending divorce (a radical stance which met with no favor from the censors). Areopagitica is full of biblical and classical references which Milton uses to strengthen his argument; this is particularly fitting because it was directed toward the Calvinist Presbyterians that comprised Parliament at that time.

Argument[link]

Before presenting his argument, Milton defends the very idea of writing a treatise such as Areopagitica. He compliments England for having overcome the tyranny of Charles I and the prelates, but his purpose is to voice his grievances. Milton defends this purpose, holding that to bring forth complaints before the Parliament is a matter of civil liberty and loyalty, because constructive criticism is better than false flattery. ^[1] He concludes his introduction by encouraging Parliament to obey “the voice of reason” and to be “willing to repeal any Act” for the sake of truth and upright judgment. ^[1].

The Origins of the Licensing System[link]

Milton begins with historical evidence noting that Ancient Greece and Rome did not adhere to the practice of licensing. In some cases, blasphemous or libelous writings were burnt and their authors punished, but it was after production that these texts were rejected rather than prior to. Milton’s point is that, if a text is to be rejected, it should first be “examined, refuted, and condemned” rather than prohibited before its ideas have even been expressed. Milton points out that licensing was first instituted by the Catholics with the Inquisition. This fact appealed to the Parliament’s religious beliefs since the Parliament was dominated by Protestants, and there were conflicts between the Protestants and Catholics in England; see Protestant Reformation. Milton provides historical examples of the aftermath following the Inquisition, including how there were popes in Rome beginning in the 1300s who became tyrannical licensers. For example, Pope Martin V became the first to excommunicate the reading of heretical books, and then in the 1500s the Council of Trent and Spanish Inquisition prohibited texts that were not even necessarily heretical, but only unfavorable to the friars.

The Use of Books and Reading[link]

Milton proceeds his argument by discussing the purpose of reading. He mentions that Moses, David, and Paul, were all learned, which reminds his Protestant audience that being learned involves reading “books of all sorts.” He argues that this includes even the “bad” or heretical books, because we can learn from their wrongs and discover what is true by considering what is not. Milton’s point is that God endowed every person with the reason, free will, and conscience to judge ideas for themselves, so the ideas in a text should be rejected by the reader’s own choice, not by a licensing authority. Also, the mind is not corrupted simply by encountering falsehood. Milton points out that encountering falsehood can actually lead to virtuous action, such as how St. Paul’s converts had privately and voluntarily burned Ephesian books considered to be "magic."

The Usefulness of the Licensing Order[link]

Milton then argues that Parliament’s licensing order will fail in its purpose to suppress scandalous, seditious, and libelous books: “This order of licensing conduces nothing to the end for which it was framed." The order was meant to rectify manners by preventing the spread of an “infection” caused by bad books. Milton objects, arguing that the licensing order is too sweeping, because even the Bible itself had been historically limited to readers for containing offensive descriptions of blasphemy and wicked men. Milton also points out that Parliament will not protect the ignorant from bad books by this Order, because the books would more likely have been read by the learned anyhow. Further, whatever bad ideas were written can still be taught through word of mouth or otherwise, so “infection” or corruption is not prevented. Milton’s point is that licensing books cannot possibly prevent societal corruption (it is “far insufficient to the end which it intends"), so there is no viable stopping point: “If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must [also] regulate all recreations and pastimes...” Finally, Milton also points out that if there are even licensers fit for making these judgments, then the possibility of error in licensing books is still great, and the amount of time the job would take is impractical.

The Harmfulness of the Licensing Order[link]

Milton argues that licensing is “a dishonor and derogation to the author, to the book, to the privilege and dignity of learning.” This is because many authors will produce a written work with genuinely good intentions only to have it censored by what amounts to a subjective, arbitrary judgment of the licenser. Milton also thinks that England needs to be open to truth and understanding, which should not be monopolized by the government’s standards. Faith and knowledge need exercise, but this Order will lead to conformity and laziness. Licensing will hinder discovery of truth by the government’s prejudice and custom, because there will always be more truth to be found that we do not yet know of. Milton thinks that licensing could potentially hinder God’s plans, since it gives the licenser the power to silence others.

Conclusion[link]

Although Milton recognizes individual right, he is not completely libertarian in Areopagitica as he argues that the status quo ante worked best. According to the previous English law, all books had to have at least a printer's name (and preferably an author's name) inscribed in them. Under that system, Milton argues, if any blasphemous or libellous material is published, those books can still be destroyed after the fact.

Critical Response[link]

Areopagitica did not persuade the Presbyterians in Parliament to invalidate the prepublication censorship component of the Licensing Order of 1643; freedom of the press was not achieved until 1695. However, as Milton's treatise has been overwhelmingly praised, understanding his audience moves us toward an understanding of why it was unsuccessful. Milton and the Presbyterians had together abolished the Star Chamber Decree under King Charles, but now that they were not being oppressed and they held the power, the Presbyterians in Parliament no longer held to their defense of freedom of the press. Through the Licensing Order of 1643, they were set on silencing the more radical Protestants, the Independents. Milton's treatise is his response to that licensing order, which clearly came at a time when he and the Parliament were already at odds.^[2]

In addition, by the time Milton wrote Areopagitica he had already unsuccessfully challenged Parliament in other areas of privilege and right. Milton’s divorce tracts proved too radical for his day, as did this work. Milton’s ideas were ahead of his time in the sense that he anticipated the arguments of later advocates of freedom of the press by relating the concept of free will and choice to individual expression and right. Milton's treatise "laid the foundations for thought that would come after and express itself in such authors as John Locke and John Stuart Mill."^[3]

Another example of its influence is in that of the United States Constitution, which includes the prohibition against prior restraint, or prepublication censorship. This prohibition is necessary because, as Milton recognized in Areopagitica, to threaten censorship prior to publication would have a chilling effect on expression and speech, or in Milton’s view, it would interfere with the pursuit of truth as it relates to a providential plan.

Quotations[link]

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

[A]s good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.

[T]hough all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play on the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when he ascended, and his Apostles after him were laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewed her lovely form into a thousand pieces, and scattered them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb, still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall do, till her Master's second coming [...]

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

[edit] Modern references to Areopagitica

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A quotation from Areopagitica – "A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life"^[4] – is still prominently displayed over the entrance to the renovated Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library.^[5]

The Supreme Court of the United States has, in interpreting the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, referred to Areopagitica to explain the Amendment's protections. The Court has cited to Areopagitica, by name, in four cases. Most notably, in the landmark case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the Court cited Areopagitica to explain the inherent value of false statements.^[6] The Court cited Milton to explain the dangers of prior restraint in Times Film Corp. v. City of Chicago et al.^[7] Later, Justice Douglas, concurring in Eisenstadt, Sheriff v. Baird cited the pamphlet to support striking down restrictions on lecturing about birth control.^[8] Finally, Justice Black cited Areopagitica when, in Communist Party of the United States v. Subversive Activities Control Board, he dissented from the Court's upholding of restrictions on the Communist Party of the United States against a free speech and free association challenge.^[9] In each instance, Milton is cited by the Court's members to support a broad and expansive protection of free speech and association.

See also[link]

• Book censorship
• Of Education
• John Peter Zenger

References[link]

Additional References[link]

Rosenblatt, edited by Jason P. (2011). Milton's Selected Poetry and Prose : authoritative texts, biblical sources, criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.. pp. 337-380. ISBN 9780393979879. 

External links[link]

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Areopagitica

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Areopagitica

• Online text from Dartmouth's Milton Reading room.
• Areopagitica at Project Gutenberg
• Areopagitica audio recording, public domain solo recording by Moira Fogarty at Internet Archive

John Milton
Portrait of John Milton in National Portrait Gallery, London ca. 1629. Unknown artist (detail)
Born	(1608-12-09)9 December 1608 Bread Street, Cheapside, London, England
Died	8 November 1674(1674-11-08) (aged 65) Bunhill, London, England
Resting place	St Giles-without-Cripplegate
Occupation	Poet, prose polemicist, civil servant
Language	English (L1), Latin, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, Aramaic, Syriac
Alma mater	Christ's College, University of Cambridge
Signature

John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth (republic) of England under Oliver Cromwell. He wrote at a time of religious flux and political upheaval, and is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost.

Milton's poetry and prose reflect deep personal convictions, a passion for freedom and self determination, and the urgent issues and political turbulence of his day. Writing in English, Latin, and Italian, he achieved international renown within his lifetime, and his celebrated Areopagitica, (written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship) is among history's most influential and impassioned defenses of free speech and freedom of the press.

William Hayley's 1796 biography called him the "greatest English author",^[1] and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language";^[2] though critical reception has oscillated in the centuries since his death (often on account of his republicanism). Samuel Johnson praised Paradise Lost as "a poem which...with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind". Though Johnson (a Tory and recipient of royal patronage) described his politics as those of an "acrimonious and surly republican".

Because of his republicanism, Milton has been the subject of centuries of British partisanship (a "nonconformist" biography by John Toland, a hostile account by Anthony à Wood etc.).

Biography[link]

The phases of Milton's life parallel the major historical and political divisions in Stuart Britain. Under the increasingly personal rule of Charles I and its breakdown in constitutional confusion and war, Milton studied, travelled, wrote poetry mostly for private circulation, and launched a career as pamphleteer and publicist. Under the Commonwealth of England, from being thought dangerously radical and even heretical, the shift in accepted attitudes in government placed him in public office, and he even acted as an official spokesman in certain of his publications. The Restoration of 1660 deprived Milton, now completely blind, of his public platform, but this period saw him complete most of his major works of poetry.

Milton's views developed from his very extensive reading, as well as travel and experience, from his student days of the 1620s to the English Revolution.^[3] By the time of his death in 1674, Milton was impoverished and on the margins of English intellectual life, yet unrepentant for his political choices, and of Europe-wide fame.

Early life[link]

John Milton was born on Bread Street, London, on 9 December 1608, as the son of the composer John Milton and his wife Sarah Jeffrey. The senior John Milton (1562–1647) moved to London around 1583 after being disinherited by his devout Catholic father, Richard Milton, for embracing Protestantism. In London, the senior John Milton married Sarah Jeffrey (1572–1637), the poet's mother, and found lasting financial success as a scrivener.^[4] He lived in, and worked from, a house on Bread Street, where the Mermaid Tavern was located in Cheapside. The elder Milton was noted for his skill as a musical composer, and this talent left Milton with a lifetime appreciation for music and friendship with musicians such as Henry Lawes.^[5]

Blue plaque in Bread Street, London, where Milton was born

Milton's father's prosperity provided his eldest son with a private tutor, Thomas Young, and then a place at St Paul's School in London. There he began the study of Latin and Greek, and the classical languages left an imprint on his poetry in English (he wrote also in Italian and Latin). His first datable compositions are two psalms done at age 15 at Long Bennington. One contemporary source is the Brief Lives of John Aubrey, an uneven compilation including first-hand reports. In the work, Aubrey quotes Christopher, Milton's younger brother: "When he was young, he studied very hard and sat up very late, commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night".^[6]

Milton matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1625 and graduated with a B.A. in 1629,^[7] ranking fourth of 24 honours graduates that year in the University of Cambridge.^[8] Preparing to become an Anglican priest, he stayed on to obtain his Master of Arts degree on 3 July 1632.

Milton was probably rusticated for quarrelling in his first year with his tutor, William Chappell. He was certainly at home in the Lent Term 1626; there he wrote his Elegia Prima, a first Latin elegy, to Charles Diodati, a friend from St Paul's. Based on remarks of John Aubrey, Chappell "whipt" Milton.^[6] This story is now disputed. Certainly Milton disliked Chappell.^[9] Christopher Hill cautiously notes that Milton was "apparently" rusticated, and that the differences between Chappell and Milton may have been either religious or personal, as far as we can know.^[10] Another factor, possibly, was the plague, by which Cambridge was badly affected in 1625. Later in 1626 Milton's tutor was Nathaniel Tovey.

At Cambridge Milton was on good terms with Edward King, for whom he later wrote Lycidas. He also befriended Anglo-American dissident and theologian, Roger Williams. Milton tutored Williams in Hebrew in exchange for lessons in Dutch.^[11] Otherwise at Cambridge he developed a reputation for poetic skill and general erudition, but experienced alienation from his peers and university life as a whole. Watching his fellow students attempting comedy upon the college stage, he later observed 'they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools'.^[12] Milton, due to his hair, which he wore long, and his general delicacy of manner, was known as the "Lady of Christ's".

Milton was disdainful of the university curriculum, which consisted of stilted formal debates on abstruse topics, conducted in Latin. His own corpus is not devoid of humour, notably his sixth prolusion and his epitaphs on the death of Thomas Hobson. While at Cambridge he wrote a number of his well-known shorter English poems, among them On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, his Epitaph on the admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespeare, his first poem to appear in print, L'Allegro and Il Penseroso.

Study, poetry, and travel[link]

Upon receiving his M.A. in 1632, Milton retired to Hammersmith, his father's new home since the previous year. He also lived at Horton, Berkshire, from 1635 and undertook six years of self-directed private study. Christopher Hill points out that this was not retreat into a rural or pastoral idyll at all: Hammersmith was then a "suburban village" falling into the orbit of London, and even Horton was becoming deforested, and suffered from the plague.^[13] He read both ancient and modern works of theology, philosophy, history, politics, literature and science, in preparation for a prospective poetical career. Milton's intellectual development can be charted via entries in his commonplace book (like a scrapbook), now in the British Library. As a result of such intensive study, Milton is considered to be among the most learned of all English poets; in addition to his years of private study, Milton had command of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Italian from his school and undergraduate days; he also added Old English to his linguistic repertoire in the 1650s while researching his History of Britain, and probably acquired proficiency in Dutch soon after.^[14]

Milton continued to write poetry during this period of study: his Arcades and Comus were both commissioned for masques composed for noble patrons, connections of the Egerton family, and performed in 1632 and 1634 respectively. Comus argues for the virtuousness of temperance and chastity.

He contributed his pastoral elegy Lycidas to a memorial collection for one of his Cambridge classmates. Drafts of these poems are preserved in Milton’s poetry notebook, known as the Trinity Manuscript because it is now kept at Trinity College, Cambridge.

In May 1638, Milton embarked upon a tour of France and Italy that lasted up to July or August 1639.^[15] His travels supplemented his study with new and direct experience of artistic and religious traditions, especially Roman Catholicism. He met famous theorists and intellectuals of the time, and was able to display his poetic skills. For specific details of what happened within Milton's "grand tour", there appears to be just one primary source: Milton's own Defensio Secunda. Although there are other records, including some letters and some references in his other prose tracts, the bulk of the information about the tour comes from a work that, according to Barbara Lewalski, "was not intended as autobiography but as rhetoric, designed to emphasise his sterling reputation with the learned of Europe."^[16]

He first went to Calais, and then on to Paris, riding horseback, with a letter from diplomat Henry Wotton to ambassador John Scudamore. Through Scudamore, Milton met Hugo Grotius, a Dutch law philosopher, playwright and poet. Milton left France soon after this meeting. He travelled south, from Nice to Genoa, and then to Livorno and Pisa. He reached Florence in July 1638. While there, Milton enjoyed many of the sites and structures of the city. His candour of manner and erudite neo-Latin poetry earned him friends in Florentine intellectual circles, and he met the astronomer Galileo, who was under virtual house arrest at Arcetri, as well as others.^[18] Milton probably visited the Florentine Academy and the Academia della Crusca along with smaller academies in the area including the Apatisti and the Svogliati.

He left Florence in September to continue to Rome. With the connections from Florence, Milton was able to have easy access to Rome's intellectual society. His poetic abilities impressed those like Giovanni Salzilli, who praised Milton within an epigram. In late October, Milton, despite his dislike for the Society of Jesus, attended a dinner given by the English College, Rome, meeting English Catholics who were also guests, theologian Henry Holden and the poet Patrick Cary.^[19] He also attended musical events, including oratorios, operas and melodramas. Milton left for Naples toward the end of November, where he stayed only for a month because of the Spanish control.^[20] During that time he was introduced to Giovanni Battista Manso, patron to both Torquato Tasso and to Giovanni Battista Marino.^[21]

Originally Milton wanted to leave Naples in order to travel to Sicily, and then on to Greece, but he returned to England during the summer of 1639 because of what he claimed, in Defensio Secunda,^[22] were "sad tidings of civil war in England."^[23] Matters became more complicated when Milton received word that Diodati, his childhood friend, had died. Milton in fact stayed another seven months on the continent, and spent time at Geneva with Diodati's uncle after he returned to Rome. In Defensio Secunda, Milton proclaimed he was warned against a return to Rome because of his frankness about religion, but he stayed in the city for two months and was able to experience Carnival and meet Lukas Holste, a Vatican librarian, who guided Milton through its collection. He was introduced to Cardinal Francesco Barberini who invited Milton to an opera hosted by the Cardinal. Around March Milton travelled once again to Florence, staying there for two months, attending further meetings of the academies, and spent time with friends. After leaving Florence he travelled through Lucca, Bologna, and Ferrara before coming to Venice. In Venice Milton was exposed to a model of Republicanism, later important in his political writings, but he soon found another model when he travelled to Geneva. From Switzerland, Milton travelled to Paris and then to Calais before finally arriving back in England in either July or August 1639.^[24]

Civil war, prose tracts, and marriage[link]

On returning to England, where the Bishops' Wars presaged further armed conflict, Milton began to write prose tracts against episcopacy, in the service of the Puritan and Parliamentary cause. Milton's first foray into polemics was Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England (1641), followed by Of Prelatical Episcopacy, the two defences of Smectymnuus (a group of presbyterian divines named from their initials: the "TY" belonged to Milton's old tutor Thomas Young), and The Reason of Church-Government Urged against Prelaty. With frequent passages of real eloquence lighting up the rough controversial style of the period, and deploying a wide knowledge of church history, he vigorously attacked the High-church party of the Church of England and their leader, William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Though supported by his father’s investments, at this time Milton became a private schoolmaster, educating his nephews and other children of the well-to-do. This experience, and discussions with educational reformer Samuel Hartlib, led him to write in 1644 his short tract, Of Education, urging a reform of the national universities.

In June 1643 Milton paid a visit to the manor house at Forest Hill, Oxfordshire, and returned with a 16-year-old bride, Mary Powell.^[25] A month later, finding life difficult with the severe 35-year-old schoolmaster and pamphleteer, Mary returned to her family. Because of the outbreak of the Civil War^{[citation needed]}, she did not return until 1645; in the meantime her desertion prompted Milton, over the next three years, to publish a series of pamphlets arguing for the legality and morality of divorce. (Anna Beer, one of Milton's most recent biographers, points to a lack of evidence and the dangers of cynicism in urging that it was not necessarily the case that the private life so animated the public polemicising.) In 1643 Milton had a brush with the authorities over these writings, in parallel with Hezekiah Woodward, who had more trouble.^[26] It was the hostile response accorded the divorce tracts that spurred Milton to write Areopagitica, his celebrated attack on pre-printing censorship.

Secretary for Foreign Tongues[link]

With the parliamentary victory in the Civil War, Milton used his pen in defense of the republican principles represented by the Commonwealth. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) defended popular government and implicitly sanctioned the regicide; Milton’s political reputation got him appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues by the Council of State in March 1649. Though Milton's main job description was to compose the English Republic's foreign correspondence in Latin, he also was called upon to produce propaganda for the regime and to serve as a censor. In October 1649 he published Eikonoklastes, an explicit defense of the regicide, in response to the Eikon Basilike, a phenomenal best-seller popularly attributed to Charles I that portrayed the King as an innocent Christian martyr. A month after Milton had tried to break this powerful image of Charles I (the literal translation of Eikonoklastes is 'the image breaker'), the exiled Charles II and his party published a defense of monarchy, Defensio Regia Pro Carolo Primo, written by the leading humanist Claudius Salmasius. By January of the following year, Milton was ordered to write a defense of the English people by the Council of State. Given the European audience and the English Republic's desire to establish diplomatic and cultural legitimacy, Milton worked more slowly than usual, as he drew on the learning marshalled by his years of study to compose a riposte. On 24 February 1652 Milton published his Latin defense of the English People, Defensio Pro Populo Anglicano, also known as the First Defense. Milton's pure Latin prose and evident learning, exemplified in the First Defense, quickly made him a European reputation, and the work ran to numerous editions.^[27]

In 1654, in response to an anonymous Royalist tract "Regii sanguinis clamor", a work that made many personal attacks on Milton, he completed a second defense of the English nation, Defensio secunda, which praised Oliver Cromwell, now Lord Protector, while exhorting him to remain true to the principles of the Revolution. Alexander Morus, to whom Milton wrongly attributed the Clamor (in fact by Peter du Moulin), published an attack on Milton, in response to which Milton published the autobiographical Defensio pro se in 1655. In addition to these literary defenses of the Commonwealth and his character, Milton continued to translate official correspondence into Latin. By 1654 Milton had become totally blind, probably due to the onset of glaucoma. This forced him to dictate his verse and prose to amanuenses (helpers), one of whom was the poet Andrew Marvell. One of his best-known sonnets, On His Blindness, is presumed to date from this period.

Family[link]

Milton and Mary Powell (1625–1652) had four children:

• Anne (born 7 July 1646)
• Mary (born 25 October 1648)
• John (16 March 1651 – June 1652)
• Deborah (2 May 1652 – ?)

His first wife, Mary Powell, died on 5 May 1652 from complications following Deborah's birth. Milton's daughters survived to adulthood, but he had always a strained relationship with them.

On 12 November 1656, Milton was married again, to Katherine Woodcock. She died on 3 February 1658, less than four months after giving birth to a daughter, Katherine, who also died.

Milton married for a third time on 24 February 1662, to Elizabeth Mynshull (1638–1728), the niece of Thomas Mynshull, a wealthy apothecary and philanthropist in Manchester. Despite a 31-year age gap, the marriage seemed happy, according to John Aubrey, and was to last more than 11 years until Milton's death. (A plaque on the wall of Mynshull's House in Manchester describes Elizabeth as Milton's "3rd and Best wife".)

Two nephews, John Phillips and Edward Phillips, were well known as writers. They were sons of Milton's sister Anne. John acted as a secretary, and Edward was Milton's first biographer.

The Restoration[link]

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Though Cromwell’s death in 1658 caused the English Republic to collapse into feuding military and political factions, Milton stubbornly clung to the beliefs that had originally inspired him to write for the Commonwealth. In 1659 he published A Treatise of Civil Power, attacking the concept of a state-dominated church (the position known as Erastianism), as well as Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove hirelings, denouncing corrupt practises in church governance. As the Republic disintegrated, Milton wrote several proposals to retain a non-monarchical government against the wishes of parliament, soldiers and the people^{[citation needed]}:

Milton later in life

• A Letter to a Friend, Concerning the Ruptures of the Commonwealth, written in October 1659, was a response to General Lambert's recent dissolution of the Rump Parliament
• Proposals of certain expedients for the preventing of a civil war now feared, written in November 1659
• The Ready and Easy Way to Establishing a Free Commonwealth, in two editions, responded to General Monck's march towards London to restore the Long Parliament (which led to the restoration of the monarchy). The work is an impassioned, bitter, and futile jeremiad damning the English people for backsliding from the cause of liberty and advocating the establishment of an authoritarian rule by an oligarchy set up by unelected parliament.

Upon the Restoration in May 1660, Milton went into hiding for his life, while a warrant was issued for his arrest and his writings burnt. He re-emerged after a general pardon was issued, but was nevertheless arrested and briefly imprisoned before influential friends, such as Marvell, now an MP, intervened. On 24 February 1663 Milton remarried, for a third and final time, a Wistaston, Cheshire-born woman Elizabeth (Betty) Minshull, then aged 24, and spent the remaining decade of his life living quietly in London, only retiring to a cottage – Milton's Cottage – in Chalfont St. Giles, his only extant home, during the Great Plague of London.

During this period Milton published several minor prose works, such as a grammar textbook, Art of Logic, and a History of Britain. His only explicitly political tracts were the 1672 Of True Religion, arguing for toleration (except for Catholics), and a translation of a Polish tract advocating an elective monarchy. Both these works were referred to in the Exclusion debate – the attempt to exclude the heir presumptive, James, Duke of York, from the throne of England because he was Roman Catholic – that would preoccupy politics in the 1670s and '80s and precipitate the formation of the Whig party and the Glorious Revolution.

Milton died of kidney failure on 8 November 1674 and was buried in the church of St Giles Cripplegate; according to an early biographer, his funeral was attended by “his learned and great Friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the Vulgar.”^[28]

Published poetry[link]

Milton's poetry was slow to see the light of day, at least under his name. His first published poem was On Shakespear (1630), anonymously included in the Second Folio edition of Shakespeare. In the midst of the excitement attending the possibility of establishing a new English government, Milton collected his work in 1645 Poems. The anonymous edition of Comus was published in 1637, and the publication of Lycidas in 1638 in Justa Edouardo King Naufrago was signed J. M. Otherwise the 1645 collection was the only poetry of his to see print, until Paradise Lost appeared in 1667.

[edit] Paradise Lost

Milton’s magnum opus, the blank-verse epic poem Paradise Lost, was composed by the blind and impoverished Milton from 1658 to 1664 (first edition) with small but significant revisions published in 1674 (second edition). As a blind poet, Milton dictated his verse to a series of aides in his employ. It reflects his personal despair at the failure of the Revolution, yet affirms an ultimate optimism in human potential. Milton encoded many references to his unyielding support for the "Good Old Cause".^[29]

Milton Dictates the Lost Paradise to His Three Daughters, ca. 1826. Artist: Eugène Delacroix

On 27 April 1667,^[30] Milton sold the publication rights to Paradise Lost to publisher Samuel Simmons for £5, equivalent to approximately £7,400 income in 2008,^[31] with a further £5 to be paid if and when each print run of between 1,300 and 1,500 copies sold out.^[32] The first run, a quarto edition priced at three shillings per copy, was published in August 1667 and sold out in eighteen months.^[33]

Milton followed up Paradise Lost with its sequel, Paradise Regained, published alongside the tragedy Samson Agonistes, in 1671. Both these works also resonate with Milton’s post-Restoration political situation. Just before his death in 1674, Milton supervised a second edition of Paradise Lost, accompanied by an explanation of "why the poem rhymes not" and prefatory verses by Marvell. Milton republished his 1645 Poems in 1673, as well a collection of his letters and the Latin prolusions from his Cambridge days. A 1668 edition of Paradise Lost, reported to have been Milton's personal copy, is now housed in the archives of the University of Western Ontario.

Views[link]

An unfinished religious manifesto, De doctrina christiana, probably written by Milton, lays out many of his heterodox theological views, and was not discovered and published until 1823. Milton's key beliefs were idiosyncratic, not those of an identifiable group or faction, and often they go well beyond the orthodoxy of the time. Their tone, however, stemmed from the Puritan emphasis on the centrality and inviolability of conscience.^[34] He was his own man, but it is Areopagitica, where he was anticipated by Henry Robinson and others, that has lasted best of his prose works.

Philosophy[link]

By the late 1650s, Milton was a proponent of monism or animist materialism, the notion that a single material substance which is "animate, self-active, and free" composes everything in the universe: from stones and trees and bodies to minds, souls, angels, and God.^[35] Milton devised this position to avoid the mind-body dualism of Plato and Descartes as well as the mechanistic determinism of Hobbes. Milton's monism is most notably reflected in Paradise Lost when he has angels eat (5.433–39)^{[clarification needed]} and engage in sexual intercourse (8.622–29)^{[clarification needed]} and the De Doctrina, where he denies the dual natures of man and argues for a theory of Creation ex Deo.

Political thought[link]

Title page of John Milton's 1644 edition of Areopagitica

In his political writing, Milton addressed particular themes at different periods. The years 1641–42 were dedicated to church politics and the struggle against episcopacy. After his divorce writings, Areopagitica, and a gap, he wrote in 1649–54 in the aftermath of the execution of Charles I, and in polemic justification of the regicide and the existing Parliamentarian regime. Then in 1659–60 he foresaw the Restoration, and wrote to head it off.^[36]

Milton's own beliefs were in some cases both unpopular and dangerous, and this was true particularly to his commitment to republicanism. In coming centuries, Milton would be claimed as an early apostle of liberalism.^[37] According to James Tully:

... with Locke as with Milton, republican and contraction conceptions of political freedom join hands in common opposition to the disengaged and passive subjection offered by absolutists such as Hobbes and Robert Filmer.^[38]

A friend and ally in the pamphlet wars was Marchamont Nedham. Austin Woolrych considers that although they were quite close, there is "little real affinity, beyond a broad republicanism", between their approaches.^[39] Blair Worden remarks that both Milton and Nedham, with others such as Andrew Marvell and James Harrington, would have taken the problem with the Rump Parliament to be not the republic, but the fact that it was not a proper republic.^[40] Woolrych speaks of "the gulf between Milton's vision of the Commonwealth's future and the reality".^[41] In the early version of his History of Britain, begun in 1649, Milton was already writing off the members of the Long Parliament as incorrigible.^[42]

He praised Oliver Cromwell as the Protectorate was set up; though subsequently he had major reservations. When Cromwell seemed to be backsliding as a revolutionary, after a couple of years in power, Milton moved closer to the position of Sir Henry Vane, to whom he wrote a sonnet in 1652.^[43][44] The group of disaffected republicans included, besides Vane, John Bradshaw, John Hutchinson, Edmund Ludlow, Henry Marten, Robert Overton, Edward Sexby and John Streater; but not Marvell, who remained with Cromwell's party.^[45] Milton had already commended Overton, along with Edmund Whalley and Bulstrode Whitelocke, in Defensio Secunda.^[46] Nigel Smith writes that

... John Streater, and the form of republicanism he stood for, was a fulfilment of Milton's most optimistic ideas of free speech and of public heroism [...]^[47]

As Richard Cromwell fell from power, he envisaged a step towards a freer republic or “free commonwealth”, writing in the hope of this outcome in early 1660. Milton had argued for an awkward position, in the Ready and Easy Way, because he wanted to invoke the Good Old Cause and gain the support of the republicans, but without offering a democratic solution of any kind.^[48] His proposal, backed by reference (amongst other reasons) to the oligarchical Dutch and Venetian constitutions, was for a council with perpetual membership. This attitude cut right across the grain of popular opinion of the time, which swung decisively behind the restoration of the Stuart monarchy that took place later in the year.^[49] Milton, an associate of and advocate on behalf of the regicides, was silenced on political matters as Charles II returned.

Theology[link]

Like many Renaissance artists before him, Milton attempted to integrate Christian theology with classical modes. In his early poems, the poet narrator expresses a tension between vice and virtue, the latter invariably related to Protestantism. In Comus Milton may make ironic use of the Caroline court masque by elevating notions of purity and virtue over the conventions of court revelry and superstition. In his later poems, Milton's theological concerns become more explicit. In 1648 he wrote a hymn How lovely are thy dwelling fair,^[50] a paraphrase of Psalm 84, that explains his view on God.

Milton embraced many heterodox Christian theological views. He rejected the Trinity, in the belief that the Son was subordinate to the Father, a position known as Arianism; and his sympathy or curiosity was probably engaged by Socinianism: in August 1650 he licensed for publication by William Dugard the Racovian Catechism, based on a non-trinitarian creed.^[51][52] A source has interpreted him as broadly Protestant, if not always easy to locate in a more precise religious category.

In his 1641 treatise, Of Reformation, Milton expressed his dislike for Catholicism and episcopacy, presenting Rome as a modern Babylon, and bishops as Egyptian taskmasters. These analogies conform to Milton's puritanical preference for Old Testament imagery. He knew at least four commentaries on Genesis: those of John Calvin, Paulus Fagius, David Pareus and Andreus Rivetus.^[53]

Through the Interregnum, Milton often presents England, rescued from the trappings of a worldly monarchy, as an elect nation akin to the Old Testament Israel, and shows its leader, Oliver Cromwell, as a latter-day Moses. These views were bound up in Protestant views of the Millennium, which some sects, such as the Fifth Monarchists predicted would arrive in England. Milton, however, would later criticise the "worldly" millenarian views of these and others, and expressed orthodox ideas on the prophecy of the Four Empires.^[54]

The Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 began a new phase in Milton's work. In Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes Milton mourns the end of the godly Commonwealth. The Garden of Eden may allegorically reflect Milton's view of England's recent Fall from Grace, while Samson's blindness and captivity – mirroring Milton's own lost sight – may be a metaphor for England's blind acceptance of Charles II as king. Illustrated by Paradise Lost is mortalism, the belief that the soul lies dormant after the body dies.^[55]

Despite the Restoration of the monarchy Milton did not lose his personal faith; Samson shows how the loss of national salvation did not necessarily preclude the salvation of the individual, while Paradise Regained expresses Milton's continuing belief in the promise of Christian salvation through Jesus Christ.

Though he may have maintained his personal faith in spite of the defeats suffered by his cause, the Dictionary of National Biography recounts how he had been alienated from the Church of England by Archbishop William Laud, and then moved similarly from the Dissenters by their denunciation of religious tolerance in England.

Milton had come to stand apart from all sects, though apparently finding the Quakers most congenial. He never went to any religious services in his later years. When a servant brought back accounts of sermons from nonconformist meetings, Milton became so sarcastic that the man at last gave up his place.

Religious toleration[link]

Milton called in the Aeropagitica for "the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties" (applied, however, only to the conflicting Protestant sects, and not to atheists, Jews, Muslims or Catholics). "Milton argued for disestablishment as the only effective way of achieving broad toleration. Rather than force a man's conscience, government should recognise the persuasive force of the gospel."^[56]

Divorce[link]

His thinking on divorce caused him considerable trouble with the authorities. An orthodox Presbyterian view of the time was that Milton's views on divorce constituted a one-man heresy:

The fervently Presbyterian Edwards had included Milton’s divorce tracts in his list in Gangraena of heretical publications that threatened the religious and moral fabric of the nation; Milton responded by mocking him as “shallow Edwards” in the satirical sonnet “On the New Forcers of Conscience under the Long Parliament,” usually dated to the latter half of 1646.^[57]

Even here, though, his originality is qualified: Thomas Gataker had already identified "mutual solace" as a principal goal in marriage.^[58] Milton abandoned his campaign to legitimise divorce after 1645, but he expressed support for polygamy in the De doctrina christiana, the theological treatise that provides the clearest evidence for his views.^[59]

History[link]

History was particularly important for the political class of the period, and Lewalski considers that Milton "more than most illustrates" a remark of Thomas Hobbes on the weight placed at the time on the classical Latin historical writers Tacitus, Livy, Sallust and Cicero, and their republican attitudes.^[60] Milton himself wrote that "Worthy deeds are not often destitute of worthy relaters", in Book II of his History of Britain. A sense of history mattered greatly to him:

The course of human history, the immediate impact of the civil disorders, and his own traumatic personal life, are all regarded by Milton as typical of the predicament he describes as "the misery that has bin since Adam".^[61]

Legacy and influence[link]

Once Paradise Lost was published, Milton's stature as epic poet was immediately recognised. He cast a formidable shadow over English poetry in the 18th and 19th centuries; he was often judged equal or superior to all other English poets, including Shakespeare. Very early on, though, he was championed by Whigs, and decried by Tories: with the regicide Edmund Ludlow he was claimed as an early Whig,^[62] while the High Tory Anglican minister Luke Milbourne lumped Milton in with other "Agents of Darkness" such as John Knox, George Buchanan, Richard Baxter, Algernon Sidney and John Locke.^[63]

Early reception of the poetry[link]

John Dryden, an early enthusiast, in 1677 began the trend of describing Milton as the poet of the sublime.^[64] Dryden's The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man: an Opera (1677) is evidence of an immediate cultural influence. In 1695, Patrick Hume became the first editor of Paradise Lost, providing an extensive apparatus of annotation and commentary, particularly chasing down allusions.^[65]

Title page of a 1752–1761 edition of "The Poetical Works of John Milton with Notes of Various Authors by Thomas Newton" printed by J. & R. Tonson in the Strand.

In 1732 the classical scholar Richard Bentley offered a corrected version of Paradise Lost.^[66] Bentley was considered presumptuous, and was attacked in the following year by Zachary Pearce. Christopher Ricks judges that, as critic, Bentley was both acute and wrong-headed, and "incorrigibly eccentric"; William Empson also finds Pearce to be more sympathetic to Bentley's underlying line of thought than is warranted.^[67][68]

There was an early, partial translation of Paradise Lost into German by Theodore Haak, and based on that a standard verse translation by Ernest Gottlieb von Berge. A subsequent prose translation by Johann Jakob Bodmer was very popular; it influenced Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. The German-language Milton tradition returned to England in the person of the artist Henry Fuseli.

Many enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century revered and commented on Milton's poetry and non-poetical works. In addition to John Dryden, among them were Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison, Thomas Newton, and Samuel Johnson. For example in The Spectator^[69]Joseph Addison wrote extensive notes, annotations, and interpretations of certain passages of Paradise Lost. Jonathan Richardson, senior, and Jonathan Richardson, the younger, co-wrote a book of criticism.^[70] In 1749, Thomas Newton published an extensive edition of Milton's poetical works with annotations provided by himself, Dryden, Pope, Addison, the Richardsons (father and son) and others. Newton's edition of Milton was a culmination of the honour bestowed upon Milton by early Enlightenment thinkers; it may also have been prompted by Richard Bentley's infamous edition, described above. Samuel Johnson wrote numerous essays on Paradise Lost, and Milton was included in his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–1781).

Blake[link]

Frontispiece to Milton a Poem

William Blake considered Milton the major English poet. Blake placed Edmund Spenser as Milton's precursor, and saw himself as Milton's poetical son.^[71] In his Milton a Poem, Blake uses Milton as a character.

Romantic theory[link]

Edmund Burke was a theorist of the sublime, and he regarded Milton's description of Hell as exemplary of sublimity as aesthetic concept. For Burke it was to set alongside mountain-tops, a storm at sea, and infinity.^[72] In The Beautiful and the Sublime he wrote "No person seems better to have understood the secret of heightening, or of setting terrible things, if I may use the expression, in their strongest light, by the force of a judicious obscurity than Milton."^[73]

The Romantic poets valued his exploration of blank verse, but for the most part rejected his religiosity. William Wordsworth began his sonnet "London, 1802" with "Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour"^[74] and modelled The Prelude, his own blank verse epic, on Paradise Lost. John Keats found the yoke of Milton's style uncongenial;^[75] he exclaimed that "Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful or rather artist's humour."^[76] Keats felt that Paradise Lost was a "beautiful and grand curiosity"; but his own unfinished attempt at epic poetry, Hyperion, was unsatisfactory to the author because, amongst other things, it had too many "Miltonic inversions".^[76] In The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar note that Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein is, in the view of many critics, "one of the key 'Romantic' readings of Paradise Lost."^[77]

Later legacy[link]

The Victorian age witnessed a continuation of Milton's influence, George Eliot^[78] and Thomas Hardy being particularly inspired by Milton's poetry and biography. By contrast, the early 20th century, with the efforts of T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, witnessed a reduction in Milton's critical stature. Harold Bloom, in The Anxiety of Influence, could still write that "Milton is the central problem in any theory and history of poetic influence in English [...]".^[79]

Milton's Areopagitica is still cited as relevant to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.^[80] A quotation from Areopagitica – "A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life" – is displayed in many public libraries, including the New York Public Library.

The title of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is derived from a quotation, "His dark materials to create more worlds", line 915 of Book II in Paradise Lost. Pullman was concerned to produce a version of Milton's poem accessible to teenagers,^[81] and has spoken of Milton as "our greatest public poet".^[82]

T. S. Eliot believed that "of no other poet is it so difficult to consider the poetry simply as poetry, without our theological and political dispositions... making unlawful entry".^[83]

Literary legacy[link]

Milton's use of blank verse, in addition to his stylistic innovations (such as grandiloquence of voice and vision, peculiar diction and phraseology) influenced later poets. At the time poetic blank verse was considered distinct from its use in verse drama, and Paradise Lost was taken as a unique examplar.^[84] Said Isaac Watts in 1734, "Mr. Milton is esteemed the parent and author of blank verse among us".^[85] "Miltonic verse" might be synonymous for a century with blank verse as poetry, a new poetic terrain independent from both the drama and the heroic couplet.

Lack of rhyme was sometimes taken as Milton's defining innovation. He himself considered the rhymeless quality of Paradise Lost to be an extension of his own personal liberty:

This neglect then of Rhime ... is to be esteem'd an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recover'd to heroic Poem from the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing.^[86]

This pursuit of freedom was largely a reaction against conservative values entrenched within the rigid heroic couplet.^[87] Within a dominant culture that stressed elegance and finish, he granted primacy to freedom, breadth and imaginative suggestiveness, eventually developed into the romantic vision of sublime terror. Reaction to Milton’s poetic worldview included, grudgingly, acknowledgement that of poet’s resemblance to classical writers (Greek and Roman poetry being unrhymed. Blank verse came to be a recognised medium for religious works and for translations of the classics. Unrhymed lyrics like Collins' Ode to Evening (in the meter of Milton's translation of Horace's Ode to Pyrrha) were not uncommon after 1740.^[88]

Statue of Milton in Temple of British Worthies, Stowe

A second aspect of Milton's blank verse was the use of unconventional rhythm:

His blank-verse paragraph, and his audacious and victorious attempt to combine blank and rhymed verse with paragraphic effect in Lycidas, lay down indestructible models and patterns of English verse-rhythm, as distinguished from the narrower and more strait-laced forms of English metre.^[89]

Before Milton, "the sense of regular rhythm ... had been knocked into the English head so securely that it was part of their nature".^[90] The "Heroick measure", according to Samuel Johnson, "is pure ... when the accent rests upon every second syllable through the whole line  The repetition of this sound or percussion at equal times, is the most complete harmony of which a single verse is capable",^[91] Caesural pauses, most agreed, were best placed at the middle and the end of the line. In order to support this symmetry, lines were most often octo- or deca-syllabic, with no enjambed endings. To this schema Milton introduced modifications, which included hypermetrical syllables (trisyllabic feet), inversion or slighting of stresses, and the shifting of pauses to all parts of the line.^[92] Milton deemed these features to be reflective of "the transcendental union of order and freedom".^[93] Admirers remained hesitant to adopt such departures from traditional metrical schemes: "The English ... had been writing separate lines for so long that they could not rid themselves of the habit”.^[94] Isaac Watts preferred his lines distinct from each other, as did Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Pemberton, and Scott of Amwell, whose general opinion it was that Milton's frequent omission of the initial unaccented foot was "displeasing to a nice ear".^[95] It was not until the late 18th century that poets (beginning with Gray) began to appreciate "the composition of Milton's harmony ... how he loved to vary his pauses, his measures, and his feet, which gives that enchanting air of freedom and wilderness to his versification".^[96]

While neo-classical diction was as restrictive as its prosody, and narrow imagery paired with uniformity of sentence structure resulted in a small set of 800 nouns circumscribing the vocabulary of 90% of heroic couplets ever written up to the eighteenth century,^[97] and tradition required that the same adjectives attach to the same nouns, followed by the same verbs, Milton's pursuit of liberty extended into his vocabulary as well. It included many Latinate neologisms, as well as obsolete words already dropped from popular usage so completely that their meanings were no longer understood. In 1740 Francis Peck identified some examples of Milton's "old" words (now popular).^[98] The “Miltonian dialect” as it was called, was emulated by later poets; Pope used the diction of Paradise Lost in his Homer translation, while the lyric poetry of Gray and Collins was frequently criticised for their use of “obsolete words out of Spenser and Milton”.^[99] The language of Thomson’s finest poems (e.g. The Seasons, Castle of Indolence) was self-consciously modelled after the Miltonian dialect, with the same tone and sensibilities as Paradise Lost. Following to Milton, English poetry from Pope to John Keats exhibited a steadily increasing attention to the connotative, the imaginative and poetic, value of words.^[100]

Miltonic effects[link]

The varied manifestations of personal liberty in Milton's works (e.g. abandonment of rhyme, irregular rhythms, peculiar diction) converge to create specific Miltonian effects that live on to this day. Raymond Dexter identifies nine outstanding characteristics specific to Paradise Lost that survived into later poetic movements:

1. Dignity, reserve and stateliness

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse (i. 1–6)

2. Sonorous, orotund voice

O thou that, with surpassing glory crown'd
Look'st from thy sole dominion like the god
Of this new World. (iv. 32-4)

3. Inversion of the natural order of words and phrases

Ten paces huge
He back recoil’d. (vi. 193-4)

"temperate vapours bland"(v. 5)
"heavenly form Angelic"(ix. 457-8)
"unvoyageable gulf obscure"(x. 366)

4. The omission of words not necessary to the sense

And where their weakness, how attempted best,
By force or subtlety. (ii. 357-8)

5. Parenthesis and opposition

Their song was partial, but the harmony
(What could it less when Spirits immortal sing?)
Suspended Hell, and took with ravishment
The thronging audience. In discourse more sweet
(For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense)
Others apart sat on a hill retired (ii. 552-7)

6. The use of one part of speech for another

"with gems . . . rich emblazed", "grinned horrible", (adjective used as adverb)
"Heaven's azure" or "the vast of Heaven". (adjective used as noun)
"without disturb they took alarm"; "the place of her retire." (verbs used as nouns )
May serve to better us and worse our foes (adjective used as verb)
Yet oft his heart, divine of something ill (verb, adjective employed in participal sense)
"fuell'd entrails," "his con-sorted Eve," "roses bushing round." (substantive used as verb).

7. Vocabulary

Archaic words from Chaucer, Spenser and Shakespeare: "erst," "grunsel," "welkin," "frore," "lore," "grisly," "ken" etc. Unusual Words from Greek or Latin: "dulcet," "panoplie," "sapience," "nocent," "congratulant” etc. Words employed in senses obsolete to the eighteenth century: "the secret top Of Oreb," "a singèd bottom all in-volved With stench," "tempt an abyss,” "his uncouth way"

8. The introduction into a comparatively short passage of proper names in number, not necessary to the sense, but adding richness, color, and imaginative suggestiveness

And what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son,
Begirt with British and Armoric knights;
And all who since, baptised or infidel,
jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban,
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond;
Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell
By Fontarabbia. (i. 579-87)

9. Unusual compound epithets

"Sail-broad vans," "high-climbing hill," "arch-chemic sun," "half-rounding guards," "night-warbling bird," "love-labour'd song"

Poetic and dramatic works[link]

• 1631: L'Allegro
• 1631: Il Penseroso
• 1634: A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634 commonly known as Comus (a masque)
• 1638: Lycidas
• 1645: Poems of Mr John Milton, Both English and Latin
• 1655: On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
• 1667: Paradise Lost
• 1671: Paradise Regained
• 1671: Samson Agonistes
• 1673: Poems, &c, Upon Several Occasions

Political, philosophical and religious prose[link]

• Of Reformation (1641)
• Of Prelatical Episcopacy (1641)
• Animadversions (1641)
• The Reason of Church-Government Urged against Prelaty (1642)
• Apology for Smectymnuus (1642)
• Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643)
• Judgement of Martin Bucer Concerning Divorce (1644)
• Of Education (1644)
• Areopagitica (1644)
• Tetrachordon (1645)
• Colasterion (1645)
• The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649)
• Eikonoklastes (1649)
• Defensio pro Populo Anglicano [First Defence] (1651)
• Defensio Secunda [Second Defence] (1654)
• A treatise of Civil Power (1659)
• The Likeliest Means to Remove Hirelings from the Church (1659)
• The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660)
• Brief Notes Upon a Late Sermon (1660)
• Accedence Commenced Grammar (1669)
• History of Britain (1670)
• Artis logicae plenior institutio [Art of Logic] (1672)
• Of True Religion (1673)
• Epistolae Familiaries (1674)
• Prolusiones (1674)
• A brief History of Moscovia, and other less known Countries lying Eastward of Russia as far as Cathay, gathered from the writings of several Eye-witnesses (1682)^[101]
• De Doctrina Christiana (1823)

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Beer, Anna. Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer, and Patriot. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008.
• Campbell, Gordon and Corns, Thomas. John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Chaney, Edward, The Grand Tour and the Great Rebellion: Richard Lassels and 'The Voyage of Italy' in the Seventeenth Century (Geneva, CIRVI, 1985) and "Milton's Visit to Vallombrosa: A literary tradition", The Evolution of the Grand Tour, 2nd ed (Routledge, London, 2000)
• Dexter, Raymond. The Influence of Milton on English Poetry London: Kessinger Publishing. 1922
• Dick, Oliver Lawson. Aubrey's Brief Lives. Harmondsworth, Middl.: Penguin Books, 1962.
• Eliot, T. S. "Annual Lecture on a Master Mind: Milton", Proceedings of the British Academy 33 (1947).
• Hill, Christopher. Milton and the English Revolution". New York: Viking Press, 1977.
• Gray, Thomas. Observations on English Metre. "The Works of Thomas Gray" ed. Mitford London: William Pickering 1835.
• Hobsbaum, Philip. "Meterem,Rhythm and Verse Form" New York: Routledge, 1996.
• Hunter, William Bridges. A Milton Encyclopedia. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1980.
• Johnson, Samuel. "Rambler #86" 1751
• Lewalski, Barbara K. The Life of John Milton. Oxford: Blackwells Publishers, 2003.
• A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 5: Bullingdon Hundred. 1957. pp. 122–134. 
• Masson, David. The Life of John Milton and History of His Time, vol. 1. Cambridge: 1859.
• McCalman, Iain. et al., An Oxford Companion to the Romantic Age: British Culture, 1776–1832. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Milton, John. Complete Prose Works 8 Vols. gen. Ed. Don M. Wolfe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959.
• Milton, John. The Verse, "Paradise Lost" London, 1668.
• Peck, Francis. "New Memoirs of Milton" London, 1740.
• Pfeiffer, Robert H. "The Teaching of Hebrew in Colonial America", The Jewish Quarterly Review, (April 1955).
• Rosenfeld, Nancy. The Human Satan in Seventeenth-Century English Literature: From Milton to Rochester. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008.
• Saintsbury, George. "The Peace of the Augustans: A Survey of Eighteenth Century Literature as a Place of Rest and Refreshment" London: Oxford University Press. 1946.
• Saintsbury, George. "A History of English Prosody: From the Twelfth Century to the Present Day" London: Macmillan and co. 1908
• Scott, John. "Critical Essays" London 1785
• Toland, John. Life of Milton in The Early Lives of Milton. Ed. Helen Darbishere. London: Constable, 1932.
• von Maltzahn, Nicholas. "Milton's Readers" in The Cambridge Companion to Milton. ed. Dennis Richard Danielson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Watts, Isaac. "Miscellaneous Thoughts" no. lxxiii. Works 1810
• Wedgwood, C. V. Thomas Wentworth, First Earl of Strafford 1593–1641. New York: Macmillan, 1961.
• Wilson, A. N. The Life of John Milton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Milton

Wikisource has original works written by or about: John Milton

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Milton

• Many 17th century digital facsimiles of Milton's works by John Geraghty
• "The masque in Milton's Arcades and Comus" by Gilbert McInnis
• Milton's cottage
• Works by John Milton at Project Gutenberg
• Famous quotations
• Milton's Paradise: exhibit review: marking the poet's 400th 2008 ArtsEditor.com article
• Site dedicated to Milton
• Books on Milton's life and works
• Works by or about John Milton in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Open Milton – an open set of Milton's works, together with ancillary information and tools, in a form designed for reuse, launched on Milton's 400th Birthday by the Open Knowledge Foundation
• Milton Reading Room – online, almost fully annotated, collection of all of Milton's poetry and selections of his prose
• Milton-L Homepage – A scholarly website devoted to the life, literature and times of Milton. It hosts the webpage for the Milton Society of America, as well as the Milton listserv, an Internet discussion group for Milton.
• Milton index entry at Poets' Corner
• Milton 400th Anniversary – lots of Milton material and details of the Milton 400th Anniversary Celebrations, from Christ's College, Cambridge, where Milton studied
• Thomas Ellwood's Epitaph for John Milton
• A common-place book of John Milton, and a Latin essay and Latin verses presumed to be by Milton Cornell University Library Historical Monographs Collection. {Reprinted by} Cornell University Library Digital Collections
• "John Milton-poet or politician?" on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time, featuring John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden
• Heroic Milton: Happy Birthday Frank Kermode in The New York Review of Books
• Audio: Robert Pinsky reads "Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint" by John Milton (via poemsoutloud.net)
• Timeline of the Life and Works of Milton at The Online Library Of Liberty
• Areopagitica (Jebb ed.) [1664]. See original text in The Online Library Of Liberty.
• The Poetical Works of John Milton, edited after the Original Texts by the Rev. H.C. Beeching M.A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900). See original text in The Online Library Of Liberty.
• The Prose Works of John Milton: With a Biographical Introduction by Rufus Wilmot Griswold. In Two Volumes (Philadelphia: John W. Moore, 1847). See original text in The Online Library Of Liberty.
• The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, edited with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary by Evert Mordecai Clark (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1915). See original text in The Online Library Of Liberty
• Online exhibition at Christ's College celebrating the 400th anniversary of Milton's birth
• The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, edited with Introduction and Notes by William Talbot Allison (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1911). See original text in The Online Library Of Liberty.
• Australian radio interview, Stephen Fallon and Nigel Smith on Milton at 400
• Australian radio feature on John Milton at 400
• L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus and other John Milton's works in HTML format.
• Read the Works of John Milton online ReadmeFree

Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens speaking in 2007
Born	Christopher Eric Hitchens (1949-04-13)13 April 1949 Portsmouth, England
Died	15 December 2011(2011-12-15) (aged 62) Houston, Texas
Occupation	Writer, journalist, public speaker
Nationality	English American
Citizenship	British and American
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Subjects	Politics, religion, history, biography, literature
Spouse(s)	Eleni Meleagrou (m. 1981-1989; divorced) Carol Blue (m. 1989-2011; his death)
Relative(s)	Peter Hitchens (brother)
Influences George Orwell,[1] Leszek Kolakowski, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Eliot, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, John Stuart Mill, Joseph Heller, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Llewellyn, Aldous Huxley, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Richard Hofstadter, Paul Mark Scott, James Fenton, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Colm Tóibín, Bertrand Russell, Wilfred Owen, Israel Shahak,[2] Isaiah Berlin, Émile Zola, W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag[3]
Influenced Johann Hari,[4] Martin Amis,[5]
Signature

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American^[6][7] author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades.^[8] Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch",^[9] was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.^[10][11]

A noted critic of religion and a self described "antitheist", he said that a person "could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct", but that "an antitheist, a term I'm trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there's no evidence for such an assertion."^[12] According to Hitchens, the concept of a god or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization. His 2007 book, God Is Not Great, sold over 500,000 copies.

On 15 December 2011, Hitchens died from pneumonia, a complication of his cancer, in the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. A popular figure, his death prompted tributes and eulogies from a range of public figures, including Tony Blair, Richard Dawkins, Martin Amis, James Fenton, Nick Clegg, Stephen Fry and Bill Maher.

Life and career[link]

Early life and education[link]

His mother, Yvonne Jean (née Hickman), and father, Eric Ernest Hitchens (1909–1987), met in Scotland while both were serving in the Royal Navy during World War II.^[13] Yvonne was at the time a "Wren" (a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service),^[14] and Eric a "purse-lipped and silent" commander, whose ship HMS Jamaica helped sink Nazi Germany's battleship Scharnhorst in the Battle of the North Cape.^[3] His father's naval career required the family to move a number of times from base to base throughout Britain and its dependencies, including in Malta, where Christopher's brother Peter was born in Sliema in 1951.

Hitchens's mother having argued that "if there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it,"^[15] he was sent off to Mount House School in Tavistock in Devon at the age of eight, followed by the independent Leys School in Cambridge, and then at Balliol College in Oxford, where he was tutored by Steven Lukes and read philosophy, politics, and economics. Hitchens was "bowled over" in his adolescence by Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, R. H. Tawney's critique on Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, and the works of George Orwell.^[14] In 1968, he took part in the TV quiz show University Challenge.^[16]

Hitchens has written of his homosexual experiences when in boarding school in his memoir, Hitch-22.^[17] These experiences continued in his college years, when he allegedly had relationships with two men who eventually became a part of the Thatcher government.^[18]

In the 1960s Hitchens joined the political left, drawn by his anger over the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, racism, and "oligarchy", including that of "the unaccountable corporation". He would express affinity with the politically charged countercultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. However, he deplored the rife recreational drug use of the time, which he describes as hedonistic.^[19]

He joined the Labour Party in 1965, but along with the majority of the Labour students' organization was expelled in 1967, because of what Hitchens called "Prime Minister Harold Wilson's contemptible support for the war in Vietnam".^{[20][clarification needed]} Under the influence of Peter Sedgwick, who translated the writings of Russian revolutionary and Soviet dissident Victor Serge, Hitchens forged an ideological interest in Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist socialism.^[14] Shortly after he joined "a small but growing post-Trotskyist Luxemburgist sect".^[21]

Journalistic career (1970–1981)[link]

Hitchens began working as a correspondent for the magazine International Socialism,^[22] published by the International Socialists, the forerunners of today's British Socialist Workers Party. This group was broadly Trotskyist, but differed from more orthodox Trotskyist groups in its refusal to defend communist states as "workers' states". Their slogan was "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism".

Hitchens left Oxford with a third class degree.^[23] In 1971 he went to work at the Times Higher Education Supplement where he served as a social science correspondent.^[24] Hitchens admitted that he hated the position, and was later fired; he recalled, "I sometimes think if I'd been any good at that job, I might still be doing it."^[25] He then went on to become a researcher for ITV's Weekend World.^[26] In 1973 he went on to work for the New Statesman, where he became friends with the authors Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, among others.^[26] At the New Statesman he acquired a reputation as a fierce left-winger, aggressively attacking targets such as Henry Kissinger, the Vietnam War, and the Roman Catholic Church.

In November 1973, Hitchens' mother committed suicide in Athens in a suicide pact with her lover, a former clergyman named Timothy Bryan.^[14] They overdosed on sleeping pills in adjoining hotel rooms, and Bryan slashed his wrists in the bathtub. Hitchens flew alone to Athens to recover his mother's body. Hitchens said he thought his mother was pressured into suicide by fear that her husband would learn of her infidelity, as their marriage had been strained and unhappy. Both her children were then independent adults. While in Greece, Hitchens reported on the constitutional crisis of the military junta. It became his first leading article for the New Statesman.^[27]

In 1977, unhappy at the New Statesman, Hitchens defected to the Daily Express where he became a foreign correspondent.^[26] He returned to the New Statesman in 1979 where he became foreign editor.^[26]

American career (1981–2011)[link]

After moving to the United States in 1981, Hitchens wrote for The Nation, where he penned vociferous critiques of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and American foreign policy in South and Central America.^{[28][29][30][31][32][33][34]} He became a contributing editor of Vanity Fair in 1992,^[35] writing ten columns a year. In 2002 Asteroid 57901 Hitchens was named after him.^[36] He left The Nation in 2002 after profoundly disagreeing with other contributors over the Iraq War. There is speculation that Hitchens was the inspiration for Tom Wolfe's character Peter Fallow in the 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities,^[30] but others — including Hitchens (or he indicated as such while alive) — believe it to be Spy Magazine's "Ironman Nightlife Decathlete" Anthony Haden-Guest.^[37][38] In 1987, his father died from cancer of the esophagus.^[39] He became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008.^[40]

Hitchens spent part of his early career in journalism as a foreign correspondent in Cyprus.^[41] Through his work there he met his first wife Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, with whom he had two children, Alexander and Sophia. His son, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, born in 1984, has worked as a researcher for London think tanks the Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion. Hitchens continued writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including Chad, Uganda^[42] and the Darfur region of Sudan.^[43] His work took him to over 60 countries.^[44] In 1991 he received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.^[45]

Before Hitchens' political shift, the American author and polemicist Gore Vidal was apt to speak of Hitchens as his "Dauphin" or "heir".^[46][47][48] In 2010, Hitchens attacked Vidal in a Vanity Fair piece headlined "Vidal Loco," calling him a "crackpot" for his adoption of 9/11 conspiracy theories.^[49][50] Also, on the back of his book Hitch-22, among the praise from notable writers and figures, a Vidal quote endorsing Hitchens as his successor is crossed out with a red 'X' and a message saying "NO C.H." His strong advocacy of the war in Iraq had gained Hitchens a wider readership, and in September 2005 he was named one of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines.^[51] An online poll ranked the 100 intellectuals, but the magazines noted that the rankings of Hitchens (5), Noam Chomsky (1), and Abdolkarim Soroush (15) were partly due to supporters publicising the vote.^[52]

In 2007 Hitchens' work for Vanity Fair won him the National Magazine Award in the category "Columns and Commentary".^[53] He was a finalist once more in the same category in 2008 for some of his columns in Slate but lost out to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone.^[54] He won the National Magazine Award for Columns about Cancer in 2011.^[55][56] Hitchens also served on the Advisory Board of Secular Coalition for America and offered advice to Coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.^[57]

Literature reviews[link]

Hitchens wrote a monthly essay on books in The Atlantic^[58] and contributed occasionally to other literary journals. One of his books, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, is a collection of such works, and Love, Poverty and War contains a section devoted to literary essays. In Why Orwell Matters, he defends Orwell's writings against modern critics as relevant today and progressive for his time. In the 2008 book Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left, many literary critiques are included of essays and other books of writers, such as David Horowitz and Edward Said.