First Period. Milton began writing English and Latin verse while a sehoolltoy. The earliest extant specimens of these exercises are para phrases of the 114th and 136th P.ipuss eomposed at the age of fifteen. Other early poems are a group of graceful Latin elegies and sylvfe I 626.29 ; (in the heath of a Pair Infant (1626) ;Ala I oration Krercisc (1628) ; ilynin on the iritr/ (1629 ) ; a so/cm n //sin (163()) ; (In Sit akespiwrc ; and sonnets 7'o the and On :lrriring at the Aye of 7'irenty-Ihrce. The Latin verses are undoubtedly the best ever written by an Englishman, and the last five of the English poems display high poetical genius. \VIiile at Horton. Nlilton emit po,ed four absolutely perfect poems: the 111,1-1'11d ire lyrics, /,'.I lb-aro owl 11 l'unseroso 11634) ; ('omus, a masque performed at Ludlow Castle on licliaellitas night, 1634, in honor of Lord liridgewater's appointment to the warden ship of the \Velsh marches: and Li/cif/as, fl pas toral elegy in memory of his college friend Ed ward King. drowned on his passage to Ireland II), 1637). Of these poems. which by themselves would place Milton among the great mine, in English literature, only a few had been published. The mu Shakespeare appeared 111 he Of the (1632) ; Henry 1,;10-4-.;, Who coMposed 1 lolede fOr t'omiuc. the inasquP I 1,011 don, 111:17 ), :11111 f,.//cith/S M11111•11 one in a e011ee l11111 of memorial poems (Cambridge, 163S). To t16, period belong six sonnets in Italian and il ton's two finest 1.0111 lhOIS/tS 1 1113S1. to (11, N1111'1)111s (lie friC1111 of 01111 111 111, old age hospitably Nlillon at Naples: and 1: pi MpIihriu lb: monis. an elegy on the death of Ilk college friend Cho des 1)i?ghtt Second l'eri"d. For full eighteen years 'Milton was di-4 railed from poetry by dome-tie per plexities mind the revfdlit ions in Church and State. The separation from his wife led to pamphlets on divorce, of which the most im portant are The Doctrine end Discipline of birorce 1, 1131i1. and The Tel 11645 ) . Against episcopacy he launched. in 1641.42, five tracts. of which the best known is Reason. of Church Oorernment In 1644 appeared the valuable lett Pr Of Lducation and a noble plea for the freedom of the press under the title Areopagitica. The exeeu tion of Charles T. and the establishment of the Commonwealth were defended against Continental criticism in The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (109), Eikonol;tastes (1649). Pro Populo .tn glieano Dcfrnsio, and sequels. These tracts. vehe ment and often scurrilous in style, contain auto biographical passages of interest. Throughout this period :Milton wrote almost no verse. lie composed, however, at intervals his magnificent sonnets. as (in His Blindness, 7'o Pairfax, To Cromwell. and The Massacre in l'icilmntl; and in 1645 appeared a volume of collected poems in English and Latin. Besides this lie wrote some Creek and Latin verse and made a few transla tions. In 1902 there appeared a valuable work called Solynm: the Heal City of Zion; or Jerusalem Regained: translated from the Latin by the liev. VCalter Ilegley, and by him attributed to John Milton. This romance was published in London (164S') with the title Sorer Solymw Libre Sex. Whether or not the work belongs to Milton, it undoubtedly shows strongly many of his char acteristics in thought and style. The romance is written in prose and in verse. and is wholly in Latin. It shows advanced theories on education, it considers love philosophically, and deals with the philosophy of religion, with conversion. sal
vation. the brotherhood of man, with almsgiving. self-control, angels, the fall of mon, and man's eternal fate. It contains some 23fi hexameters of a projected epic on the Armada. and there runs through it a vein of adventures with tales of outlaws. robbers. sea-rovers, and fighting on sea. There is an account of a man possessed by the devil. and an allegory of Philomela's King dom of Pleasure.
Third Period. The great epic that Milton now is the spiritual summary of his life of 104 ideals. early as his return from Italy, lie had meditated the production of some great poem. By 1642 his mind was turning toward it mystery play on the loss of paradise. \\len he resumed the subject in 165S, it took the form of in epic. Paradise Lost, in ten books. cent pleted by 1663, perhaps even Ii 1663. was !addl.:bed on August 10, 1667. After several reprints with slight changes, it was enlarged to I welve hooks (1674). For this poem, of 1300 copies were sold in eighteen months. Milton received from his publisher in all (10. At of Thomas Ellwood, a Quaker friend of the poet. Milton wrote Paradise • pained, which was published with Namson inn s/is/es, an intense lyrieal drama. in 1671. (Mee Milton was known mainly as Pare.
1.0st . Shire the romantic revival, this epic has been unfavorably eompared with the so ealled minor poems. The fa-einaling imagina• five ?thle in which the early lyrics were con ceived certainly departed from Milton during the civil eontlict. But as years went on, his imagination became with sublimity. Ilad LORI been written in 1642. it would have been a perfect mystery play, as Comas is a perfect masque. Delayed twenty odd years it became a sonorous epic, which, though barren in places. abounds in the noblest English poetry. BirtmonnArity. For his biography, consult: Phillips's memoir in his Letters of .`;talc ( 1694) ; Masson, Life of John Vurr•ated in Connec tion with the Ecelf'siastieal, and Lit erary History of His Time (6 vols, and index, London, 1859-94). an exhaustive work; Patti son in the "English Mcn of Letters Series" (New York, 1S80) ; Garnett in the "Great Writers ( London, 1890) ; and l‘lasterman and Mullinger. Thr .1 yr of Milton (ib., 1897). For works, consult: Prose Works, ed. by Saint John, Bohn's Library (5 vols., London, 1848-53) ; Po etical 11'w-ks ed. by Masson (Cabinet edition, 3 vols., ib., 1890; Globe ed., 1 vol., ib., 1877, often reprinted): Poetical Works after the Original Texts, i.e. reprints, ed. by Beeching (Oxford. 1900) ; and Pacsimilc of Milton's Minor Poems, from manuscripts in Trinity College, Cambridge, ed. by Wright (Cambridge, 1899). Igor estimate, consult: essays by Dr. (London, 1779), Macaulay (ib.. 1840), Lowell (ib., 1845) , and A Short Study, by Trent ( New York. 1899) ; Co•son..trr Introduction to Works, containing the prose autobiographical pieces (ib., 1899) : and the notable Study, by Raleigh (London and New York, 1900). The student will find of much value: Osgood, The Classical Mythology of Milton's English Poems (New York, 1900) ; and Lockwood, Lexicon to the Poetical Works of ,lohn .11i/ton (ib.. 1902). A contemporary biography of Milton, discovered in 1889 in a volume of Anthony Wood's papers in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, was edited and published by E. 11. Parsons in 1903. under the title, "The Earliest Life of Milton," in the Colorado College Rtudirs (Colorado Springs, March, 1903).