Traditionally ranked second only to William Shakespeare among English poets, Milton left a copious record of his formal and private studies that led even his earliest biographers to attempt to chart his intellectual development. Moreover, his engagement in major political and intellectual movements of his time produced prose works that are a testament to his rhetorical and logical ability. Because Milton was conspicuous for his verbal skill in an age renowned for able writers, and because his own writings testify to his interest in and regard for logical and rhetorical training, scholars turn to
Artis logicae plenior institutio to try to determine how he understood the arts of speaking and reasoning well and to gain insight into how that understanding might have contributed to his literary achievement.
Milton was born on 9 December 1608 in Bread Street, Cheapside, London, near St. Paul's Cathedral. The second of John and Sara Jeffrey Milton's three children who survived to adulthood, he had an older sister, Anne, and a brother, Christopher. The family's parish, All Hallows, was known for its reforming ministers--attacked as "Puritans" by their enemies--who opposed ritualism in worship and hierarchy in church government and emphasized preaching and Bible reading.
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