Milton, John(1608–1674)
John Milton, the English poet, author, and political writer, was born in London, the son of a prosperous scrivener. He was educated at St. Paul's School in London and Christ's College, Cambridge. After receiving an M.A. in 1632, he spent six years in study at his father's estate in Horton. In 1638 and 1639 he traveled to Italy, where he met Galileo Galilei, and on his return to London he found employment as a tutor. He wrote five pamphlets (1641–1642) attacking episcopacy, and his unhappy marriage in 1642 lent intensity to his subsequent tracts on divorce. In 1644 he published the tract Of Education, as well as Areopagitica, his famous attack on censorship of the press. His pamphlet justifying regicide, Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649), probably brought him the post of secretary for foreign tongues to the Council of State. He wrote several defenses of the revolutionary government, but after 1652 total blindness forced him to withdraw gradually from public life. He turned to the completion of his theological treatise, De Doctrina Christiana, and his History of Britain and to the fulfillment of his poetic ambitions. Despite a brief return to public controversy in 1659 and 1660, Milton was treated leniently by the Restoration government.
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