Milton

John Milton was a (1)

and Humanist scholar who felt his poetic inspiration was a gift from God. He (2)

all forms of tyranny, from political to religious, to domestic. He was born into a (3)

Protestant family in London in 1608. He learned Latin, Greek and Italian at Cambridge, where he received a degree in 1632. During the period 1632–1637, he published poetry, drama, songs and music which celebrated chastity as the only source of human joy and freedom. His elegy Lycidas (1637) attacked (4)

of the Church. In 1638 Milton began a European tour, and he visited Galileo in Fiesole, near Florence. Back in England, his sympathies were with Cromwell. His support for the new (5)

was such that in 1649 he was appointed Secretary for Foreign Languages in Cromwell’s Council of State.

In 1642 he married the daughter of a Royalist, Mary Powell, but she promptly returned home. This bitter personal experience caused the poet to (6)

in his pamphlet Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Other important pamphlets he wrote included Areopagitica, about the freedom of the press; Of Education, in which he advocated schooling in all fields of knowledge; and Eikonoklastes, where he tried to explain (7)

. Around 1652 Milton became blind, but (8)

helped to stimulate his verbal richness. After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, his republican writings were condemned to be burnt and he (9)

. He was later pardoned and released. This experience of political and personal loss was recreated in his great poem, Paradise Lost, which was written (10)

. He later wrote Paradise Regained (1671), a much less grandiose poem on Satan’s temptation of Christ. He died in London in 1674.