Life of milton by samuel johnson. John Milton 2022-11-15
Life of milton by samuel johnson Rating:
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1740
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The life of John Milton, one of the greatest poets in the English language, was marked by both personal and political struggles. Born in London in 1608, Milton was the son of a prosperous scrivener and was educated at St. Paul's School and Christ's College, Cambridge. From a young age, he showed a prodigious talent for languages and literature, and he began writing poetry while still in school.
Milton's early work was heavily influenced by the Classical tradition, and he wrote several Latin poems and translations during this time. However, he also began to develop a strong interest in theology and the political climate of his time. The English Civil War and the execution of King Charles I had a profound impact on Milton, and he became a vocal advocate for the Commonwealth and the Puritan cause.
In the 1640s, Milton began to write more openly about his political beliefs, and he published several pamphlets and tracts arguing for the rights of the individual and the need for a just and democratic society. These works brought him to the attention of the new Commonwealth government, and he was appointed to several official positions, including that of Latin secretary.
During this time, Milton also produced some of his most famous works, including "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained." These epic poems, which explored themes of freedom, temptation, and redemption, were highly influential and cemented Milton's reputation as one of the greatest poets in the English language.
Despite his successes, Milton's later years were marked by personal tragedy and hardship. He went blind in 1652 and was forced to dictate his works to assistants. He also lost several of his children to illness, and his wife died in childbirth. Despite these setbacks, Milton continued to write and publish, and he remained a prominent figure in English literature until his death in 1674.
In conclusion, the life of John Milton was one of great achievement and enduring legacy. His poetry and political writings continue to be studied and admired to this day, and he remains a towering figure in the history of English literature.
Johnson Criticism In Life Of Milton
Holstenius, the keeper of the Vatican Library, who had resided three years at Oxford, introduced him to Cardinal Barberini; and he at a musical entertainment waited for him at the door, and led him by the hand into the assembly. He had accustomed his imagination to unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were extensive. He makes a foolish allusion of Salmasius, whose doctrine he considers as servile and unmanly, to the stream of Salmacis, which whoever entered left half his virility behind him. Of this tenderness shown to Milton, the curiosity of mankind has not forborne to inquire the reason. His eyes are said never to have been bright; but, if he was a dexterous fencer, they must have been once quick. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
Johnson's Life Of Milton: With Introduction And Notes by Samuel Johnson
His father appears to have been very solicitous about his education; for he was instructed, at first, by private tuition, under the care of Thomas Young, who was afterwards chaplain to the English merchants at Hamburgh, and of whom we have reason to think well, since his scholar considered him as worthy of an epistolary elegy. With these trifling fictions are mingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought never to be polluted with such irreverent combinations. In the Prometheus of Aeschylus, we see violence and strength, and in the Alcestis of Euripides, we see death brought upon the stage, all as active persons of the drama; but no precedents can justify absurdity. Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum, Nec dudum vetiti me laris angit amor. There are no other internal notes of time.
Next year appeared Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum. An accumulation of knowledge impregnated his mind, fermented by study, and exalted by imagination. His wants, being few were competently supplied. Richardson, who seems to have been very diligent in his enquiries, but discovers always a wish to find Milton discriminated from other men, relates, that "he would sometimes lie awake whole nights, but not a verse could he make; and on a sudden his poetical faculty would rush upon him with an impetus or oestrum, and his daughter was immediately called to secure what came. He was, at this time, eminently skilled in the Latin tongue; and he himself, by annexing the dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the learned Politian had given him an example, seems to commend the earliness of his own proficiency to the notice of posterity. But with guilt enter distrust and discord, mutual accusation, and stubborn self-defence; they regard each other with alienated minds, and dread their creator as the avenger of their transgression. Philips observes that there was a very remarkable circumstance in the composure of Paradise Lost, "which I have a particular reason," says he, "to remember; for whereas I had the perusal of it from the very beginning for some years, as I went from time to time to visit him, in parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time which, being written by whatever hand came next, might possibly want correction as to the orthography and pointing , having, as the summer came on, not been shewed any for a considerable while, and desiring the reason thereof, was answered that his vein never happily flowed but from the Autumnal Equinox to the Vernal; and that whatever he attempted at other times was never to his satisfaction, though he courted his fancy never so much: so that, in all the years he was about this poem, he may be said to have spent half his time therein.
The variety of pauses, so much boasted by the lovers of blank verse, changes the measures of an English poet to the periods of a declaimer; and there are only a few skilful and happy readers of Milton, who enable their audience to perceive where the lines end or begin. Goodwin, who had committed the same kind of crime, escaped with incapacitation; and as exclusion from publick trust is a punishment which the power of government can commonly inflict without the help of a particular law, it required no great interest to exempt Milton from a censure little more than verbal. Of Paradise Regained, the general judgment seems now to be right, that it is, in many parts, elegant, and everywhere instructive. He afterwards went to Venice, and having sent away a collection of musick and other books travelled to Geneva, which he probably considered as the metropolis of orthodoxy. In a series of debates not unlike those in Paradise Regained between the Son and Paradise Lost, which dramatizes the self-sacrifice of the Son, Samson Agonistes creates in its hero an But where the Son of Paradise Regained maintains steadfastly his resistance to temptation, Samson typifies human vulnerability to downfall.
How does Samuel Johnson describe the life of John Milton in his Lives of the Poets?
He was desirous to use English words with a foreign idiom. One source of his peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets; the disposition of his words is, I think, frequently Italian; perhaps, sometimes, combined with other tongues. Possibly his having proceeded so far in the education of youth may have been the occasion of his adversaries calling him pedagogue and schoolmaster; whereas, it is well known he never set up for a publick school, to teach all the young fry of a parish; but only was willing to impart his learning and knowledge to his relations, and the sons of gentlemen who were his intimate friends, and that neither his writings, nor his way of teaching, ever savoured in the least of pedantry. The defects and faults of Paradise Lost, for faults and defects every work of man must have, it is the business of impartial criticism to discover. Being, therefore, not new, they raise no unaccustomed emotion in the mind; what we knew before, we cannot learn; what is not unexpected, cannot surprise.
At Whitsuntide, in his thirty-fifth year, he married Mary, the daughter of Mr. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind, unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example. The Spirit relates that the Lady is in the power of Comus, the Brother moralises again, and the Spirit makes a long narration, of no use because it is false, and therefore unsuitable to a good Being. He could not, as Elwood relates, endure to hear Paradise Lost preferred to Paradise Regained. John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed Printing.
Johnson's Life Of Milton: With Introduction And Notes by Samuel Johnson
We drove a field, and both together heard What time the grey fly winds her sultry horn, Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night. In examining their propriety it is to be considered that the essence of verse is regularity, and its ornament is variety. We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master, and seek for companions. But has the case been truly stated? Cui subjungitur compendiosa enumeratio poetarum saltern quorum fama maxima enituit qui a tempore Dantis Aligerii usque ad hanc aetatem claruerunt, etc. It was his labour to turn philosophy from the study of nature to speculations upon life, but the innovators whom I oppose are turning off attention from life to nature. Thus a Latin hexameter is formed from dactyls and spondees differently combined; the English heroic admits of acute or grave syllables variously disposed. He had done what he knew to be necessarily previous to poetical excellence: he had made himself acquainted with "seemly arts and affairs," his comprehension was extended by various knowledge, and his memory stored with intellectual treasures.
He read all the languages which are considered either as learned or polite: Hebrew, with its two dialects, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish. History must supply the writer with the rudiments of narration, which he must improve and exalt by a nobler art, must animate by dramatick energy, and diversify by retrospection and anticipation; morality must teach him the exact bounds and different shades of vice and virtue; from policy and the practice of life he has to learn the discriminations of character and the tendency of the passions, either single or combined; and physiology must supply him with illustrations and images. The author's design is not, what Theobald has remarked, merely to shew how objects derived their colours from the mind, by representing the operation of the same things upon the gay and the melancholy temper, or upon the same man as he is differently disposed; but rather how, among the successive variety of appearances, every disposition of mind takes hold on those by which it may be gratified. Milton, who appears to have nad full conviction of the truth of Christianity, and to have regarded the Holy Scriptures with the profoundest veneration, to have been untainted by an heretical peculiarity of opinion, and to have lived in a confirmed belief of the immediate and occasional agency of Providence, yet grew old without any visible worship. In the examination of epick poems much speculation is commonly employed upon the characters. This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Milton, who, in his letter to Hartlib, had declared that "to read Latin with an English mouth is as ill a hearing as Law French," required that Elwood should learn and practise the Italian pronunciation, which, he said, was necessary, if he would talk with foreigners.
What he should undertake it was difficult to determine. When they have sinned they shew how discord begins in mutual frailty, and how it ought to cease in mutual forbearance; how confidence of the divine favour is forfeited by sin, and how hope of pardon may be obtained by penitence and prayer. One of them was ninety-two at the time of her death. Its end is to raise the thoughts above sublunary cares or pleasures. If Christina, as is said, commended the Defence of the People, her purpose must be to torment Salmasius, who was then at court; for neither her civil station, nor her natural character, could dispose her to favour the doctrine, who was by birth a queen, and by temper despotick. Labour, } Sickness, } Discontent, } Mutes.
