John Milton, the greatest English poet except Shakspere, was born in
London in 1608. His father was a scrivener, an educated man, and a
musical composer of some merit. At his home Milton was surrounded with
all the inflences of a refined and well-ordered Puritan household of
the better class. He inherited his father's musical tastes, and during
the latter part of his life he spent a part of every afternoon in
playing the organ. No poet has written more beautifully of music than
Milton. One of his sonnets was addressed to Henry Lawes, the composer,
who wrote the airs to the songs in _Comus_. Milton's education was most
careful and thorough. He spent seven years at Cambridge, where, from his
personal beauty and fastidious habits, he was called "The lady of
Christ's." At Horton, in Buckinghamshire, where his father had a country
seat, he passed five years more, perfecting himself in his studies, and
then traveled for fifteen months, mainly in Italy, visiting Naples and
Rome, but residing at Florence. Here he saw Galileo, a prisoner of the
Inquisition "for thinking otherwise in astronomy than his Dominican and
Franciscan licensers thought." Milton was the most scholarly and the
most truly classical of English poets. His Latin verse, for elegance and
correctness, ranks with Addison's; and his Italian poems were the
admiration of the Tuscan scholars.
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