"Cliff Notes - Paradise Lost" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

sort of combined notary and banker, who was wealthy enough to afford
private tutors for his son, then schooling at St. Paul's and
Christ's College, Cambridge University. Perhaps just as important
for Milton's development was the fact that his father was a musician
and composer. One of the most attractive features of Milton's poetry
is its marvelous musical qualities.

Since Milton had a small private income, he did not seek a profession
when he left Cambridge, but stayed at home writing poetry and
increasing his already amazing stock of knowledge. Some people have
said that Milton was one of the most learned men England has ever
known. He wrote poetry in Latin, Greek, and Italian, and read almost
all the literature surviving from the Greek and Roman periods. He
even read the Bible in Hebrew.

Just before the religious and political quarrels in England came to a
head, Milton went abroad for fifteen months, meeting and talking with
learned and famous men all over Europe. He met Galileo and looked
through his telescope, a fact Milton mentions more than once in
Paradise Lost.

When he returned, he put his learning and considerable rhetorical
force at the service of the Puritan cause. He wrote a series of
scorching political and religious pamphlets: he condemned bishops,
not only the Catholic ones but those of the Protestant Church of
England; defended the liberty of the press against censorship; even
advocated divorce. Many of the controversies in which he engaged
with heat and passion we find difficult to sympathize with now, but
Milton championed them with vigor and made himself not only well
known but also well hated.

The Civil War deeply affected his personal relations. His brother
Christopher adhered to the Royalist side. Milton married into a
Royalist family in 1642. He was swept off his feet by a fun-loving
seventeen-year-old, Mary Powell, whose family was originally the
source of Milton's private income (they had bought property from
Milton's father). The Powells kept Mary away from Milton, in Oxford
where King Charles I made his headquarters, and did not let her
travel to London to live with her husband until 1645.

By that time Milton had been extremely vocal publicly on the subject
of divorce (he even advocated polygamy at one time) and had had an
affair with a Miss Davies. His was a lively household, for he looked
after and educated his dead sister's three sons. (One of them became
Milton's biographer and the source of most of what we know about
Milton's life.) He took his duties as schoolmaster very seriously;
the boys were beaten if they did not learn their Latin and Greek
grammar. The civil disturbances flowed in and out of the house as
Milton's pamphlets provoked angry opposition and his supporters cried
for more.