With Illustrations by E. H. Corbould and John Gilbert. Is not each great, each amiable Muse Of blowing Eden fair; as Heaven sublime. Тномзох LONDON: T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW; EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK. 1864. JOHN MILTON was born in Bread Street, in the city of London, December 9, 1608. He was descended of an ancient family of that name at Milton, near Abingdon, in Oxfordshire, where there still exists a monument of the family in the parish church. During the bloody contests between the Houses of York and Lancaster, his ancestors allied themselves to the weaker side, and nearly all the family estates were forfeited. The father of Milton was a man of considerable ability, a great proficient in music, and by profession a scrivener an honourable occupation at that period, and one by which he speedily acquired a considerable fortune. His parents were bigotedly attached to the Romish faith; and upon his abjuring its errors, and embracing the Protestant religion, he was disinherited by them. Johnson begins his biography by remarking, that the life of Milton has been already written in so many forms, and with such minute inquiry, that a new one is almost superfluous; yet with all this, the account that has been preserved of his early years is so meagre, as scarcely to present a single characteristic incident. Doubtless, under the instructions of a father who had suffered for conscience-sake, Milton early acquired those high views of civil and religious liberty which he advocated so His strenuously throughout the whole period of his life. mother also is said to have been "a woman of incomparable |