Milton’s life spans the three turbulent periods of the first Stuart kings, the Commonwealth and the Restoration, and he was writing some of the finest works in the history of English literature during this time. But the poet’s triumph, Paradise Lost, was completed during the reign of Charles II. This accomplishment becomes even more remarkable when one realizes that the poet had become blind by 1652 and most of the work was done by dictation. The last part of this great epic was completed in 1665, the Plague Year, and the poet was living with his third wife in a still-surviving cottage at Chalfont St Giles, a village just north of the City. It was published in 1667, and Milton received the princely sum of £20 for it.
Paradise Lost is an heroic poem in the tradition of the Greek classics of Homer. But the material comes not from the Greeks but from the Hebrews, and the subject is the biblical drama of Heaven and Hell and all that lies between—the revolt of Satan and his rebel angels, the expulsion of the rebels from Heaven, Satan’s plot against the Almighty to corrupt the newly created earth, the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve, and the prophecy of Christ’s ultimate triumph over Satan. The theme, as Milton says in the prologue, is to:
...assert (or vindicate) Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.
John Milton was born in a house on Bread Street off Cheapside in 1608. His parents were Puritans. He was brought up in an atmosphere of culture and refinement, attended St Paul’s School and spent seven years at Christ’s College, Cambridge. Archbishop Laud’s policies repelled him from the Anglican ministry, and he became a Presbyterian and later an Independent. He was secretary to the Council of State during Cromwell’s time, which put him in some danger after the Restoration. Milton lived in various houses in London, none of which have survived. He died in 1674 and was buried near his father in the chancel of St Giles, Cripplegate.