the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding.”  Here, in a word, is the secret of Milton’s life and writing.  Hence his long silences, years passing without a word; and when he speaks it is like the voice of a prophet who begins with the sublime announcement, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.”  Hence his style, producing an impression of sublimity, which has been marked for wonder by every historian of our literature.  His style was unconsciously sublime because he lived and thought consciously in a sublime atmosphere.

LIFE OF MILTON.  Milton is like an ideal in the soul, like a lofty mountain on the horizon.  We never attain the ideal; we never climb the mountain; but life would be inexpressibly poorer were either to be taken away.

From childhood Milton’s parents set him apart for the attainment of noble ends, and so left nothing to chance in the matter of training.  His father, John Milton, is said to have turned Puritan while a student at Oxford and to have been disinherited by his family; whereupon he settled in London and prospered greatly as a scrivener, that is, a kind of notary.  In character the elder Milton was a rare combination of scholar and business man, a radical Puritan in politics and religion, yet a musician, whose hymn tunes are still sung, and a lover of art and literature.  The poet’s mother was a woman of refinement and social grace, with a deep interest in religion and in local charities.  So the boy grew up in a home which combined the culture of the Renaissance with the piety and moral strength of early Puritanism.  He begins, therefore, as the heir of one great age and the prophet of another.

Apparently the elder Milton shared Bacon’s dislike for the educational methods of the time and so took charge of his son’s training, encouraging his natural tastes, teaching him music, and seeking out a tutor who helped the boy to what he sought most eagerly, not the grammar and mechanism of Greek and Latin but rather the stories, the ideals, the poetry that hide in their incomparable literatures.  At twelve years we find the boy already a scholar in spirit, unable to rest till after midnight because of the joy with which his study was rewarded.  From boyhood two great principles seem to govern Milton’s career:  one, the love of beauty, of music, art, literature, and indeed of every form of human culture; the other, a steadfast devotion to duty as the highest object in human life.

A brief course at the famous St. Paul’s school in London was the prelude to Milton’s entrance to Christ’s College, Cambridge.  Here again he followed his natural bent and, like Bacon, found himself often in opposition to the authorities.  Aside from some Latin poems, the most noteworthy song of this period of Milton’s life is his splendid ode, ’"On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” which was begun on Christmas day, 1629.  Milton, while deep in the classics, had yet a greater love for his native literature.  Spenser was for years his master; in his verse we find every evidence of his “loving study” of Shakespeare, and his last great poems show clearly how he had been influenced by Fletcher’s Christ’s Victory and Triumph.  But it is significant that this first ode rises higher than anything of the kind produced in the famous Age of Elizabeth.