Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1893 — THE BLIND IMMORTAL. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE BLIND IMMORTAL.

John Milton, the Sightless Author of England’* Great Epic. “The glory dies not and the grief is past.” Of all men the latter may be said, for the greatest human sorrow terminates at death; but there are

comparatively few who have earned gl&ry that shall never die. Shakespeare is by general accord 5 one of these; so, is John Milton. We cannot eonceive of the sweet bard of

Avon being forgotten by mankind, nor can we think that the great author of “Paradise Lost" shall ever be deprived of the meed of immortality which so many generations have awarded him. The life of Milton, like the lives of many other great men of genius, was unhappy. Like Byron and Burns he was fondled for years; like Byron and Burns he was neglected. He suffered penury and political disappointment and domestic affliction and physical privation—blindness—but he had faith in his genius, in his destiny, and he wove amid the storms of calamity the wreath of undying fame. His character changed not “Such as it was,” says Lord Macaulay in his admirable essay on Milton, “when, on the eve of great events he returned from his travels in the prime of life and manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions and glowing with patriotic hopes, such it continued to be when, after having experienced every calamity which is incident to

our nature, old, poor, sightless and disgraced, he returned to his hovel to die.” Milton was born in London in 1608, and received a good education. He was intended for the ministry, but he was out of sympathy with the church government of the time and refused to take orders. And thus, without a profession and with no definite prospects, he returned to the i home of his father, who by this time :had removed to Hoi ton,' Buckinghamshire County. Here he wrote i several of his poems, “L’AUegro,” “Penseroso,” “Arcades,” “Cornus” and ;“Lycidas.” After six years he went ;on a visit to the continent. Ho was i received with great honors in Italy, land it was then he conceived the ■idea of writing a great epic poem 'that would win him immortality. He ! was interrupted in these musings by ‘political turmoil in England, and he returned home in 1639. He entered ioto the political and religious disputes of the day, espousing the cause ■of the people in their conflict with the King and antagonizing the episcopacy. In 1649 King Charles was beheaded and Milton published a work in defense of the regicides. He then became Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the commonwealth and published another work in vindication of the killing of King Charles. These works severely taxed his eyes, which had been weak for sottie time, and by 1654 he was completely blind. His first wife, with whom he lived most unhappily, bad died a couple ol years before, and in 1656 he married again. His second wife lived but a short time, and in 1663 he again married. The third, as the first, marriage was uphappy. Notwithstanding his domestic infelicities, his blindness and the obloquy that settled on his name after the restoration of royalty in 1660 he devoted himself to the crowning work of his

life, “Paradise Lost. ” This was followed by “Paradise Regained” and “Samson Agonistes.”- In 1674 he died and his remains were interred with those of his father in the Church of St Giles, Cripplegate. The custom of throwing shoes after a bride comes from the Jewish custom of handing a shoe to the pur* chaser after the completion of a contract (Ruth iv. 7). Parents also gave a shoe to the husband on a daughter’s marriage to signify the yielding of their authority. It is seldom that wood which has grown more than 4,000 years before the Christian era is used in the construction of a present-day residence and yet this really happened recently in Edinburgh, where a mantelpiece was fashioned from wood said to be 6,000 years old. \ inegab will not split rocks, so Hannibal could not thus have made his way through the Alps. Nor will It dissolve pearls, so that the story of Cleopatra drinking pearls melted la vinegar must have been a Action.

JOHN MILTON.

MILTON’S HOUSE, YORK STREET, LONDON.

ST. GILES' CHURCH, CRIPPLEGATE. [Where Milton is buried.]