Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1919 — GREAT POETS LIFE UNHAPPY [ARTICLE]

GREAT POETS LIFE UNHAPPY

John Milton, Wonderfully Gifted Intellectually, Was Yet a Man of Many Sorrow*. The great English poet, Milton, is described at the age of sixteen as “scholarly, accomplished and as handsome a youth as St. Paul’s had sent forth.” That was at the age when, having finished preparatory school, he was ready for the university. He was born on Broad street, London. His father was a man of education, with a decided talent for music. Milton inherited ali bis esthetic qualities —Indeed, the rougher element at college called him “the lady," though all recognized his intellectuality. Even at that period, long before he was twenty, he contemplated writing the great “Paradise Lost,” which was not finished, it happened, for forty years. During that long lapse of time Milton had started his reputation by the twin poems, “D Penseroso” and “L’Allegro;” had married a mere child of seventeen —an unhappy marriage, as It turned out; had written some stirring pamphlets; had almost been killed for opposing 1 the leading politics; had married and been left a widower again; had lost his sight; had found the three neglected children of his first marriage not model daughters; had lived in terrible loneliness in spite of his great fame, and had been persuaded to marry a third time, for the sake of being looked after. He was an old man when the great “Paradise Lost” appeared, which is called “one of the few monumental works of the world,” and his death followed some ten years later.