born Dec. 9, 1608, London, Eng.
died Nov. 8, 1674, Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire
English poet.
A brilliant youth, Milton attended Cambridge University (1625–32), where he wrote poems in Latin, Italian, and English; these included "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso", both published later in Poems (1645). During 1632–38 he engaged in private study
writing the masque Comus (1637) and the extraordinary elegy "Lycidas" (1638)
and toured Italy. Concerned with the Puritan cause in England, he spent much of 1641–60 pamphleteering for civil and religious liberty and serving in Oliver Cromwell 's government. His best-known prose is in the pamphlets Areopagitica (1644), on freedom of the press, and Of Education (1644). He lost his sight с 1651, and thereafter dictated his works. His disastrous first marriage ended with his wife's death in 1652; two later marriages were more successful. After the Restoration he was arrested as a noted defender of the Commonwealth but was soon released. In Paradise Lost (1667), his epic masterpiece on the Fall of Man written in blank verse, he uses his sublime "grand style" with superb power; his characterization of Satan is a supreme achievement. He further expressed his purified faith in God and the regenerative strength of the individual soul in Paradise Regained (1671), an epic in which Christ overcomes Satan the tempter, and Samson Agonistes (1671), a tragedy in which the Old Testament figure conquers self-pity and despair to become God's champion. Considered second only to William Shakespeare in the history of English-language poetry, Milton had an immense influence on later literature; though attacked early in the 20th century, he had regained his place in the Western canon by mid century.