ABSTRACT
For John Milton (1608-74) poetry was a vocation, and such is the personal and public importance of his masterpiece Paradise Lost that one can fitly measure the other activities of his life up to its composition according to how they prepared the ground for it or delayed it. Milton’s father was a well-to-do scrivener who gave him a good education and every encouragement to steep himself in literary and musical culture. Before he completed his studies at Cambridge by taking the MA degree in 1632, Milton had already written his first significant poem, the ode ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ (1629). ‘L’Allegro’ and ‘Il Penseroso’ followed not long after. For five years Milton lived at Horton in Buckinghamshire, preparing himself mentally and spiritually for his chosen vocation. The masque Comus was written for performance at Ludlow Castle in 1634 and ‘Lycidas’, the elegy for his fellow student, Edward King, in 1637. Milton’s next phase of self-preparation was a tour on the Continent on which he met Italian men of letters.
