ABSTRACT
On the 12th of February 1624-5, John Milton was entered at Christ’s College, Cambridge. In Cambridge he was nicknamed “the Lady of Christ’s.” His life was one of dignity, and study,—aloof, pure and high. Laud became Archbishop (1628), while Milton was still at Cambridge, and the set was the other way—toward authority, antiquity and the “beauty of holiness” and away from freedom and new thoughts and the search for truth. In April 1638 Milton set out for Italy. The grand tour in those days took English youth to France and to Italy, and brought them back sometimes none the better for their new experiences—”transform’d into Mimics, Apes, and Kecshose.” Milton’s “political notions,” he said, “were those of an acrimonious and surly republican.”.
