60 Fun Facts About John Milton

Milton's epic Paradise Lost tells the story of what?

It also follows the rebel angels' war in Heaven and the tempter's journey through Chaos to the new-made Earth.

Paradise Lost is written in which metrical form?

Milton was the first modern writer to use unrhymed verse outside the theatre and translation, and later added a note explaining 'why the poem rhymes not'.

Milton was born in December 1608 in which part of London, also home to the Mermaid Tavern?

His father, also John Milton, was a composer whose day job paid for the family's comfortable Cheapside home.

Milton's father made his living in which profession?

He was also a composer, and the family home stood in Cheapside.

Where in London was the young Milton educated before Cambridge, beginning Latin and Greek?

He met his lifelong friend Charles Diodati there.

Where at Cambridge did Milton study from 1625, sharing an alma mater with Charles Darwin?

He graduated fourth of 24 honours graduates in 1629.

Because of his fair complexion, what nickname did fellow students give Milton at Cambridge?

The detail comes from the gossipy 17th-century biographer John Aubrey.

Milton's first poem to appear in print was an epitaph on which writer?

It appeared in the Second Folio of 1632, while Milton was still at Cambridge.

Milton's twin poems L'Allegro and Il Penseroso celebrate which contrasting moods?

Both proceed in couplets of iambic tetrameter and first appeared in the 1645 Poems.

Milton wrote On the Morning of Christ's Nativity in December 1629, just after what milestone?

The Hymn that makes up most of the ode runs to 27 stanzas.

Milton's masque Comus was first performed in 1634 at which castle?

It celebrated the Earl of Bridgewater's new post as Lord President of Wales, and his own children played the Lady and her brothers.

What virtue does the Lady defend against Comus's magical cup in the masque?

Thomas Arne's 1738 musical adaptation of the masque ran in London for more than 70 years.

Milton's pastoral elegy Lycidas mourns which Cambridge friend, drowned in the Irish Sea in 1637?

The 193-line poem appeared in a memorial volume, Justa Edouardo King Naufrago, in 1638.

Which critic dismissed Lycidas, saying no one could read it with pleasure 'had he not known its author'?

He objected to the exhausted pastoral idiom and the mixing of Christian and pagan imagery.

On his 1638 tour of Italy, Milton met which astronomer, then under house arrest?

The visit at Arcetri is the only meeting between the two great figures on record; Milton later cited it in Areopagitica.

Milton cut his continental tour short in 1639 after hearing what?

He nonetheless lingered another seven months, spending time in Geneva with the uncle of his late friend Diodati.

In 1642 the 34-year-old Milton married Mary Powell; how old was she?

She soon went home to her parents at Forest Hill and did not return until 1645.

Milton's desertion by his young wife spurred him to write a series of pamphlets arguing for what?

The four tracts, beginning with The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, were condemned by Puritan clergy as heretical.

Areopagitica (1644) is Milton's famous attack on what?

It was written against Parliament's Licensing Order of 1643, which the divorce tracts had helped provoke.

Areopagitica takes its title from a speech by which ancient Athenian orator?

Like its model, it was written as a speech but never delivered aloud to Parliament.

Milton's 1644 tract Of Education was prompted by discussions with which reformer?

It urged a reform of the national universities.

Which 1649 tract by Milton implicitly justified the execution of Charles I and won him a government post?

In March 1649 the Council of State rewarded him with a government post.

Milton's Eikonoklastes was written to demolish which royalist bestseller?

The 'image of the king' portrayed Charles I as an innocent Christian martyr; Milton's title means 'image-breaker'.

Milton's First Defence of the English People answered which humanist's defence of monarchy?

Milton was still fighting Royalist pamphleteers in a Second Defence two years later.

What official title did Milton hold under the Commonwealth from 1649 to 1660?

Once he was blind, his deputies did most of the work.

By which year had Milton become totally blind?

Bilateral retinal detachment or glaucoma are the likeliest causes.

Milton's sonnet beginning 'When I consider how my light is spent' ends with which famous line?

The popular title by which the sonnet is known was added a century later by an editor.

Which fellow poet joined the blind Milton as Latin secretary in 1657 and later helped save him?

By 1660 Marvell was MP for Hull; he also wrote prefatory verses for the 1674 Paradise Lost.

Milton's Sonnet 16, addressed to 'our chief of men', was written to whom?

It was not published until 1654; Milton later had major reservations about the Protector.

What happened to Milton at the Restoration in 1660?

A warrant was issued and his writings burnt; friends such as Marvell intervened to free him.

Milton's last-ditch 1660 pamphlet urging England not to restore the king was titled what?

It responded to General Monck's march on London and damned the English for backsliding from liberty.

To which Buckinghamshire village did Milton retreat during the Great Plague of 1665?

His timber-framed cottage there is now a museum and the only surviving home of the poet.

How much did Milton receive up front when he sold the rights to Paradise Lost to Samuel Simmons in 1667?

A further £5 followed each time a print run of 1,300 to 1,500 copies sold out; the first sold out in eighteen months.

The first edition of Paradise Lost (1667) was divided into how many books?

The 1674 second edition rearranged it into twelve, in the manner of Virgil's Aeneid.

What is the name of the capital city of Hell in Paradise Lost, a word Milton coined?

It is raised under the direction of Mammon, and Milton links its architecture to St Peter's and the Pantheon.

Milton states that his aim in Paradise Lost is to 'justify the ways of God to' whom?

The line comes in the invocation, where he addresses the Christian God rather than a classical muse.

Complete the fallen archangel's famous line from Book 1: 'Better to reign in Hell, than...'

Romantics such as Blake, Byron and Shelley read the speaker as the poem's true hero.

Which archangel recounts the war in Heaven to Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost?

He also describes the six days of creation when Adam asks about the cosmos in Book 7.

Which archangel shows Adam a vision of the future, up to the Flood and beyond, before the expulsion?

He promises Adam 'a paradise within thee, happier far'.

In Book 9 of Paradise Lost, the first letters of consecutive lines describing the serpent spell out what?

Elsewhere in the same book Milton spells out 'FFAALL' and 'FALL' for the double fall of humanity.

Which poet wrote that Milton was 'of the Devil's party without knowing it'?

The line is from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Blake also illustrated the poem and wrote an epic titled Milton.

Which Christian critic's A Preface to Paradise Lost argued against reading the poem's devil as a hero?

William Empson took the opposite view, calling Milton's God a 'Stalinist' tyrant.

Paradise Regained (1671) deals mainly with which biblical episode?

At four books and 2,068 lines it is a 'brief epic' next to its 10,565-line predecessor.

Which closet drama was published in the same 1671 volume as Paradise Regained?

Its blind hero, imprisoned by the Philistines, is often read as a self-portrait of the blind poet.

Milton's 1671 closet drama about the blinded Samson is modelled on which dramatic tradition?

The preface cites Aristotle's Poetics; the title means 'Samson the struggler' or 'champion'.

How many times did Milton marry?

After Mary Powell came Katherine Woodcock in 1656 and Elizabeth Mynshull, whom a Manchester plaque calls his '3rd and Best wife'.

Milton's nephews Edward and John Phillips, whom he educated, were the sons of which relative?

Both became writers; Edward wrote an early life of his uncle.

Milton was buried in November 1674 in which London church?

A monument was added in Westminster Abbey only in 1737; whether he died of consumption or gout is disputed.

Milton's unfinished treatise De Doctrina Christiana was not discovered and published until when?

It lays out many of his heterodox views, including a denial of the dual natures of man.

The preface to Blake's illuminated epic Milton (1804-10) contains which poem, later a famous hymn?

Set to music by Hubert Parry, it became 'Jerusalem'.

Which Tory critic praised Paradise Lost yet called Milton 'an acrimonious and surly republican'?

He nonetheless admired Milton's power of 'displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful'.

Which title did editor Thomas Newton give Milton's sonnet "When I consider how my light is spent" in 1761?

There is no evidence Milton used the title himself; scholars mostly date the poem to 1655.

Milton's private tutor, Thomas Young, was a Presbyterian from which country?

Young held an MA from St Andrews and introduced the boy to religious radicalism.

Which Dutch law philosopher and poet did Milton meet in Paris at the start of his continental tour?

The introduction came via ambassador John Scudamore, to whom Henry Wotton had given Milton a letter.

Milton's third wife Elizabeth Minshull was the niece of a wealthy apothecary from which city?

They married at St Mary Aldermary in the City of London in February 1663.

In which year was a monument to Milton added in Westminster Abbey?

He was buried in 1674 at St Giles-without-Cripplegate, with the cause of death disputed between consumption and gout.

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials takes its title from which part of Paradise Lost?

The phrase 'His dark materials to create more worlds' comes from line 915.

Which Aldous Huxley novel takes its title from Milton's Samson Agonistes?

Look Homeward, Angel, Darkness at Noon and Darkness Visible are other titles drawn from Milton.

Milton's 1654 Second Defence answered a Royalist tract with what title?

The anonymous Latin work was Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum Adversus Parricidas Anglicanos.

Which classical scholar's 1732 'corrected' Paradise Lost was attacked as presumptuous?

Zachary Pearce led the counterattack the following year.