Milton, John
Milton, John ( 1608 – 74 ),born in Bread Street, Cheapside, at the Sign of the Spread Eagle, the house of his father John Milton the elder, a scrivener and composer of music. He was educated at St Paul's School , where he became friendly with Diodati , then at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he acquired the nickname ‘the Lady of Christ's’, and may have alienated his fellow students by, in his own words, ‘a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness’. He was briefly rusticated, probably in 1626 , became BA in 1629 , and MA in 1632 . During his Cambridge period, while considering himself destined for the ministry, he began to write poetry in Latin and Italian, and also in English, on both sacred and secular themes. His first known attempt at English verse, ‘On the Death of a Fair Infant’ (in a complex stanza repeated in the opening of the ‘Nativity Ode’), was probably written in 1628 on the...
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