Home Pictures of English Poets, for Fireside and Schoolroom

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MILTON.- Thy eonl was like a star and dwelt apart; Thou Uadftt a voice whose sound was liko the Bea, Pare as the naked heavens, majestie, free. So didst thon travel on life's common way To cheerful godliness, and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on thyself did lay. As Shakespeare was walking down Broad...
More Description

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MILTON.- Thy eonl was like a star and dwelt apart; Thou Uadftt a voice whose sound was liko the Bea, Pare as the naked heavens, majestie, free. So didst thon travel on life's common way To cheerful godliness, and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on thyself did lay. As Shakespeare was walking down Broad Street, London, to. the Mermaid Tavern, where he used to meet his friends and make merry over cups of canary, his attention was attracted by a child of six, seated on a doorway, singing a melody, and upon an old-fashioned instrument stretching his tiny fingers in search of pleasing chords. It was a little Puritan boy, with closely-cropped hair, large lace frill about his neck, and closely-fitting blackcoat; he who, in after-years, was to sing in sublimer strains? Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our woe. If any precise critic should ask how I know that this pretty, sweet-voiced boy was ever seen by Shakespeare, I shall have to confess that the scene- is but a picture in my own mind, one of the many things that might have been. John Milton was born in London, December 9, 1608. His father, who had been disinherited for adopting the Protestant faith, was an educated man, with a great deal of musical ability, a scrivener by profession, his business being very much like that of the modern attorney. Before the invention of printing, 'the scriveners were penmen of all kinds of writing, often copying literary manuscripts as well as charters and law papers. Chaucer has an epigram, in which he lampoons his scrivener Adam for doing his work badly. At this time the profession was an honorable one. The general aspect of their shops was like the offices of modern la...