John Milton

John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674) was an English poet, most famous for his blank verse epic Paradise Lost. He is also remembered for authoring the brief epic Paradise Regained, the closet drama Samson Agonistes, the monody Lycidas, and Areopagitica, a prose work that condemns pre-publishing censorship.

Cambridge Years

John Milton matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1625 and studied there for seven years before he graduated Master of Arts cum laude on July 3 1632. While at Cambridge he wrote a number of his most famous poems, among them the monody, Lycidas, Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, Epitaph on the admirable Dramatick Poet, W. Shakespeare, and the octosyllabics L'Allegro and Il Penseroso.

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While at Cambridge he developed a reputation for poetic skill and general erudition, although many biographers have also noted Milton's alienation from his Cambridge peers and university life as a whole. In a famous observation about his fellow Cambridge students, some of whom were soon to enter the ministry, he admitted that when he saw such students attempting comedy upon the college stage, 'they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools'{{fn|4}}. The feeling it seems was mutual; Milton,

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due to his hair, which he wore long, and his general delicacy of manner, was known as the "Lady of Christ's", an epithet probably applied with some degree of scorn.

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