An Account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton; With an Introduction to Paradise Lost (Paperback)

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: SECOND PERIOD. AT HOETON AND ON THE CONTINENT. A. D. 1632-1639. A. si. 24-31. Milton's father, who was now an old man, and who had retired from business on a competent income, was at this time, and had been perhaps for the last few years, wholly or in part, resident on a property he had purchased in the village of Horton, near Colnebrooke, in Buckinghamshire, the Suburban from which his son dates one of his letters to his friend Alexander Gill.f Hither Milton, on quitting the University, came, and took up his permanent abode. It had been his father's wish and hisown intention that he should enter the Church, but he had given up that design. His own account is as follows: By the intentions of my parents and friends I was destined of a child to the service of the Church, and in my own resolutions. Till coming to some maturity of years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the Church, that he who would take orders must subscribe Slave and take an oath withal, which, unless he took with a conscience that he would relish, he must either straight perjure or split his faith?I thought better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing. Mr. Todd was informed by the rector of the parish in 1808, that the house had been pulled down about ten years previously. Birken Manor-house, near the church, is still said to have been Milton's residence. f Warton, in his note on Eleg. i. 60, says, Some country-house of Milton's father, very near London, is here intended, of which we have now no notices. In our note on this place we have shown that Warton misunderstood it. It could not of course have been the house at Horton that he meant, yet he immediately after quotes the date of a letter from Milton to his ...