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The Poetical Works of John Milton: The minor poems
The Poetical Works of John Milton The minor poems Author:John Milton 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: luTiinTiiliiluiiirillSll'illllllllllllllll1l INTRODUCTIONS TO THE ENGLISH POEMS. Paraphrases On Psalms CXIV. And CXXXVI. These were done, as the author... more » himself takes care to tell us, "at fifteen years old"—i.e. in 1624. They are, in fact, the only specimens now extant of Milton's muse before he went to Cambridge. They are the relics, doubtless, of a little collection of boyish performances, now lost, with which he amused himself, and perhaps pleased his father and his teachers, when he lived in his father's house in Bread Street, Cheapside, and attended the neighbouring school of St. Paul's. They prove him to have been even then a careful reader of contemporary English poetry, and, in particular, of Spenser, and of Sylvester's quaint and old-fashioned, but richly poetical, translation of the Divine Weehes and Workes of the French religious poet Du Bartas. This book, which had been published in 1605 by Humphrey Lownes, a well- known printer of Bread Street Hill, close to Milton's father's house, was as popular in England as the original was on the Continent. It went through several editions while Sylvester lived, and almost every pious English household of literary tastes possessed a copy. On The Death Of A Fair Infant Dying Of A Cough. Over this poem Milton has himself placed the words "Anno alatis 17," implying that it was written in his 17th year. Now, as Milton entered his seventeenth year on the gth of December 1624, and ended it on the pth of Decem- ber 1625, this would place the poem between those dates. But, when Milton placed Arabic figures after the phrase anno osteitis in those headings of his poems, it was his habit to give himself the benefit of a year by understanding the figures as noting cardinal and not ordinal numbers. "Anno atatis 17 " meant, ...« less