



Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Steven Brown and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









[Illustration: Colour plate of book cover]

[Illustration: Byron portrait plate]


    PARADISE LOST. BK. XII. _Painting by S. Meteyard._

    "They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
    Through Eden took their solitary way."

                           (_Paradise Lost. Bk. XII._)


[Illustration: Paradise lost plate]




    A DAY WITH
    JOHN MILTON

    BY MAY BYRON


[Illustration: "Angel" plate]


    HODDER & STOUGHTON




    _In the same Series._

    _Tennyson._
    _Browning._
    _E. B. Browning._
    _Burns._
    _Byron._
    _Longfellow._
    _Whittier._
    _Rossetti._
    _Shelley._
    _Scott._
    _Coleridge._
    _Morris._
    _Wordsworth._
    _Whitman._
    _Keats._
    _Shakespeare._




A DAY WITH JOHN MILTON


About four o'clock on a September morning of 1665,--when the sun was
not yet shining upon his windows facing the Artillery Fields, and the
autumnal dew lay wet upon his garden leaves,--John Milton awoke with
his customary punctuality, and, true to his austere and abstemious mode
of life, wasted no time over comfortable indolence. He rose and
proceeded to dress, with the help of his manservant Greene. For,
although he was but fifty-four years in age, his hands were partly
crippled with gout and chalkstones, and his eyes, clear, bright and blue
as they had always been to outward seeming, were both stone-blind.

Milton still retained much of that personal comeliness which had won
him, at Cambridge, the nickname of "Lady of Christ's College." His
original red and white had now become a uniform pallor; his thick,
light brown hair, parted at the top, and curling richly on his
shoulders--(no close-cropt Roundhead this!)--was beginning to fade
towards grey. But his features were noble and symmetrical; he was
well-built and well-proportioned; and he was justified in priding
himself upon a personal appearance which he had never neglected or
despised. In his own words, he was "neither large nor small: at no time
had he been considered ugly; and in youth, with a sword by his side, he
had never feared the bravest."

Such was the man who now, neatly dressed in black, was led into his
study, upon the same floor as his bedroom,--a small chamber hung with
rusty green,--and there, seated in a large old elbow-chair, received the
morning salutations of his three daughters.

One after another they entered the room, and each bestowed a
characteristic greeting upon her father. Anne, the eldest, a handsome
girl of twenty, was lame, and had a slight impediment in her speech. She
bade him good-morning with a stammering carelessness, enquired casually
as to his night's rest, and stared out of window, palpably bored at the
commencement of another monotonous, irksome day. Mary, the second,
--dark, impetuous, and impatient,--was in a state of smouldering
rebellion. She addressed him in a tone of almost insolent mock-civility,
--he must needs have been deaf as well as blind not to detect the
unfilial dislike beneath her words. Ten-year-old Deborah, the most
affectionate of the three, ventured to kiss her father, even to stroke
his long, beautiful hair, and to re-tie the tassels of his collar.

"Mary will read to me this morning," said Milton, gravely inclining his
head in acknowledgment of Deborah's