Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

In July 1639 the thirty-year-old John Milton stepped down on to the safe shores of his native land. During his fourteen – or fifteen-month tour of the continent he had conversed with philosophers, divines and poets and had found himself welcome; he had been inspired by the cultural life of Italy, particularly in the Florentine accademia, where appreciation of his poetic and philological abilities had puffed his ambition; he had refined his languages, and witnessed scholars and intellectuals participating in civic life. Fifteen years later he wrote that he had returned because ‘the sad tidings of Civil war in England summoned me back’ (Milton 1998b: 1116). The sentiment suggests that in 1639 Milton already sensed that there was a public role for him to play at his country's moment of crisis. Familial respects called him first to tranquil Horton, but he soon turned to London.In the autumn and winter of 1639 the streets of the metropolis were alive with news and debate. The events of the preceding two years had done much to disturb the peaceful surface of the Personal Rule, and discontent was registered in the realm that would later come to be known as ‘public opinion’. In July 1637 Charles had imposed a revised Book of Common Prayer upon the Scottish Kirk, provoking resistance that resulted in the invasion of England by a Covenanting army, and the surrender of the King's forces. Charles ... log in or subscribe to read full text