Milton’s Autobiography Made Up of All the More Important Autobiographical Passages Contained in His Prose and Poetical Works
It was found quite impossible to avoid somewhat of a jumble in bringing together the many autobiographic passages scattered throughout Milton’s prose and poetical works. The passage in the ‘Second Defence of the People of England,’ in reply to the scurrilous abuse and utterly unfounded charges against his private character contained in the Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Cœlum, adversus Parricidas Anglicanos, 1652, which occasioned the ‘Second Defence,’ covers a larger period of Milton’s life than any other, extending, as it does, from his birth to the time of his writing the ‘Second Defence,’ published in 1654, Milton being then in his forty-sixth year; and as there is an autobiographic passage of some importance in the preface to the ‘First Defence’ (published in 1651), this passage and that in the ‘Second Defence’ are kept together and given first. In the former he expresses his sense of the honor done him in his having been engaged to reply to the Defensio Regia pro Carolo I., by Salmasius; and he evidently felt, and justly, too, that no abler man could have been engaged for that important function. The extract from ‘A Defence of the People of England’ is from the translation ascribed by Milton’s biographer, John Toland, to Mr. Washington, a gentleman of the Temple, and that from the ‘Second Defence,’ from the translation by Robert Fellowes, A.M., Oxon. These are very free translations, and sometimes far from being adequate representations of Milton’s thought. It is much to be regretted that Milton did not himself make an English translation, for the general English reader, of these two noble Defences.
The other autobiographic passages are given, as far as may be, in their chronological order,—that is, not always according to the dates of their composition, but according to their order in Milton’s life.