John Milton, famous English poet, was born in London in 1608, and died in 1674. He was educated at St. Paul's School and at Cambridge. He became blind about 1652, dictated his "Paradise Lost" to an amanuensis, and published it in 1667. He was married three times, first to Mary Powell in 1643. She was 17 and he 35, and she left him after a month but returned several years later. She died in 1653 or 1654. In 1656 he married Catherine Woodcock, who died fifteen months later. In 1663 he married Elizabeth Minshull, 30 years his junior.

REFERENCE: David Masson, The Life of John Milton, Narrated in Connection with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time, London, 1858—79, 6 vols.

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