John Milton Biography

Milton was born in London. the son of a wealthy notary. He became a Puritan, and an opponent of the Catholics and of the Stuarts. A famous writer and poet, he visited Italy between 1638 and 1639. It was in 1638 that he would perhaps have met Galileo, a meeting represented in a picture which is the work of Annibale Gatti. Milton was the author of the poem Paradise Lost (1667). He was also an ardent polemicist, a follower of Cromwell, and the latter's foreign language secretary. In 1652 he became completely blind. After the restoration of the Stuarts he suffered considerable persecution. He was financially ruined by the Fire of London in 1666.