No words
are so commonplace but that they can be made to yield inference by a
biographer. And even in these school exercises we think we can discern
that the future poet was already a diligent reader of Sylvester's _Du
Bartas_ (1605), the patriarch of Protestant poetry, and of Fairfax's
_Tasso_ (1600). There are other indications that, from very early
years, poetry had assumed a place in Milton's mind, not merely as a
juvenile pastime, but as an occupation of serious import.
Young Gill, son of the high master, a school-fellow of Milton, went
up to Trinity, Oxford, where he got into trouble by being informed
against by Chillingworth, who reported incautious political speeches
of Gill to his godfather, Laud. With Gill Milton corresponded; they
exchanged their verses, Greek, Latin, and English, with a confession
on Milton's part that he prefers English and Latin composition to
Greek; that to write Greek verses in this age is to sing to the deaf.
Gill, Milton finds "a severe critic of poetry, however disposed to be
lenient to his friend's attempts."
If Milton's genius did not announce itself in his paraphrases of
Psalms, it did in his impetuosity in learning, "which I seized with
such eagerness that from the twelfth year of my age, I scarce ever
went to bed before midnight.
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