Paradise Lost

Today's John Milton's birthday. Born in 1608, he lived through one monarchy, a revolution, a brief republic, a dictatorship (disguised as a protectorate), then a restoration of monarchy. Being politically active, a political flack in fact, he rose and fell as changes occurred, spending time in favor and then in prison. He was also going blind as surely as Thurber, whose birthday was yesterday. He dictated much of his poetry to assistant Andrew Marvell, who was himself a great poet. Milton wrote Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. For the former landmark in English literature his publisher paid him £10. He also wrote The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (he was unhappily married), which probably means he was no Puritan, despite his allegiances. John Milton appears four times in A Book of Ages.

The Road Not Taken

Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” was published in the August 1915 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Frost was 41, an age when poets begin to wonder what life might have been like if they'd gone into advertising.

Milton, Paradise Lost and £10

On this day in 1667, John Milton sold the copyright to Paradise Lost for £10. He was blind and hard up and his political party was on the outs. The poem written in blank verse came to 80,275 words, with a vocabulary of 10,148 words arranged in 10,565 lines; do the math. Milton was 58.

He appears four times in A Book of Ages, appearing first at age 34 as the author of a cheerful little book titled "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce." He married three times. I like to tell these stories as well as the happier and funnier ones. They tell themselves, really. Irony requires very little ornament. Coups, pratfalls, lucky breaks and disappointments, and then a sublime masterpiece. That is life.