Obiter Dicta

John Milton’s biography, Augustine Birrell argues, is no sickening catalogue of genius gone bad. Here is a poet who set out to make not only great poems, but a noble poem of himself.

In this essay from Obiter Dicta: Second Series, Birrell turns late-Victorian readers toward the literary past, beginning with Milton’s London birth and tracing the making of a mind that would not submit easily—to tutors, universities, or creeds. The young poet studies by lamplight, gives himself wholly to his art, and dreams of a life devoted to beauty; yet the age’s fierce political struggles will call him away from that quiet labour. Birrell admires Milton’s moral purpose without pretending he was easy to like. How did this self-fashioned poet become a rebel—and what would his chosen cause demand of him?

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