He was a precocious child, and have we not been told that precocity does
not fulfill its promises? But this boy was an exception. He was incarnated
into a family that prized music, poetry, philosophy, and yet held fast to
the Christian faith. His father set psalms to music, his sister wrote
madrigals, and his mother played sweet strains on a harp to waken him at
morningtide. The entire household united in a devotion to poetry and art.
Possibly this atmosphere of high thinking was too rarefied for real
comfort--the gravity of the situation being sustained only by a stern
effort.

But no matter--father, mother and sister joined hands to make the pale,
handsome boy a prodigy of learning: one that would surprise the world and
leave his impress on the time.

And they succeeded.

Of the three Milton children that passed away in childhood, I can not but
think that they succumbed to overtraining, being crammed quite after the
German custom of stuffing geese so as to produce that delicious diseased
tidbit known to gourmets as pate de foies gras. John Milton stood the
cramming process like a true hero. His parents set him apart for the
Church--therefore he must be learned in books, familiar with languages,
versed in theories. They desired that he should have knowledge, which
they did not know is quite a different thing from wisdom.

So the boy had a private tutor in Greek and Latin at nine years of age,
and even then began to write verse. At ten years of age his father had the
lad's portrait painted by that rare and thrifty Dutchman, Cornelius
Jansen. We have this picture now, and it reveals the pale, grave, winsome
face with the flowing curls that we so easily recognize.