No expense or pains were spared in the boy's education. The time was
divided up for him as the hours are for a soldier. One tutor after another
took him in hand during the day; but the change of study and a glad
respite of an hour in the morning and the same in the afternoon, for
music, bore him up.

He was the pride of his parents, the delight of his tutors.

Three years were spent at Saint Paul's School; then he was sent to
Cambridge. From there he wrote to his mother, "I am penetrating into the
inmost recesses of the Muses; climbing high Olympus, visiting the green
pastures of Parnassus, and drinking deep from Pierian Springs."

This is terrible language for a child of fourteen. A boy who should talk
like that now would be regarded with anxious concern by his loving
parents. The present age is incredulous of the Infant Phenomenon. And no
fond parent must for a moment imagine that by following the system laid
out for the education of John Milton can a John Milton be produced. The
Miltonian curriculum, if used today, would be sufficient ground for action
on the part of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

But John Milton, though but a weak-eyed boy with a chronic headache, had a
deal of whipcord fiber in his make-up. He stood the test and grubbed at
his books every night until the clock tolled twelve. He was born at a
peculiar time, being a child of the Reformation married to the
Renaissance. The toughness and grimness of Calvin were united in him with
the tenderness of Erasmus. From out of the Universal Energy, of which we
are particles, he had called into his being qualities so diverse that they
seemed never to have been before or since united in one person.