to have been Sarah Jeffrey. John Milton the younger was the third of six
children, only three of whom survived infancy. He grew up between a
sister, Anne, several years older, and a brother, Christopher, seven
years younger than himself.

Milton's birth and nurture were thus in the centre of London; but the
London of that day had not half the population of the Liverpool of ours.
Even now the fragrance of the hay in far-off meadows may be inhaled in
Bread Street on a balmy summer's night; then the meadows were near the
doors, and the undefiled sky was reflected by an unpolluted stream.
There seems no reason to conclude that Milton, in his early boyhood,
enjoyed any further opportunities of resort to rural scenery than the
vicinity of London could afford; but if the city is his native element,
natural beauty never appeals to him in vain. Yet the influences which
moulded his childhood must have been rather moral and intellectual than
merely natural:--

"The starlight smile of children, the sweet looks
Of women, the fair breast from which I fed,"

played a greater part in the education of this poet than

"The murmur of the unreposing brooks,
And the green light which, shifting overhead,
Some tangled bower of vines around me shed,
The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers."

Paramount to all other influences must have been the character of his
father, a "mute" but by no means an "inglorious" Milton, the preface and
foreshadowing of the son. His great step in life had set the son the