Ebook Areopagitica

In 1640 Milton established his school in Aldersgate, where his sister Anne's two boys, Edward and John Phillips, then aged nine and eight, were among his pupils. There Milton began, in the year 1641 at the age of thirty-two, the second part of his literary life, the period of his prose writing, which divides by an interval of about eighteen years his earlier from his later verse. To the Middle Period belonged only a few short poems, which this volume contains, and the great body of prose, which is here represented by the greatest of his prose works, "Areopagitica," and by the "Letter to Hartlib upon Education." That Milton should put away the art he loved best and had so long studied, and as he himself said, write with his left hand during the years of highest power in a man, from thirty-two to fifty, is instructive. He gave himself, as a good citizen should, to the clear utterance of his own voice among the many voices in debate at a great turning point in English history.