Salt Lake Tribune | 1906-05-23 | Page 6 | Milton's Last Days

Milton's Last Days. One youth there was who came to him now, like the boys he used to leach, and had lessons from him and talk. In return re-turn for which he wrote at Milton's dictation, writes Georgo Edward Wood-berry Wood-berry in McCluro's. His daughters had left him; a third wife, whom he married lato. took kindly care of him; friends visited him. He would sit outside the door In tho svin, wrapped In a gray, coarse cloth coat. The undying portrait of him is that reported by the painter, Richardson, from an aged clergyman who called on him. "He found him in a small house, ho thinks but ono room on a lloor In that, up one pair of stairs, which was hung with a rusty green, he found John Milton sitting In an elbow-chair, black clothes and neat enough: pale but not cadaverous: his hands and fingers gouty, and with chalk-stones. Among other discourse dis-course he cxprossod himself to this purpose, pur-pose, 'that was ho free from the pain this gave him, his blindness would bo tolerable.' toler-able.' " This was the old age appointed for the fair youth of forty years before, in whom tho beauty of the Ilenaissanco seemed to have taken on Ideal form, on the eve of the Italian journey; to thin end he had brought his boyhood passion for beauty, purity and perfection through a life of Intellectual conlllct to a consummation consum-mation that gave him kinship with the sterner rather than the softer brothers of his art. It is commonly thought that i in tho tragedy of Samson he had his own fortune in mind, and doubtless he drew sympathetic Inspiration from his own position po-sition In realizing that of Samson in defeat de-feat But his spirit seems to have accepted ac-cepted defeat without that despair of life which In so fiery-tempered a soul, so great In facnltv, might well bo feared.