Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1908-12-12
Special CORRESPONDENCE.

Special Correspondence.
U LONDON, Oct. 2.-On page OF
an old family Bible in the pos
session of the British museum in
London stands an entry: John
Milton was born the 9Th of December.
1908. die Veneris hall, an hour after 6
o'clock in the morning. This year and
more particularly this week. England
has been celebrating the three hun
drcdth anniversary of the birth of him
who made this entry in the Bible and
followed 1t with a number of other
entries concerning his family. 1t is
curious to note that the spelling of
these shows a considerable diversity.
We get "howt," how're. land hover"
born" and "borne''-for the writer
was. of course, the greatest English
man of letters of his day and none
other than the poet of Paradise Lost"
The 800 years which have elapsed
since the birth Of Milton have not sue
ceeded in destroying the actual traces
OF his life to the same extent as they
have succeeded in the case of his con-
temporaries. Milton remains q more
vivid picture to us today than any of
his fellow countrymen who preceded
him or lived with him. We know over
$50 portraits, of which at least four are
most undoubtedly genuine, three repre-
senting him at the age Of 10, u and 62
respectively, and one in early middle
age. AL.
IS PORTRAIT FOUND THIS YEAR. y
BY an extraordinary coincidence the
portrait at the age OF 10 was rediscov-
cred this year on the very eve of the
opening. of the exhibition of AIiltoniana
at Chrlst's college. Cambridge, the coll
!ese at which he lived and studied from
the time he was 16 UP to the time when
he took his MA. degree at 49, BY a
great stroke of luck DIR. G. c, William
son early this summer found one more
painting by the Dutch painter, Corne-
Illus Jansen. who came over to Eng
land in, 1918 and took lodgings near
the house of John Milton the elder,
scrivener, in Bread street, three doors
from Cheapside. London, r.. C.--tte
house where the future poet was born
and where he still was dwelling at the
age of 10. This portrait was we'll
known in Milton's lifetime and was in
the possession Of the third Mrs. Milton
when she died. in 172T, since when 1t
has been heard of only fitfully.. A
grave and intelligent Puritan boy is
represented, with auburn locks. which
remind us of the old gossip Aubrey's
description of Milton's hair as light
brown or reddish"
From this, the most important find
made in connection With Milton in re-
cent times, and the three later por-
traits, we are able to construct an ac-
curate history of the poets features
from his charming and somewhat
naughty youth down to his sad and
blind old age. The picture of the
young man at Cambridge, the least
tdistinctively Puritanical OF the series.
now is in the possession of the Right
Hon. Lewis Harcourt, First Commits
sfoner of Works, and hangs at his res
idence at Nuneham, near Oxford 1t
is a copy made in the late eighteenth
century from the now lost original
which Milton's third wife said her hus-
band gave her ITO show her what he
wis in his youth, being drawn when
he was about 81 years of age" The
poet was by no means devoid of vanity
about his features. as is quantity shown
by the four-lined Greek epigram which
lie wrote under the frontispiece to
the original edition of his poems in
1915, lines which have been translated
roughly as follows:
Who that my real lineament has
Will not in this detect bunglers
hand I?
My friends, In doubt con whom his art
was tried.
The idiot lininer's vain attempt deride.
That Milton was justified in his sar-