retary to Mr.
Goschen (1887-1889); Under-Secretary for Finance in Egypt (1889-1892);
Chairman of the Inland Revenue Board, from 1892 to 1897, when he
succeeded Lord Rosmead at the Cape; represented the Mother Country with
great ability before and during the Boer War; visited England and raised
to the peerage in 1901; declined the Colonial Secretaryship in 1903;
resigned in 1905; _b_. 1854.

MILNER, JOSEPH, Church historian; master of the Grammar School,
Hull; his "History of the Church" reaches down to the 16th century
(1744-1797).

MILO, a celebrated athlete, born at Crotona, of extraordinary
strength, said to have one day carried a live bullock 120 paces along the
Olympic course, killed it with his fist, and eaten it up entire at one
repast; in old age he attempted to split a tree, but it closed upon his
arm, and the wolves devoured him.

MILTIADES, an Athenian general, famous for his decisive defeat of
the Persians at Marathon, 490 B.C.; failing in a naval attack on Paros,
and fined to indemnify the cost of the expedition, but unable to pay, was
cast into prison, where he died of his wounds inflicted in the attempt.

MILTON, JOHN, poet, born in London, son of a scrivener; graduated at
Cambridge, and settled to study and write poetry in his father's house at
Horton, 1632; in 1638 he visited Italy, being already known at home as
the author of the "Hymn on the Nativity," "Allegro," "Penseroso,"
"Comus," a mask, and "Lycidas," an elegy on his friend King, who was
drowned in the Irish Sea in 1637, besides much excellent Latin verse; the
outbreak of the Civil War recalled him, and silenced his muse for many
years; settling in London he took pupils, married in 1643 Mary Powell,
and became active as a writer of pamphlets on public questions; his first
topic was Church Government, then his wife's desertion of him for two
years called forth his tracts on Divorce, a threatened prosecution for
which elicited in turn the "Areopagitica, a Speech for the Liberty of
Unlicensed Printing"; his father died in 1647, his wife in 1652; under
the Common wealth he was "Secretary of Foreign Tongues," and successfully
defended the execution of Charles I. in his Latin "Defence of the English
People," and other bitter controversial works; he married in 1656 his
second wife, who died two years later; the Restoration gave him back to
leisure and poetry; his greatest work, "Paradise Lost," was composed
rapidly, dictated to his daughter