ondon, the birthplace of Chaucer, Spenser, Ben
Jonson, Milton, Herrick, Pope, Gray, Blake, Keats, and Browning, and
Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. Of English poets it
may be said generally they are either born in London or remote country
places. The large provincial towns know them not. Indeed, nothing is
more pathetic than the way in which these dim, destitute places hug the
memory of any puny whipster of a poet who may have been born within their
statutory boundaries. This has its advantages, for it keeps alive in
certain localities fames that would otherwise have utterly perished.
Parnassus has forgotten all about poor Henry Kirke White, but the lace
manufacturers of Nottingham still name him with whatever degree of
reverence they may respectively consider to be the due of letters.
Manchester is yet mindful of Dr. John Byrom. Liverpool clings to Roscoe.

Milton remained faithful to his birth-city, though, like many another
Londoner, when he was persecuted in one house he fled into another. From
Bread Street he moved to St. Bride's Churchyard, Fleet Street; from Fleet
Street to Aldersgate Street; from Aldersgate Street to the Barbican; from
the Barbican to the south side of Holborn; from the south side of Holborn
to what is now called York Street, Westminster; from York Street,
Westminster, to the north side of Holborn; from the north side of Holborn
to Jewin Street; from Jewin Street to his last abode in Bunhill Fields.
These are not vain repetitions if they serve to remind a single reader
how all the enchantments of association lie about him. Englishwomen have
been found searching about Florence for the street where George Eliot
represents Romola as having lived, who have admitted never having been to
Jewin Street, where the author of _Lycidas_ and _Paradise Lost_ did in
fact live.

Milton's father was the right kind of father, amiable, accomplished, and
well-to-do. He was by business what was then called a scrivener, a term
which has received judicial interpretation, and imported a person who
arranged loans on mortgage, receiving a commission for so doing. The
poet's mother, whose baptismal name was Sarah (his father was, like
himself, John), was a lady of good extraction, and approved excellence
and virtue. We do not know very much about her, for the poet was one of
those rare men of genius who are prepared to do justice to their fathers.
Though Sarah Milton did not die till 1637, sh