Study, poetry, and travel
An English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Common wealth of England under Oliver Cromwell was educated at St. Paul 's School, then at Christ 's College in 1625 and graduated with a B.A in 1629 ranking fourth of 24 honors graduates that year in the University of Cambridge, where he began to write poetry in Latin, Italian, and English, and prepared to enter the clergy. Milton was probably suspended for quarrelling in his first year with his tutor, William Chappell. He was certainly at home in the Lent term 1626; there he wrote his Elegia Prima, a first Latin elegy, to Charles Diodati, a friend from St Paul 's.
At Cambridge Milton was on good terms with Edward King, for whom he later wrote Lycidas. At Cambridge he developed a reputation for poetic skill and general erudition, but experienced alienation from his peers and university life as a whole. Watching his fellow students attempting comedy upon the college stage, he later observed 'they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools '. Due to his long hair and general delicacy of manner, Milton was known as the "Lady of Christ 's". After getting his Masters in Arts degree in 1632, Milton
Bibliography: Poetry Lycidas (1638) Poems (1645) Paradise Lost (1667) Paradise Regained (1671) Samson Agonistes (1671) Drama Arcades (1632) Comus (1634) Non-Fiction Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England (1641) The Reason of Church Government Urged Against Prelaty (1642) The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643) Areopagitica (1644) Of Education (1644) The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1649) A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes (1659)