He married a woman named Mary Powell in 1642, but she quickly grew tired of him and left him almost immediately after their honeymoon. Milton was furious, but it was against the law to get a divorce on the grounds of incompatibility. The next year, he wrote The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643), in which he argued that couples should be able to divorce if the marriage turns out to be unhappy. He tried to prove that marriage was created to remedy the loneliness of men, and that if a wife failed to perform this function, her husband should have the right to divorce her. He also said that those who had lived freely in their youth were more likely to find happiness in marriage than those who were chaste and inexperienced. Milton addressed his tract to the British Parliament, but it didn't go over well. He remained married to Powell until her death in 1652.
Milton wrote Areopagitica in 1644 to make the case against the government's censorship of books and pamphlets. It's one of the first great arguments in favor of freedom of the press. He argued that no one group should control the number of available opinions from which an individual can choose. He wrote, "As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself."
After the Civil War ended and Charles II was restored to the throne, Milton devoted himself to the writing of Paradise Lost. In 12 books of sonorous, majestic, black verse, Milton recapitulates the story in Genesis of the temptation, the fall and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Milton said the poem was an attempt to "justifie the wayes of God to men. Many readers of Paradise Lost come away from it feeling that Satan is the most interesting and sympathetic character in the poem. He's clever and cunning, smart enough to hold sway over the rest of the fallen angels and to trick Adam and Eve into betraying God. At one point Satan thinks, "Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n." Milton's God, on the other hand, comes across as a mean, stodgy old man. William Blake called Milton "a true poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it."
In modern usage the phrase "paradise lost" is often trivialized, as in a vacation over and done with. But it is also used to refer to loss of innocence , as in growing out of childhood.
~Writer's Almanac
