From time to time, people buy me books. They know I read a lot [probably too much for my own good, as I've been known to read instead of doing homework], so they feed my addiction. I got lots of books this Christmas, at my own request … I gave my family my Amazon.com wishlist and had them go to war.
As I drove to Tennessee for Christmas, I wondered … just what have my parents picked for me, book-wise? Well, let’s see … they picked up Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics, and the Role of Chance in the Game, which definitely fed my addiction to sabermetrics. But they also picked up the book I least expected to get for Christmas: John Milton (The Oxford Authors). It’s a critical edition of Milton’s major works.
I’ve long been a fan of Milton; I enjoy his work immensely, for some unknown reason. I’m one of those people that actually liked reading “Paradise Lost”, thankyouverymuch. But I’ve never really tried to read Milton critically … it does take a bit of work. I’m also attempting to read him appreciatively, something I’ve also had a hard time doing.

Being the good student I am, I started at the beginning and read the introduction–and unlike many such introductions, it wasn’t an insomniac’s delight. I actually got a bit of the sense of who Milton was and why he wrote some of the things that he did. I hadn’t ever truly realized the depth in which Milton commingled his writing with politics and religion … as someone who has the unfortunate bent to do so, I find myself drawn to him.

But as I was reading the opening work, a letter to an unnamed friend written c. 1633, I was stopped cold by his words. The second paragraph begins, “But if you think, as you said, that too much love of learning is in fault, and that I have given up myself to dream away my years in the arms of studious retirement … consider that if it were no more but the mere love of learning, … it could not have held out thus long against so strong opposition on the other side of every kind.”

I have often been accused, semi-jokingly, of being a person with designs on being a career student. Consider, for example, the fact that I am in the fifth of what I think will be eleven years of post-secondary education–you know, the same amount of time I spent going from being a snot-nosed little brat in Mrs. Anthony’s second grade class to being a big brat in Mr. Wester’s AP Physics class. [Little changed, I guess; both times, I was seriously involved in the study of geology and plate tectonics ... but I guess the latter time was because it was part of National Science Bowl. You betcha, that's me in the middle of this picture.]

[Side note: I just got a laugh out of that last link: "His career goals are to be an astronaut and a Congressman." What the heck was I thinking, eh?]

So, I continued reading this letter, hoping that there was something there for me. I do believe I found it in these words: “Lastly, this love of learning, as it is the pursuit of something good, it would sooner ffollow the more excellent and supreme good known and presented, and so be quickly diverted from the empty and fantastic chase of shadown and notions to the solid good flowing from due and timely obedience to that command in the gospel set out by the terrible seizing of him that hid the talent.” Wow. The last reference, if you’re not familiar with it, is to Matthew 25:14-28, The Parable of the Talents.

Included in Milton’s letter is what would be later published as Sonnet 7 in his 1645 Poems. I will let this serve as the end of this entry; as a young man of 23, it does quite hit home:

How soon hath time the subtle thief of youth,
   Stol’n on his wing my three and twentieth year!
   My hasting days fly on with full career,
   But my late spring no bud or blossom shew’th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
   That I to manhood am arrived so near,
   And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
   That some more timely-happy spirits endueth.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
   It shall be still in strictest measure even,
   To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which time leads me, and the will of heaven;
   All is, if I have grace to use it so,
   As ever in my great task-master’s eye.