48 THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 
THE ASTRONOMY OF MILTON’S “PARADISE LOST.” 
Read before the Astronomical Section of the Hamilton Scientific 
Association, November 20th, 1903. 
BY JOHN A. PATERSON, K. C., M. A. 
Three poets in three distant ages born, 
Greece, Italy and England did adorn ; 
The first in loftiness of mind surpassed 
The next in majesty, in both the dast ; 
The force of Nature could no further go, 
_To make the third she joined the former two. 
And thus blind John Milton, shut in “from sight of vernal 
bloom or summer rose, or flocks or herds or human face divine,” 
sung of “things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,” and made the 
ages eloquent with that song that swept at large through the com- 
pass of the whole universe, and through all heaven beyond it, and 
surveyed all periods of time from before the creation to the consum- 
mation of all things. We are not, however, to speak to-night of him 
as a poet, well called “that mighty Arc of Song—the Divine Mil- 
ton,” but rather of his astronomical knowledge, when he knew of the 
starry heavens, and what purposes he worked out by that knowledge 
in the exercise of his powers of imagination and description Young 
in his ‘‘ Night Thoughts,” says ‘‘the undevout astronomer is mad,” 
and we might venture to express the correlate of that thought that 
the devout man who knows not something of astronomy is also 
mad, in that he fails to cultivate as he should the faculties that God 
gave him whereby his worship would be advanced. Is it too strong 
a statement to make that an average scientist knows a greater and 
more puissant God than an average Christian ? 
Milton was one of the most—if not the most—deeply read men 
of his day. His mind was saturated with the “classics,” learned in 
French, Italian and Hebrew ; and in science, in philosophy and in 
general learning he was regarded as the foremost scholar of the 
University of Cambridge. His travels in Italy, where he met the 
