Milton, Wolfe, and the Angels

August 10: On this day in 1637 Edward King, a college friend of John Milton’s, drowned at sea. Milton published “Lycidas” three months later, giving the elegiac tradition one of its most famous poems and, three centuries later, giving Thomas Wolfe the title to his first and most famous novel: “Look homeward Angel now, and melt with ruth; / And, O ye Dolphins, waft the hapless youth.”