Abstract: John Milton is the first great English poet who has biographies written by his Contemporaries. Before Samuel Johnson’s Life of Milton, there are more than 10 biographies about him. However, the same biographee Milton appears different or even contradictory in temperament, habits and personalities because of different characters, needs and motivations of his biographers. It sufficiently proves that the textual subjects of biographies have changeability, which requires readers to make a painstaking examination, tell the true from the false and interpret the biographee multi-dimensionally.

Keywords: Biography, Textual Subject, Life of John Milton, Samuel Johnson