“David Harper’s Paradise Lost and the Making of English Literary Criticism is an original piece of work based on rigorous archival research, on history of the book methodology, and on close reading. It is a book that reshapes our understanding of the history of English literary criticism and scholarship by illuminating how Paradise Lost was interpreted and annotated in the Restoration and its aftermath. This book makes a major contribution to scholarly work on the poem’s reception history while deepening our understanding of the discipline of English literary scholarship and criticism. Scholars and students of Milton will greatly benefit from reading Harper’s book, as will anyone interested in the making of English literary criticism.”

David Loewenstein, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English, Penn State-University Park, USA

Paradise Lost and the Making of English Literary Criticism

Paradise Lost and the Making of English Literary Criticism identifies the early reception of Paradise Lost as a site of contest over the place of literature in political and religious controversy. Milton’s earliest readers and critics (Dryden, Addison, Dennis, Hume, and Bentley) confronted a poem and author at odds with the prevailing culture and the revanchist conservatism of the restored monarchy. Grappling with the epic required navigating Milton’s reputation as a “fanatick” who had called in print for Charles I’s execution, inveighed openly against monarchy on the eve of Charles II’s return, and held heretical views on the trinity, baptism, and divorce. Harper argues that foundational figures in English literary criticism rose to this challenge by innovating new ways of reading: producing creative (and subversive) rewritings of Paradise Lost, articulating new theories of the sublime, explaining the poem in the first substantial body of annotations for an English vernacular text, and by pioneering early forms of textual criticism and editing.

David A. Harper is the former Professor and Head of the Department of English and Philosophy at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point. He is now teaching in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York.

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Paradise Lost and the Making of English Literary Criticism

David A. Harper

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Paradise Lost and the Making of English Literary Criticism

David A. Harper

First published 2024

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Harper, David A., 1971- author.

Title: Paradise Lost and the making of English literary criticism / David A. Harper.

Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Routledge studies in renaissance literature and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2023032597 (print) | LCCN 2023032598 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032232409 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032633428 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003276395 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Milton, John, 1608-1674. Paradise lost. | Criticism--History.

Classification: LCC PR3562 .H36 2024 (print) | LCC PR3562 (ebook) | DDC 821/.4--dc23/eng/20230713

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023032597

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023032598

ISBN: 9781032232409 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781032633428 (pbk)

ISBN: 9781003276395 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003276395

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For Erica, Jessica, and Jane.

Acknowledgments

Satan understands too late in Book 4 that “a grateful Mind / By owing owes not, but still pays, at once / Indebted and discharged; what burthen then?” (55–7). It is then, a pleasure and no burden to admit the immense debt of gratitude I owe to so many individuals and institutions who supported me in various ways throughout the writing of this book.

My research was supported at various stages by funding from The University of Texas at Austin, a life-changing Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, and a year as a U.S.–U.K. Fulbright Scholar at the University of York, U.K. Over the years, time spent as a research associate of the Department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of York has been invaluable to me. I wish to thank the staff of the British Library, the Bodleian Library, The Cambridge University Library, the Trinity College Cambridge Library, the Grolier Club Library, the Harry Ransom Center, the Huntington Library, the New York Public Library, and the U.K. National Archives and for their help on many occasions.

I am grateful to colleagues and friends who have assisted me in this task in various ways, especially my mentor and friend John Rumrich whose wisdom and kindness has been constant throughout my academic career. The community of Milton scholars is a special source of inspiration, and I’d be remiss not to mention the generous support and encouragement I have received from esteemed Miltonists such as John Leonard, David Loewenstein, and Stephen Dobranski. Michael Suarez has been an inspiring supporter of this project and offered valuable advice about book historical approaches as I sought Hume’s identity. My colleague Seth Herbst was a cheerful and insightful interlocutor on many occasions. At York, I’m grateful for the support of Kevin Killeen and Helen Smith among others. K.P. Clarke, and Michael Plevin of the “research leave lunch club” offered support and helpful comments when most needed and kept me accountable for doing the work of writing. Richard Rowland has been a diligent, kind, and thoughtful reader who has paid the sort of Bentleyesque attention to my text that it (and I) most needed. My editor at Routledge, Anita Bhatt, has been invaluable in her assistance and her persistent encouragement to finish the book.

I would not, in fact, have been able to finish this project were it not for the skill of Doctor Brian Shimkus and others in the Austin area who helped me vanquish my cancer. The support of my daughters, Erica and Jessica Harper, has been unflagging despite my many weekends spent writing in coffeeshops (Bennu, 2 Alices, Micklegate Social). Finally, Jane Raisch deserves my warmest thanks and unwavering love for lending me her encouragement and advice, and for being a constant inspiration to remain focused on the stakes of the argument.

Frequently Cited Works

California

The Works of John Dryden, 20 vols. Edited by Edward Niles Hooker, H.T. Swedenberg, and others (Berkeley, 1955–90).

Critical Works

The Critical Works of John Dennis, 2 vols. Edited by Edward Niles Hooker (Baltimore, 1939–43)

CW

The Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Frank Allen Patterson, 18 vols. (Columbia, 1931–38).

Darbishire

Helen Darbishire, ed., The Early Lives of Milton (London, 1932).

Masson

David Masson, The Life of John Milton, 7 vols. (1877–96; New York, 1946).

YP

The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, gen. ed. Don M. Wolfe, 8 vols. (New Haven, 1953–82).

Citations and line numbers for Paradise Lost, unless otherwise noted, are from the 1695 Tonson Paradise Lost containing Peter Hume’s Annotations.

When quoting seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts, I have tried to preserve the spelling, pointing capitalization, elision, and use of roman and italic case. However, ʃ has been silently modernized; most small capitals have been treated as upper-case letters; and ligatures and swash letters have been ignored.

IntroductionBirth Narratives

DOI: 10.4324/9781003276395-1

My introduction to the world of the Miltonists was at the 8th International Milton Symposium that convened in Grenoble in 2005. In writing up this event for Milton Quarterly, Roy Flannagan reported that the some two hundred Miltonists who convened for the conference on “Milton, Droits et Libertés” were well-behaved.

As befits a Milton Symposium, there were few overt vices – very little public drunkenness or lewd behavior (there were no nude beaches nearby to tempt us, as in Vancouver). There was a healthy mix of young Turks and old farts …. Neither an atheist nor a fundamentalist pall hung over this conference: no one was forced to go to chapel, and a fitting separation of church and state was observed. Love of food replaced all other pleasures and vices, because, after all, this was France.¹

Admittedly, this bit hasn’t aged well (and it certainly makes me glad I wasn’t at the Vancouver meeting). Yet, despite being ostensibly meant as a playful overture to a circle of Miltonists “in the know” about the goings on in Vancouver and Grenoble, Flannagan’s ready juxtapositions of vice and virtue, “church and state,” and in particular the poles of “atheism” or “fundamentalism” recall tensions I had sensed at the conference. I well remember watching with amusement as attendees divided into camps gathered around two eminent scholars seated under opposite trees on the lawn before the closing dinner at the Château de Sassenage. It seemed a visible enactment of the underlying divisions in the field that had been almost always palpable in the panels and plenaries filling the days before. While these tensions may not have cast a “pall” over the proceedings, religious-political anxieties raised by Milton and his work were quite evident and active during the Grenoble gathering, as they have been since the seventeenth century.

What was playing out beneath the civilized veneer of the Grenoble proceedings was the impact of ongoing, divisive, and sometimes quite personal debates about the status of Milton’s “most cherished possession,” his treatise De Doctrina Christiana. In the years leading up to the 8th International Milton Symposium, at least since William B. Hunter questioned it in 1991 at the fourth symposium and in print, the authorship of the heterodox treatise had been contested.² Following the initial attack on Milton’s authorship and a spate of answers and remonstrances, a committee of experts had been established to investigate De Doctrina and report back to the Milton community. The committee presented its findings in a final report published in Milton Quarterly in 1997, but it is fair to say they didn’t successfully put the matter to rest. The report, “The Provenance of De Doctrina Christiana,” is a problematic text perhaps best described by John Rumrich and Steven Dobranski as one that

equivocates and by its very bulk encourages readers to indulge the tenuously grounded speculation that it sifts … the report’s stylometric analysis and ultimate conclusions – while acknowledging that Milton wrote at least significant portions of the treatise – ostensibly justify continued uncertainty regarding the provenance of the treatise.³

As Rumrich and Dobranski point out, the underlying stakes (and one suspects the motivations) for denying Milton’s authorship of De Doctrina were part of an ongoing attempt to downplay Milton’s heterodoxies. As they put it, “the persistent desire to present Milton as an orthodox Christian threatens to undermine critical accomplishments of the past half century.”⁴ Even if one denies Milton’s authorship of De Doctrina without recasting his religious beliefs as therefore more orthodox, removing the Christian Doctrine from Milton’s canon would disallow the use of it as an important mechanism by which we can better understand Milton’s religious heterodoxies in general and those in Paradise Lost in particular. At Grenoble in 2005, the issue wasn’t over, and Thomas N. Corns had to take to the stage to clarify the published report of the committee and affirm publicly that, yes, in fact the committee’s examination and stylometric analysis of the text had shown that Milton was the author of De Doctrina. Flannagan’s diaristic reporting of that event is, again, telling:

We heard from John Hale and Tom Corns, to begin the symposium, that despite many years of research and computer analysis, Milton probably did write most of the De Doctrina Christiana (DDC), peace be to Bill Hunter’s conjecture at the Vancouver symposium. John Hale confirmed that Milton was indeed a very clever Latinist, that the majority of his work is in Latin, and that we all really do need to read his Latin to understand him.⁵

Flanagan’s summary reenacts the problems that Rumrich and Dobranski had pointed out in the committee’s report by suggesting both closure (“peace be” to the conjecture) and continued ambiguity and uncertainty (“probably” and “most of”). And so, at every Milton Symposium I’ve attended since, and at numerous gatherings of Miltonists in between (to include regular conferences in Murfreesboro, Tennessee), there has been at least one panel devoted to the De Doctrina authorship “controversy,” with hardcore De Doctrina deniers spinning ever more fantastic theories about the treatise being a hoax or otherwise a fraud.⁶

As fascinating as it may be, the debate over Milton’s authorship of De Doctrina is only emblematic of wider – and longstanding – discomfort with Milton’s political and religious heterodoxies and a continued struggle to appropriate Milton as reflecting the views most cherished by the author/reader/critic (Milton is thus orthodox or heterodox, “atheist” or “fundamentalist” at the utter extremes). The debate over the authorship of De Doctrina demonstrates that Milton’s radical energies remain troubling for some even as they are productive for others. The push-and-pull between the orthodox and radical Milton has dominated modern scholarship on Milton most explicitly since the publication of Stanley Fish’s Surprised by Sin. Fish’s Milton is one whose heterodoxies are always only snares for the fallen reader, and his Milton is always ready to slap the reader on the hand with a ruler and orient them back to an orthodox view. So marked is this continued response to the political and religious anxieties in Milton that William Kolbrener famously characterized the field as a contest between Milton’s Warring Angels: the critics themselves.⁷ As he traces the evolution of this dynamic to the closing decades of the seventeenth century, Kolbrener concludes that “This bifurcation among readers of Milton – who have constructed opposing if not contradictory images of the poet – has long been evident.”⁸ Kolbrener explains the state of Milton studies by exploring how a historiography founded upon “Whig history” leads to his titular warring camps of critics who agree only that Milton must be categorized as they insist “that Milton must conform to either the requisites of satanic heresy or angelic orthodoxy.”⁹ In response, Kolbrener proposes that recognizing Milton’s “mediation” between extremes can avoid unnecessarily separating Milton’s identity as a statesman from that of a poet. By proposing mediation as “the means by which Milton joins, without reconciling, apparently contradictory positions,” Kolbrener attempts to move past competing orthodox/heterodox or “angelic” and “satanic” readings of Milton.¹⁰

This book is not another volley in the exchanges between the “angelic” and “satanic” Miltonists, although it is predicated upon a view that foregrounds Milton’s religious and political beliefs as profoundly challenging to orthodoxy and, by extension, to tyranny. I suggest that the ways in which Milton’s Restoration reputation and his poetics incited early readers to participate in this interpretive conflict prompted important developments in English literary scholarship itself. In doing so, however, I’m aware that some scholars who continue to want Milton (or at least Milton’s great poetry) to be only and always orthodox will deny that Paradise Lost contained the radical energies I credit for its importance or will deny that early readers saw such heterodoxies (because to do so would be to admit they are evident and active in the poetry). Resistance to recognizing the power of heterodoxy in Milton’s poetry has led to the longstanding and false belief that only the discovery and publication of De Doctrina in 1825 cast doubt upon the poet’s orthodoxy.¹¹ This, in turn, has elevated the unnecessary authorship debate about De Doctrina to a central role in the conflict. However, even when willing to cede Milton’s personal heterodoxy, critics like C.S. Lewis and his successors have claimed it had no part in Paradise Lost. Lewis thunders:

In Paradise Lost we are to study what the poet, with his singing robes about him, has given us. And when we study that we find that he has laid aside most of his private theological whimsies during his working hours as an epic poet. He may have been an undisciplined man; he was a very disciplined artist.¹²

Chapter 1 therefore demonstrates conclusively that discomfort with Milton’s heterodoxies – quite present in Paradise Lost – dates from the poem’s very earliest reception. This is necessary to set the scene for the later argument that the radical energies of Milton’s theodicy and politics were productive spurs to the development of critical maneuvers that remain operative in English literary studies. Debates such as those about the authorship of De Doctrina, about Milton’s concept of the trinity, or even about whether early readers recognized Milton’s heterodoxies continue to elicit the very dynamic of repression and recovery that marked the Restoration reception of Paradise Lost. As a result, critics create their own versions of Paradise Lost, and each version has its own reception history – its own birth narrative for the poem and scholarship upon it – that varies depending on what tree on the château’s lawn they might seat themselves under.

Birth Narratives

In Paradise Lost, Milton offers readers two distinctly differing birth narratives for Eve. In the first, as Satan spies upon them in the guise of a tiger, Eve recounts to Adam how she took her faltering first steps and sought to understand the world and herself (4.449–91).¹³ In Eve’s telling, her first experience of the world and herself comes from encountering her reflection in a clear lake. She relates how she approached the pond “With unexperienc’d thought, and laid me down / On the green Bank, to look into the clear / Smooth Lake, that to me seem’d another Sky” (4.457–459). In contrast, Adam, later relating to Raphael the similar moment of his own creation, claims that “Streight toward Heav’n my wondering Eyes I turned” (8.257) before “My self I then perus’d, and Limb by Limb / Survey’d” (8.267–8). Adam immediately looks to heaven and only later examines his own physical being. By contrast, Eve’s attention is directed down, diverted first to the mere appearance of things as she looks at the reflection of the sky, and then upon her own reflection.

A Shape within the watry gleam appear’d

Bending to look on me, I started back,

It started back, but pleas’d I soon return’d,

Pleas’d it return’d as soon…

(4.461–4)

Eve is quickly enamored with her first glimpse of the human form. In his 1695 Annotations upon Paradise Lost, Peter Hume opined that in these passages Milton “improved the fable of Ovid, by representing Eve like a she Narcissus admiring her self: and has made it much more probable that a Person who had never seen any thing like her self, should be in love with her own faint reflected Resemblance” (Hume 4.461).¹⁴ It is typical of Hume (whom we shall meet properly in Chapter 4) that he doesn’t linger on the problematic representation of Eve as a “she Narcissus,” but instead focuses on how Milton revises and makes the classical source “more probable.” As Eve gazes at herself in the glassy pond, her reflection mirrors the progress of her own infatuation as it moves with her from being startled to being “pleas’d.” Throughout Eve’s recounting of her first impressions, Milton’s verse itself enacts the theme of approach and retreat, turn and return, as the poet plays with echo, repetition, and variance. Only when Eve is warned away from her reflection by a divine voice does she finally approach Adam, only to turn back once again. Compared to her own reflection, she finds Adam “fair indeed and tall,” but also less attractive. In fact, rather than seeing Adam in his masculine form as endowed with more, Eve’s impression of him is only that he is “less” than the image she had seen in the water:

            less fair,

Less winning soft, less amiably mild

Than that smooth watry image; back I turn’d,

Thou following cryd’st aloud, Return fair Eve,

Whom fly’st thou? whom thou fly’st of him thou art

(4.478–82)

Adam unintentionally acknowledges Eve’s definition of him as “less” when he declares that “Whom thou fly’st of him thou art,” as Eve’s being has quite literally been subtracted from him. Eve’s desire to return to the pool and her own image is only interrupted by Adam’s plea that she stay and by the stay of his “gentle hand” as it “seized” Eve’s (4.489). It is clearly to Satan’s later advantage that this is the narrative of Eve’s creation that he overhears, even as he is forced himself to turn away from the couple’s kisses with envy.

The second version of Eve’s birth narrative in Paradise Lost is a curious revision conspicuous in how it fails to acknowledge the earlier account. In this second version, related by Adam to Raphael (8.452–539) after Eve has left them to their conversation, Adam provides a different reason for Eve’s initial recoil from him. The version Adam chooses to tell actively represses the one he has heard from Eve and discounts her subjective experience of the events. Having seen Eve’s creation while under divine anesthesia, Adam already desires her and mourns their brief separation until she reappears led by the divine voice. As she turns from him, a move she has explained (to Adam) as indicative of her preference for her own image reflected in the pool, Adam reframes it for Raphael as feigned reluctance as part of a courting ritual:

Yet Innocence and Virgin Modesty,

Her Vertue and the conscience of her worth,

That would be woo’d, and not unsought be won,

Not obvious, not obtrusive, but retir’d,

The more desirable, or to say all,

Nature herself, though pure of sinful thought,

Wrought in her so, that seeing me, she turn’d

(8.501–7)

In Adam’s version, Eve’s turn away is a performance spurred on by an instinctual desire to be wooed and won over and turns implicitly sexual as Adam’s defense of Nature being “pure of sinful thought” introduces the potential of sin into this turning away. Even though Eve has recently told him the real reason for her turning, Adam silently emends her account to make it evidence of her attraction to him, seductive, and aligned with his view of Eve’s virtues (and as many have noted, aligned with Restoration ideals of courtship). Eve’s initial ambivalence about Adam is revised out of the birth narrative in an exercise authorial of power that adapts the narrative in a manner Adam clearly considers more apt for his angelic audience and that is more comfortable for Adam. In its new form, the narrative reifies a perspective on Eden and its hierarchy that was observed by Satan when he first saw the couple and noted the apparent inequality of their creation: “He [Adam] for God only, she for God in him” (4.299).

Like Eve, Paradise Lost has two birth narratives that differ according to narrator, vantage point, political stakes, and intended audience. Like the recounting of Eve’s creation, the story of Paradise Lost’s creation and earliest reception is entangled in power relations and political stakes. Here, in these earliest birth narratives of the poem we glimpse early maneuverings and posturing in the culture war over Paradise Lost.

In the less-complicated narrative of Paradise Lost’s earliest reception, one recalling Adam’s narrative of Eve’s creation in the way in which it confirms prevailing attitudes toward the poem and glosses over discomforting facts, the epic was immediately recognized for its beauties and destined to be a classic from the outset. In this version, first related by Jonathan Richardson in 1734, Sir John Denham “came into the House one Morning with a Sheet, Wet from the Press, in his Hand.”¹⁵ Asked what he had, Denham replied, “Part of the Noblest Poem that ever was Wrote in Any Language, or in Any Age.”¹⁶ This early praise, we are to assume, set the poem on its way to being a classic. In more modern versions of this narrative the story is often expanded to explain how the publication of Jacob Tonson’s grand folio of 1688 cemented Paradise Lost’s (already nascent) status as a classic worthy of sumptuous treatment, or signaled how the Whig cause would rapidly appropriate the poem, or shows us that the poem was “already a classic.”¹⁷

A second birth narrative of Paradise Lost is also provided by Richardson, and – despite its factual conflict with the triumphal one above – makes the poem’s rise to revered status perhaps even more heroic. In this version, Richardson relates his third-hand knowledge of how the joint efforts of Lord Dorset and John Dryden rescued Paradise Lost from obscurity. The narrative is a masterpiece of hearsay: by way of Tancred Robison, who heard it from Fleet Shephard (“at the Grecian Coffee-house”), Richardson heard that Lord Dorset found Paradise Lost in a bookseller’s shop in Little-Britain, where the bookseller begged him to speak well of it because it “lay on his hands as Waste Paper.”¹⁸ Relating this in 1734, Richardson is so moved by the thought of Milton’s poem being regarded as “waste paper” that he can’t restrain an emotional interjection: “Jesus!”¹⁹ Recovering his poise, Richardson goes on to explain how Dorset sent the poem to Dryden, who “in a short time return’d it: This Man (says Dryden) Cuts us All Out, and the Ancients too.” What is more, Richardson tells us that a certain “North-Country Gentleman” reported that Milton’s poem had such an impact on Dryden that he told the gentlemen that he wouldn’t have rhymed his 1697 Works of Virgil if he were to begin it again.²⁰ Richardson sums up this story of Paradise Lost’s salvation and reception in a manner that clearly casts it as a heroic or even providential journey:

Thus, what by One means, what by Another, and Those Complicated and Manag’d as Providence well Can, This Poem, this Waste Paper, (like an Acorn Hid and Lost) has, by its Inherent Life, and a Little Cultivation, Sprung Out of the Earth, Lifted up its Head and Spread its Branches, a Noble Oak.²¹

What Richardson’s account doesn’t delve into are reasons why Paradise Lost would languish until Dryden rescued it. Chapter 2 explores the ways in which Dryden is a very problematic figure in the reception of the poem, with a much more nuanced and complicated relationship to the poem than is usually let on. Even in Richardson’s narrative, it takes only a little scratching at the surface to find a Royalist in favor with the court recuperating the poem of the radical and outcast Milton.

Despite the apparent conflicts between the two narratives provided by Richardson (with one claiming the poem is hailed even “wet from the press” and the other seeing it languish unsold), both valorize the poem’s rapid rise in status and renown. Richardson sees the poem’s ascension from “waste paper” as much evidence for the poem’s worth as its having been proclaimed “the noblest poem that ever was wrote” in the House while still in sheets. Both receptions acknowledge an intrinsic worth (or “inherent life”) in the poem. In somewhat modified form, these narratives have been passed on and recounted in modern critical accounts of Paradise Lost so often that the poem’s rise to prominence has seemed inevitable.

This book explores a more complicated reception history of Paradise Lost, one that has a greater affinity with Eve’s fraught narrative of her creation than with Adam’s sketch of a brief but successful Restoration courtship. The version of Paradise Lost’s reception that I trace here is one of approach and retreat, of suspicion, suppression, and recovery, and ultimately of critical interventions to save the poem from the reputation of its author and its own controversial content. In this version John Milton, pamphleteer, statesman, Protectorate apologist, heretic, and (most importantly) regicide casts a long shadow that complicates Restoration readers’ enjoyment of his poem and its potential use by even the most enthusiastic Whigs. Reexamining the poem’s reception while keeping Milton’s reputation as one of the “infernal saints of the revolution” in mind, the task faced by the earliest commentators upon Paradise Lost – some of the founders of modern English literary scholarship – will be revealed in a different light than when considered (with benefit of hindsight) as simply the first responses to the poem’s inherent and self-evident greatness. John Dryden, Peter Hume, John Dennis, Joseph Addison, and Richard Bentley were not commenting upon a poem that was already a classic. Instead, in a series of critical interventions, they worked to render the poem palatable to readers who could not fail to recognize the radical energies of its political and religious heterodoxies. In so doing, these early readers and critics began to outline the contours of Milton criticism, and of English literary criticism as a discipline, for the centuries to follow.

Reevaluating the poem’s early reception as inextricably a response to Milton’s political reputation and the political content in the epic itself, this book argues that the early reception of Paradise Lost constitutes a foundational moment in the history of English vernacular literary criticism. The chapters to follow will trace the way in which the political anxiety that Milton and his epic produced spurred the development of new modes of reading and responding to English literature even as vernacular English literature was only just becoming a fit subject for study. The challenge posed by Paradise Lost prompted rewritings, new critical theories, voluminous annotations, and early editions in which Restoration readers of Paradise Lost developed new paradigms for examining and writing about English vernacular literature. It will, I think, become clear in the course of this study how these new modes of reading and the development of a hermeneutic of political anxiety shaped the formation and future of the discipline.

When Rita Felski interrogated The Limits of Critique in 2015, she argued that prevailing modes of modern literary criticism rest upon what Paul Ricoquer termed “the hermeneutics of suspicion,” and suggested that there are (and we need) alternative modes of reading.²² Joseph North’s Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History (2017) focused on recent trends in literary theory to demonstrate ways in which literary scholarship has confined itself to diagnostic rather than interventionist relationships with the politics of that which it studies.²³ These and other works on the history of the discipline (e.g., Thomas Docherty’s Criticism and Modernity) share a concern with the proper relationship between literary critique and political action.²⁴ This book proposes we look for the roots of this tension in the trauma of the English Civil Wars and Restoration. It is here that we can discover the mechanisms by which literature and its study came to be quite detached from political efficacy. Using Paradise Lost’s reception as a case study, we can trace how innovative strategies of literary critique – developed to rescue Milton’s poem from its political-religious controversy – contributed to a successful quarantining of literature from political action. The early figures who grappled with the problems posed by Milton and Paradise Lost developed and employed a more specific and historically situated version of suspicious reading (one inflected by local political-religious anxieties) as they sought ways to navigate the poem’s heterodoxies. Confronting a poem and an author at odds with the prevailing culture and the revanchist conservatism of the restored monarchy, these early critics developed ways of reading that determined the telos of the discipline.

While Shakespeare and his unstable corpus are often invoked as the origin point for modern literary criticism, it was actually Milton and his political and religious radicalism that first provoked sustained commentary and scholarly engagement with an English vernacular poem. While the instability of Shakespeare’s textual corpus and resulting interrogations of the meanings of authorship have informed modern innovations in literary methodology ranging from the “New Bibliography” to computer-assisted stylometric analysis, it was in fact reactions to Milton’s political and heterodoxic texts that inspired the discipline’s early development in the politically charged and partisan atmosphere of the Restoration. By pinpointing Paradise Lost’s reception as the impetus for the development of a hermeneutic of political anxiety, this book thus somewhat decenters the importance of Shakespeare in the history of the discipline. Letting the history of the discipline determine our understanding of the discipline’s methodologies and meaning, this perspective asks us to adjust a major lens through which we see the development of the discipline from Shakespearean to Miltonic – that is, from one of textual uncertainty to one of political and religious suspicion.

Early Readers and Critics of Paradise Lost

The genesis of this book began with my first encounter with the Annotations on Paradise Lost printed in Jacob Tonson’s 1695 folio and credited only to “P.H.” Considered as a material object, this edition, with its 321 folio pages of notes keyed to verse and line numbers, posed significant questions. In contemplating how this book came to be the way it was, I began to consider why Milton’s Paradise Lost (and not Spenser or Shakespeare) had prompted such an endeavor. What about Milton’s epic required the addition of this substantial paratext? Further, as I began my research into the Annotations and their own reception and scholarly history, I became more and more curious about the anonymity of the author as I wondered how it was that the identity of a founding figure in English literary scholarship had been left to conjecture.

My fascination with Hume’s work and puzzling obscurity eventually widened into a project encompassing the early reception of Paradise Lost as I found to my surprise, given how these responses to Milton shaped the future of the discipline, that the readers and critics who take center stage in this book are often marginalized, forgotten, or even ridiculed in treatments of the period. Dryden’s operatic, rhyming adaptation of Milton’s blank verse epic is often treated as an oddity reflecting his own tastes in literature that had always diverged from Milton’s seemingly obsolete judgments. John Dennis, the hero of Chapter 3 and perhaps the first aspiring professional critic of vernacular literature, has been treated as an absurd caricature of a pedant ever since Swift and Pope named him such. And although history has treated Joseph Addison with more respect, it routinely glosses over how his treatment of Milton depended upon and responded to those who came before him, as well as ignoring his fraught earlier encounters with the poem’s political freight. Richard Bentley, one of the key foils of the wits, alongside Dennis, is a fitting endpoint for this study. His heavy-handed editorial interventions in the poem come too late in its reception to be greeted with anything but scorn, and yet they are a natural outgrowth of the methodologies of anxious reading that had come before.

This book took shape around the unifying concerns these early readers had and the moves they made in response to the radical energies of Paradise Lost. It attempts to recover the political and religious stakes of their responses and illuminate the ways in which they influenced not only its reception but the early formation of a discipline. A new understanding of the earliest reception of Paradise Lost makes more legible the interconnectedness of the political and the literary – then and today.

In critical histories of Paradise Lost that follow Richardson in glorifying the reception of Milton’s epic, the very real difficulties the political and religious heterodoxies of the poem and author posed for Restoration audiences often go unacknowledged. As a result, the role played by the trauma of the Restoration in the development of vernacular English criticism has remained largely unexplored and underappreciated. In the first chapter, a reexamination of Milton’s political reputation in the Restoration will show that widespread abhorrence of Milton’s politics dominated the popular opinion of the author and threatened the poem’s very survival. For admirers of the poem, Milton’s reputation thus required new strategies to suit the poem to its time and to justify its greatness without the risk of appearing to condone its radicalisms. The hermeneutic of political anxiety one finds in these early critical endeavors is the key to understanding the way in which literary production was effectively quarantined from the world of political action in the later eighteenth century.

In contemporary criticism of Paradise Lost, the study of reception and the material text has often been isolated from consideration of the poem’s place in intellectual and literary history. As a result, the role of Paradise Lost in shaping the discipline of English literary scholarship, as well as Milton’s influence on the history of literary production, canonization, publishing, and editing has been overlooked by most critics. By recovering the ways in which the reception of Paradise Lost was conditioned by its substantive heterodoxies, by Milton’s political reputation, and by Milton’s unusual and long self-fashioning as a singular author figure, this book allows us to appreciate the impact of these strands coming together during the crisis of the Restoration. The reception of Paradise Lost is a watershed moment in which Milton’s poem challenged the nascent field of vernacular English literary criticism to confront the intersection of literature and the political.

Organizing Principles

While this book explores Restoration literary critical responses to Milton in roughly chronological order, it is structured so that each chapter highlights a unique and evolving species of critical response: forms of rewriting (Dryden), commentary (Hume), theorizing (Dennis), the critical essay (Addison), and the edition (Bentley). The sheer variety of critical approaches employed in response to Paradise Lost between 1674 and 1732 demonstrates how provocative the poem’s appearance was in Restoration culture. While this project began with a desire to know why Milton (and not, say, Shakespeare) required the first extended commentary on a vernacular English literary work, the answer invites us to consider the rise of critique in its many manifestations and in what is practically a catalogue of critical modes. The chapters examine each of these modes to explore how they arose from attempts to explain, contain, or negate the political and religious freight of Milton and his epic.

Chapter 1: Milton’s Profaned Pen: Paradise Lost and the Political Anxiety of the Restoration

What is lost or repressed in the earliest stories of how Paradise Lost gained its reputation is the role Milton’s political reputation played as the poem was received amid Restoration trauma and partisan culture. Effaced from these histories is the political anxiety with which readers (from Thomas Ellwood onward) approached the poem, and how this shaped their reading practices and responses. This first chapter sets the stage by interrogating Milton’s Restoration reputation to demonstrate how it remained a threat to the poem’s reception (and interpretation) long into the eighteenth century. Examining evidence from private correspondence, manuscript marginalia, period almanacs, and other materials hostile to Milton, I show how deeply controversial the poet and his poem remained well into the eighteenth century. Reinstating the central role that the trauma of the civil war and Restoration played in its reception, this chapter explains why Milton’s poem required new forms of reading and critique in response to the problem it posed Restoration readers. The cultural crosscurrents into which Paradise Lost entered are highlighted by a first encounter with a pivotal figure whose changing approaches to Milton and the poem will illuminate the dynamic of repression and recovery to be traced in later chapters. Closely reading young Joseph Addison’s 1694 “progress of poets” poem shows the effect of political anxiety on his reading and valuation of Paradise Lost and highlights how the problem of Milton remained entrenched – even after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Addison, who will go on to be credited with popularizing Paradise Lost, is at this point unable to reconcile his admiration of the poem with the anathema of Milton. Addison’s 1694 approach to (and simultaneous retreat from) the political in Paradise Lost demonstrates Milton’s resistance to the traditional modes of critique that Addison was then using. His paradoxical inclusion and rejection of Paradise Lost in his English poetic canon shows why it demanded different modes of engagement.

Chapter 2: Paradise Lost, Dryden, and Political Genre

John Dryden is perhaps the most complicated and least well-understood figure in the early reception of Paradise Lost. His relationship to Milton and Paradise Lost has been oversimplified by even the most capable of commentators (see, e.g., Earl Miner et al. in their variorum Three Centuries of Commentary). Similar to the young Addison of Chapter 1, Dryden approached Milton with admiration as well as deep, politically motivated discomfort. His critique of Milton’s epic played out over decades and in various modes of engagement, including a starring role in the earliest stories of the poem’s reception, a dedicatory poem in the epic’s paratextual apparatus, and in critical pronouncements in prefaces. This chapter will demonstrate how, finding Milton’s politics and religion unsuited to his own taste and the age, Dryden set out to write a version of the poem acceptable to the Restoration. Dryden’s motivation to smooth over the political and religious controversies in Milton’s epic in his own version, The State of Innocence, can best be understood only in the context of all of Dryden’s pronouncements on the poem, from praise to disparagement. While Miner et al. credited Dryden with heroically saving the poem from public criticisms that threatened to belittle it, Dryden himself generated some of the greatest doubt about the poem’s status as epic and its place in Restoration literary and political culture.

Chapter 3: John Dennis and the Sublime Paradise Lost

John Dennis’s somewhat obsessive approach to literary criticism – and his endeavor to be the first professional English literary critic – put him on the wrong side not only of Dryden but of the “wits” who saw themselves as defending English culture against pedants. Although the wits’ chief champions, Swift and Pope, would do enduring harm to Dennis by characterizing him as a great dunce, his deliberate critical approach to Paradise Lost provides a stark contrast to the manner in which Dryden approached its challenges. Dennis saw clearly the political stakes of Dryden’s State of Innocence and recognized that the Royalist rewriting of the epic (which was for some time more popular than Paradise Lost itself) misinterpreted and misrepresented Milton’s more difficult, complicated, and controversial poem. What starkly separates Dennis’s engagement with Paradise Lost from Dryden’s or even those who would follow him, is his development of a critical theory to account for the poem’s unique features and justify even its controversial political and religious content. Dennis sought acceptance for Paradise Lost not by excising or turning away from the anxieties it produced but by embracing them. Paradise Lost, which Dennis asserted was sui generis, was so central to Dennis’s developing theories of literature that the wits lampooned his obsession with the epic as evidence of his madness. The associations of Dennis as a “dunce” have unfortunately contributed to his being largely overlooked by scholars of the discipline. In particular, Dennis deserves credit for his most important response to the difficult religious/political freight of Paradise Lost, which prompted him to develop a psychologically grounded theory of the religious sublime to explain how Milton’s epic works and to demonstrate how the moderns could exceed the ancients. In doing so, Dennis marks the poem’s radical religious and political energies as the very source of its sublimity and suggests that the passions they provoke are not harmful to a polity, but necessary.

Chapter 4: “The Merit of Being First”: Peter Hume’s 1695 Annotations on Paradise Lost

Dennis’s plan to explain literature and Paradise Lost in terms of a theory accounting for its generic, religious, and political heterodoxies was stymied when too few subscribers were found to justify and underwrite printing his ambitious volume of English literary critical theory. The samples of criticism Dennis had circulated, along with his other declarations upon Paradise Lost were limited in audience and impact and seemed to have earned him more ridicule than renown. However, others were taking approaches aimed at a wider audience. Jacob Tonson – the great publisher at the nexus of Restoration literary and political culture – had bought the rights to Milton’s poetical works and was committed to making Paradise Lost the cornerstone of his publishing empire. His most important contribution to the poem’s reception and the development of literary studies, however, may not have been the grand folios themselves, but the inclusion of 321 pages of dense, scholarly annotations with the 1695 (third folio) edition.

The foundational role of the Annotations in the development of the English critical discipline has been neglected due to the combined effects of the author’s anonymity, the dismissal of the work by later commentators who plundered it for their own, and because of the longevity of the very political and religious anxieties that necessitated Hume’s endeavor in the first place. Extending my research that revealed Hume’s identity as a servant in the Restoration royal household (SEL, Summer 2019), this chapter examines the impact of his precarious religious-political situation as a nonconformist working in the royal household. Where young Addison – only the year before the Annotations were published – had deemed Paradise Lost corrupted by Milton’s reputation and its own eruptions of radicalism, Hume uses Milton’s poetic ambiguity as an opportunity to reorient Milton’s politics. Hume’s accomplishment, however, was unacknowledged as his very name slid into obscurity. Nonetheless, his techniques – used and amplified without acknowledgment by critics to follow – established strategies of reading that were encoded in the DNA of literary critique.

Chapter 5: Death of the Author: Addison Explains Paradise Lost to the Eighteenth Century

In 1712 Joseph Addison revisited Paradise Lost, correcting his earlier, politically motivated dismissal of the poem in 1694 (explored in Chapter 1). Using many passages that John Dennis had highlighted in his theoretical treatments of the poem’s sublimity, and adapting Peter Hume’s innovative strategies for isolating the poem from political controversy, Addison set out to explain Milton’s greatness to a broad, general audience. His immensely popular daily, The Spectator, would be the vehicle for this rapprochement to Milton. This chapter argues that the essays on Paradise Lost that Addison published over eighteen weekends in 1712 show Addison approaching the poem in a manner suited to the political posture of The Spectator. Addison extends the techniques of those who had intervened in the poem’s reception since his last abortive attempt to canonize Milton. In his essays, explicitly aimed to popularize the poem, Addison rejects Dennis’s embrace of Milton’s political-religious enthusiasms as a source of the poem’s sublimity. Instead, Addison adapts Hume’s strategies to render the poem acceptable by almost eliminating Milton from the poem and by asserting that the epic conformed to neo-classical expectations of the genre. Addison’s synthesis of previous attempts to accommodate the poem to the mores of the early eighteenth century was undeniably successful in rendering the poem “safe” by eliding or effacing the poem’s radical energies. In the Restoration cycle of repression and recovery, Addison recuperated the poem as sublime by repressing the very mechanisms that Dennis had identified as the source of its sublimity.

Chapter 6: “Such Scorn of Enemies”: Richard Bentley’s Paradise Lost

One particularly avid reader of Addison’s Spectator essays upon Paradise Lost was Richard Bentley, the controversial Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In a decision that has been long debated and was much ridiculed at the time, Bentley chose to edit and amend Paradise Lost in the manner with which he edited and annotated ancient texts. This approach rested on philological and “judicious” emendations made by an informed editor faced with ancient texts corrupted by centuries of transmission. It is fitting then that one of Bentley’s primary sources for his approach to an English vernacular poem was Alexander Pope’s 1725–7 edition of Shakespeare, where Pope had been confronted with the instability of Shakespeare’s textual corpus and authorship. Armed with Pope’s model and Addison’s Spectator Essays, Bentley set out to correct Milton’s poem in the same manner with which he had treated Horace.

Expanding upon my earlier research on copies of Paradise Lost annotated by Bentley, this chapter shows that Bentley and his editorial excesses are not an aberration but instead a natural telos of the work that had come before. Although in his typical manner, Bentley doesn’t explicitly acknowledge his use of Addison, Hume, or Pope, Bentley’s edition uses these earlier critiques of Milton as a guide to his edition. The natural culmination of five decades of contention over Milton’s poem and its place in culture and politics, Bentley attempts to turn the poem into the one suggested by the work of its most popular readers. Bentley’s edition (the first in which an editorial persona and stance becomes visible) combines Dryden’s urge to rewrite with Dennis’s, Hume’s, and Addison’s attempts to circumvent Milton’s problematic presence. The result inadvertently exposes the insufficiencies of Addison’s critique by showing, as in a palimpsest, the poem that Addison wants Milton’s to be, and how poorly it fares against the original. That Bentley’s edition was ridiculed before it was even published demonstrates the success of Milton’s early readers in having made Milton and his poem less controversial. At the same time, it demonstrates the necessity of taking the poem as it is – that is, ultimately the impossibility of genuinely excising controversy from the poem.

Why Milton’s Reception Matters (Now)

Reception histories may seem somehow esoteric, quaint, or at the very least dry and technical. After all, why write about Paradise Lost at one remove from the work itself? Among multiple reasons why the early reception of Paradise Lost is worth studying, three in particular bear mention. First, the narrative explaining how Milton’s work was reclaimed from partisan politics – or employed in them – would be no insignificant matter to Milton himself. For Milton, the reception of posterity mattered. That Milton was keenly interested in his literary reputation is evident at every turn in the autobiographical comments scattered throughout his body of work, particularly in The Reason of Church Government (1642), where he expressed his desire to “leave something so written to aftertimes, as they should not willing let it die,” and in Areopagitica (1644) where he famously asserted that “a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, inbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life.”²⁵ When Jonathan Swift portrayed the battle of the ancients versus the moderns as one in which the competition between authors was represented by their actual books waging war on the shelves of the Royal Library, he was only exaggerating a genuine belief that authors lived on in their books though a sort of metempsychosis into print. And in 1660, when Charles II issued a proclamation ordering that Milton’s Pro Populo Defensio and Eikonoklastes be “publickly burnt by the hand of the common hangman,” the symbolism was quite clear.²⁶ I’ve suggested elsewhere that for Milton, whose belief in thnetopsychism (or mortalism) is clear in De Doctrina, his textual afterlife was more important to him than we might otherwise think.²⁷

The second reason the reception history of Paradise Lost matters is that, however variously phrased, the question of “why Milton matters” stubbornly crops up again and again. There is no shortage of answers to that question, among the most recent being Nigel Smith’s assertion that Milton’s works deserve more attention and credit for their influence on modern political theory.²⁸ As we’ll see as we reexamine it anew, the reception history of Paradise Lost provides yet another answer. Paradise Lost was the first English vernacular poem to garner, to demand, and to reward extensive commentary such as the monumental 1695 work of Peter Hume and the sustained 1712 critical engagement undertaken by Joseph Addison in the immensely popular Spectator essays. John Dennis set out to craft a literary theory of the sublime in order to explain Milton’s poem, one of the most significant (and least appreciated) advances of Restoration critical thought. Fully a decade before Pope and Theobald would square off over the textual corpus of Shakespeare, and well before Theobald would claim to produce “the first assay of literary Criticism upon any author in the English tongue,” the complexities of Paradise Lost had already spurred developments in English literary criticism that would peak in the furor raised by Richard Bentley’s 1732 edition of the poem.²⁹ It is no coincidence that these developments were spurred on by the politics and heterodoxies of this poem and this poet, bequeathing a legacy that continues to be worked out not only in Milton criticism but in English literary criticism at large. Ultimately, this book endeavors to show how the initial contributions of Hume, Dennis, Addison, and even Bentley, secured Milton’s place and inaugurated modern approaches to textual and literary criticism. By examining more closely the complicated birth narratives of Milton’s great poem, we are also watching the birth of modern literary criticism as a discipline innately concerned with the relationship of authors to works, and with all the political implications of writing and reading.

The third reason that this reception history matters now is that it (perhaps frighteningly) sketches a history of suppression and return that speaks to our current moment. Fraught in his own relationship to Milton, T.S. Eliot famously declared in 1947 that the English Civil War “is not ended.”³⁰ The story of Paradise Lost’s reception that we’ll encounter here is one determined by continued and seemingly endless conflict with a revanchist conservative culture made deeply uncomfortable by Milton’s political and religious heterodoxies. In attempting to appropriate Milton as an orthodox figure, a coterie of public figures who enjoyed a type of seventeenth-century celebrity (the wits) waged a culture war against academic elites, effectively rebranding expertise as pedantry and experts – such as John Dennis or Richard Bentley – as dunces. This is a moment that, unfortunately, may seem all-too familiar to us in the early twenty-first century as we endure assaults against climate and vaccine science as well as a renewed interest in suppressing books that counter the prevailing orthodox, conservative cultural agenda. More locally, continued debate about the authorship of Milton’s De Doctrina and other attempts to isolate the radical energies from Paradise Lost threaten to quarantine off the most powerful parts of the poem from efficacy and even enjoyment.

In Areopagitica, Milton’s metaphor for toleration of sectarian divisions in England is the construction of the temple where “when every stone is laid artfully together, it cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in this world.”³¹ This serves as an apt reminder that this project stands in humble relationship to preceding and contemporary efforts alike. In particular, this book seeks to build upon foundations laid by Ants Oras’s 1964 Milton’s Editors and Commentators from Patrick Hume to Henry John Todd (1695–1801). Despite its date, Oras’s work continues to cast a long shadow, often being used (without attribution) as a source for information about early work, such as the Annotations, despite more recent scholarship being available. Oras apologizes for devoting so many as twenty-seven pages to the first dedicated commentary upon Paradise Lost by P.H. or “Patrick Hume” and follows Newton’s 1749 commentary in being generally dismissive of the 1695 Annotations. In keeping with prevailing critical attitudes then (and even now) Oras often resorts to ridicule when dealing with Bentley. His characterization of one of Hume’s annotations as “Bentleian” is no service to either man.³² Worse, Oras’s narrow focus on editions means he largely ignores two of the most important commentators on the poem prior to Bentley: he barely mentions John Dennis and only briefly acknowledges Addison’s Spectator essays.

John Shawcross’s 1972 Milton, 1628–1731: The Critical Heritage provides a ready repository of early comments on Milton that remains a useful reference. However, to use Dennis as example once again, the extracts Shawcross chooses from Dennis’s decades of scattered comments on Paradise Lost fail to convey the complicated development of his critical theory. In the age in which we have ready access to electronic sources, such a reference as Shawcross provides is still a convenient starting point for students interested in tracing the earliest reactions to Milton, but it lacks a substantial critical narrative of its own to help make sense of the narrative these commentaries participate in.

Finally, John Leonard’s magisterial Faithful Labourers: A Reception History of Paradise Lost from 1667 to 1970 is a work of great import and delight for Milton scholars. However, as Leonard focuses on tracing distinct threads of scholarship over the grand scope of time he covers, his work cannot linger over any single commentator for too long, particularly a figure as elusive as Dennis, the unlikely hero of this particular reception history. It is my hope that our works may complement one another like those contiguous hewn stones of Milton’s temple.

Notes

Roy Flannagan, “IMS 8: The Eighth International Milton Symposium Grenoble, France, June 7–11, 2005,” Milton Quarterly 39.3 (October 2005), 169–189.

William B. Hunter, “The Provenance of the Christian Doctrine,” Studies in English Literature 32 (1992), 129–142. Hunter continued to build his case in “The Provenance of the Christian Doctrine: Addenda from the Bishop of Salisbury,” Studies in English Literature 33 (1993), 191–207 and “Animadversions upon the Remonstrants’ Defenses against Burgess and Hunter,” Studies in English Literature 34 (1994), 195–203.

Stephen B. Dobranski and John Rumrich, “Introduction,” in Milton and Heresy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), 6–7. Dobranski and Rumrich go on to note that “Worse, the report denies the relevance of de doctrina to our understanding of Milton and his exemplary position within the history of seventeenth-century English religious controversies.”

Dobranski and Rumrich, 12.

Flannagan, 169.

For instance, at the 12th International Milton Symposium, held in Strasbourg in 2019, Hugh F. Wilson chaired a roundtable discussion on “The Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana” in which he proposed that the treatise was an elaborate hoax perpetrated by Daniel Defoe.

William Kolbrener, Milton’s Warring Angels (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997).

Ibid., 1.

Ibid., 2.

Ibid., 4–5 and passim.

See, for instance, Patrick Murray, Milton: The Modern Phase (London: Longman, 1967), 85.

C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (London: Oxford UP, 1960), 92.

Throughout this book, unless otherwise noted, I will refer to Paradise Lost from the 1695 Tonson edition, as we shall find it the most important early edition of the poem as we explore its reception.

Throughout I will identify the author of the 1695 Annotations upon Paradise Lost as Peter Hume rather than “P.H.” as he acquits himself in print or the false attribution to some “Patrick Hume” that has reigned since the eighteenth century. See David A. Harper, “The First Annotator of Paradise Lost and the Makings of English Literary Criticism,” Studies in English Literature 112.3 (Summer 2019), 507–530.

Jonathan Richardson, Remarks on Milton’s Paradise Lost: With the Life of the Author and a Discourse on the Poem (London: printed for James, John, and Paul Knapton, at the Crown in Ludgate-Street, near the West-End of St. Paul's, 1734) quoted in Helen Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton (London: Constable and Co., 1932), 295.

Darbishire, 295.

The claim that Paradise Lost was a classic by 1695 is found, for instance, in Earl Miner et al., Paradise Lost 1668–1968: The Centuries of Commentary (Lewisburg: Bucknell, 2004), 15.

Darbishire, 295.

Ibid.

Ibid., 296.

Ibid., 297.

Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique (Chicago: Chicago University, 2015).

Joseph North, Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2017).

Thomas Docherty, Criticism and Modernity (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999).

Milton, Reason of Church Government, YP 1.810; Areopagitica, YP 2.493.

In one of the ironies of history, Milton had commented in Eikonoklastes that when Charles commanded that his pledges to the Scots be “burnt op’nly by the Hangman… What enemy durst have don him that dishonour and affront which he did therein to himself?” (YP 3.449).

David A. Harper. “Milton Beyond Iconoclasm” (chapter) in Immortality and the Body in the Age of Milton, edited by John Rumrich and Steven Fallon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 22–40.

See Nigel Smith, Is Milton Better than Shakespeare? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).

For Theobald’s claim to invent English literary criticism, see Lewis Theobald, Works, 1733. Available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

T. S. Eliot, “Milton II,” From The Henrietta Hertz Lecture, delivered to the British Academy, 1947. In T. S. Eliot, The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot: The Critical Edition, Volume 7: A European Society, 1947–1953, edited by Iman Javadi and Ronald Schuchard (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press and Faber & Faber Ltd., 2018), 23.

YP 2.555.

Ants Oras, Milton’s Editors and Commentators from Patrick Hume to Henry John Todd (1695–1801) (New York: Haskell House, 1964), 48.

1 Milton’s Profaned PenParadise Lost and the Political Anxiety of the Restoration

DOI: 10.4324/9781003276395-2

Oh had the Poet ne’re prophan’d his Pen,

To varnish o’re the Guilt of Faithless Men;

His other works might have deserv’d applause!

– Joseph Addison, “An Account of the Greatest English Poets”¹

Looking back from 1734, Jonathan Richardson took stock of the earliest narratives of Paradise Lost’s composition, printing, and reception and summarized it as a series of harrowing escapes from the “danger of losing this poem.”² In his “Life of the Author,” Richardson portrayed the poem’s creation and survival as perpetually ranged against great odds, from navigating the licensing process before its printing and assuaging the business concerns of a publisher confronted with Milton’s dubious reputation following the Restoration, to reception by a hostile public. Examining Milton’s moving description of himself in the invocation of Book 7 as “fall’n on evil days, / On evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues; / In darkness, and with dangers compast round,” (7.24–7), Richardson is clearly moved by the author’s situation. Milton, Richardson says, was “in Perpetual Terror of being Assassinated, though he had escap’d the Talons of the Law, he knew he had Made Himself Enemies in Abundance.”³

In his 1779 “Life of Milton,” Samuel Johnson’s response to Milton’s biographical sketch provides a stark contrast to Richardson’s. Unmoved by Milton’s description of his isolation, Johnson refutes the author’s characterization of his Restoration predicament as “ungrateful and unjust.” Inured to and even annoyed by the passage that had touched Richardson to the quick, Johnson denies Milton was in any danger and employs biting sarcasm to support his claim that the author was “ungrateful” upon the Restoration.

The beginning of the third book shews that he had lost his sight; and the Introduction to the seventh, that the return of the King had clouded him with discountenance; and that he was offended by the licentious festivity of the Restoration. There are no other internal notes of time. Milton, being now cleared from all effects of his disloyalty, had nothing required from him but the common duty of living in quiet, to be rewarded with the common right of protection: but this, which, when he sculked from the approach of his King, was perhaps more than he hoped, seems not to have satisfied him; for no sooner is he safe, than he finds himself in danger, fallen on evil days and evil tongues, and with darkness and with danger compass'd round. This darkness, had his eyes been better employed, had undoubtedly deserved compassion: but to add the mention of danger was ungrateful and unjust. He was fallen indeed on evil days; the time was come in which regicides could no longer boast their wickedness. But of evil tongues for Milton to complain, required impudence at least equal to his other powers; Milton, whose warmest advocates must allow, that he never spared any asperity of reproach or brutality of insolence.

But the charge itself seems to be false; for it would be hard to recollect any reproach cast upon him, either serious or ludicrous, through the whole remaining part of his life. He pursued his studies, or his amusements, without persecution, molestation, or insult. Such is the reverence paid to great abilities, however misused: they who contemplated in Milton the scholar and the wit, were contented to forget the reviler of his King.⁴

Johnson’s retort that it was impudent for Milton – of all people – to complain about “evil tongues” is admittedly one of the harshest passages in Johnson’s “Life,” but it does give a good indication of the tone throughout. In claiming that Milton exaggerated his precarity upon the Restoration, Johnson demonstrates that – even with the benefit of the distance afforded by over a century past – he himself is unable and unwilling to “forget” that Milton had been a “reviler of the King.” Extending his deprecation of the dangers Milton faced in the Restoration, Johnson turns to debunking narratives (such as Richardson’s) claiming that Paradise Lost faced resistance to its reception in the Restoration. Instead, Johnson asserts that Paradise Lost was popular in its time:

The slow sale and tardy reputation of this poem have been always mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of literary fame; and enquiries have been made, and conjectures offered, about the causes of its long obscurity and late reception. But has the case been truly stated? Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished on an evil that was never felt? That in the reigns of Charles and James the Paradise Lost received no publick acclamations, is readily confessed. Wit and literature were on the side of the Court: and who that solicited favour or fashion would venture to praise the defender of the regicides? All that he himself could think his due, from evil tongues in evil days, was that reverential silence which was generously preserved. But it cannot be inferred that his poem was not read, or not, however unwillingly, admired. The sale, if it be considered, will justify the publick. Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions. The call for books was not in Milton's age what it is in the present.⁵

As with his treatment of Milton’s complaint about the isolation, danger, and defeat he felt in the Restoration, Johnson dismisses the narratives of Paradise Lost’s neglect as lamenting “an evil that was never felt.” Johnson’s bias against Milton’s politics oozes from his “Life” in almost every sentence and bleeds over into his version of the poem’s reception. It is as if Johnson must deny Milton (and Paradise Lost) any adversity at all in order to avoid granting the poem even the quasi-heroic ascent from obscurity that Richardson had sketched out for it. This seems meant not to denigrate the poem, but instead to suggest a sort of entitlement: Paradise Lost was always recognized for its greatness, “however unwillingly” and despite the reputation of its author.

Modern variations on Johnson’s take also portray Paradise Lost as an almost instant classic because it was so masterful. These accounts don’t so vehemently dismiss the importance of Milton’s political reputation as Johnson did, but instead celebrate the poem’s ability to quickly transcend them. Driven by a motivation quite different from Johnson’s ill-concealed hostility toward Milton’s politics, these critics continually push back the date of the poem’s literary canonization. The most indicative recent representation of this view is in the preface to Earl Miner, William Moeck’s, and Steven Jablonski’s variorum volume of collected commentary on the poem:

Understood in context, the response to the poem on publication explodes the myth of its unpopularity. Adjusted for the literate population, it was in fact popular among royalists as well as republicans. Poets and critics led by Marvell, Dryden, John Dennis, and Addison lauded the poem. One threatening voice was heard, that of Thomas Rymer, who proposed to demolish the poem with the assumptions of the latest French theory. (The more some things change…) But Dryden out-maneuvered him.⁶

In this summation of the poem’s reception narrative, Paradise Lost appealed to both sides of the political spectrum at the Restoration. The “one threatening voice” (only one!) that would denigrate the poem was easily “out-maneuvered” by John Dryden. The impulse of this passage to show that Paradise Lost was in fact popular in Milton’s time is combined with a curious parenthetical defensiveness about apparently current and remaining threats to the poem. This brief history cancels the earliest accounts of the poem’s reception, accounts that (as we’ve seen in Richardson) often highlight the poem’s early unpopularity and neglect. Instead, like Johnson, the editors of this collection suggest these earlier accounts created a myth that has since been supplanted by a more accurate story of the poem’s ready reception.

Reducing Paradise Lost’s reception history to heroic single combat between the “one threatening voice” of Rymer and the deft maneuvers of Dryden is its own sort of myth-making, as we shall see in Chapter 2. It certainly oversimplifies Dryden’s complicated engagement with Milton’s poetry, a very unsettled affair from when the poet laureate first “tagged” Milton’s “points” and put the epic into rhyme to his late critical engagements with the poem. Finally, this view casts Hume’s commentary, John Dennis’s criticism, Addison’s essays, and the furor surrounding Bentley’s edition not as critical innovations vital to the poem’s reception and reputation, but instead as simply evidence that Paradise Lost had always already achieved classic status. Ants Oras, in his history of Milton’s editors, takes this view as a given when he introduces his discussion of P.H.’s annotations:

What is too often absent in Hume is a direct interest in the poet himself. He gives no biographical information about Milton, but confines himself to a study of the work considered quite apart from the writer’s personality. Milton is already a classic, and Paradise Lost an engine of edification and instruction.⁷

As we’ll see later, the marked absence of biographical information about Milton in Hume’s Annotations is a strategy that assists Hume in actively casting Paradise Lost as a classic – he is not a naïve reader who accepts it as such already. Inviting a return to an earlier, more complicated, understanding of the poem’s reception requires recognizing anew that Paradise Lost was a product of a profoundly controversial author in an unsettled time. To set the stage properly to understand the work of the epic’s earliest readers in context, this chapter must temporarily undo their work and consider the reception of the poem with all its uncertainty and with an appreciation of the dangers that attended it.

We will never know with certainty how nearly John Milton came to being drawn and quartered upon the Restoration. We do know that on the very eve of the Restoration, Milton made his infamy sure. Defiantly unchanged by the shifting political landscape around him, the blind statesman made no secret of his continued republicanism and opposition to any return of the Stuart monarchy. This final attempt to persuade his countrymen to hold fast against the return of monarchy has been described as Milton’s nailing his colors to the mast of the sinking ship of state even as the water closed over the decks.⁸ Considering that it was published when the return of the monarchy was all but assured, one must acknowledge even the title daring: The Ready and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, and the Excellence Thereof Compared with the Inconveniences and Dangers of Readmitting Kingship in this Nation. The first edition of this pamphlet, published in February 1659/60, and its companion Brief Notes Upon a Late Sermon did not escape notice by Milton’s enemies. Milton was immediately attacked in answering pamphlets such as the anonymous The Censure of the Rota upon Mr. Milton’s Book, entituled ‘The Ready and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth’ published on March 30, 1660, Roger L’Estrange’s No Blinde Guides: in answer to a seditious pamphlet of J. Milton’s entitled ‘Brief Notes on a late Sermon, &c.’ Addressed to the Author, and The Dignity of Kingship Asserted: in Answer to Mr. Milton’s ‘Ready and Easie Way … by G.S. a Lover of Loyalty. John Tatham, the presumptive author of a pamphlet entitled The Character of the Rump that was published on March 17, 1659/60, seems to particularly enjoy imagining Milton’s violent death:

John Milton is their goose-quill champion; who had need of a help-meet to establish anything, for he has a ram’s head and is good only at batteries, – an old heretic both in religion and manners, that by his will would shake off governors as he doth wives, four in a fortnight…. His scandalous papers against the late King’s Book is the parent that begot his late New Commonwealth …. He is so much an enemy to usual practices that I believe, when he is condemned to travel to Tyburn in a cart, he will petition for the favour to be the first man that ever was driven thither in a wheelbarrow. And now, John, you must stand close and draw in your elbows, that Needham, the Commonwealth didapper, may have room to stand beside you.⁹

Tatham reviles Milton for not only his Ready and Easie Way but also for long-festering crimes including his divorce tracts and his assault upon the “King’s Book” in Eikonoklastes. The vision concludes by imagining Milton on his way to be hanged beside Marchamont Needham, the publisher of the Mercurius Politicus who was himself famously mercurial in his political affiliations throughout the English Civil Wars, joining and disappearing from factions and the public eye as the little didapper bird constantly submerges and reemerges in a lake or river. This real danger to Milton had been made palpable when the parliament, constituted of the Rump and formerly Secluded Members readmitted by Monck, considered a motion for a vote of execration on the Regicides. Milton must have considered it likely that he would indeed find himself at Tyburn, sentenced to hang until partly dead and to await, in the darkness that constantly compassed him round, the unseen stroke of the executioner disemboweling him while yet alive.

Nevertheless, Milton pressed on in his outspoken resistance to the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy. Receiving no favorable response to the first edition of The Ready and Easie Way or to his letter to Monck summarizing the same argument, Milton published a second edition of the pamphlet in April 1660. Far from backing down in the face of the monarchy’s imminent return, the second edition retains the defiance of the first while incorporating some changes indicating Milton’s familiarity with the pamphlets directed against the first edition.¹⁰ He recognizes that he stands almost alone, but cannot forbear to speak on behalf of his conscience and liberty.

Thus much I should perhaps have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones; and had none to cry to, but with the Prophet, O earth, earth, earth! to tell the very soil it self, what her perverse inhabitants are deaf to. Nay, though what I have spoke, should happ’n (which Thou suffer not, who didst create mankinde free; nor Thou next, who didst redeem us from being servants of men!) to be the last words of expiring libertie (YP 7, 462-3).

His words were indeed among the last published on behalf of that peculiar “expiring libertie” that was the Protectorate and English Commonwealth. Within weeks, Milton was in hiding and Charles II was on his way to reclaim his father’s throne. The proclamation by Charles II of 13 August 1660 calling in Eikonoklastes and The Defense of the People of England to be burned at the hand of the common hangman was a half-measure only resorted to because Milton had not yet been apprehended.

The said John Milton, and John Goodwin, are both fled, or so obscure themselves that no endeavors used for their apprehension can take effect, whereby they might be brought to Legal Tryal, and deservedly receive condigne punishment for their Treasons and Offenses.¹¹

Milton’s name was thus bandied about in Parliament as they considered exclusions from the Bill of Oblivion.¹² Perhaps due to the diligent and delicate work by Milton’s friends, Parliament did not exclude Milton from amnesty. This strange clemency puzzled both contemporaries and later generations as they grappled with his legacy. In his 1725 memoir, Gilbert Burnett expressed the view of many:

Milton had appeared so boldly, tho’ with much wit and great purity and elegancy of style, against Salmasius and others, upon the argument of putting the King to death, and had discovered such violence against the late King and all the Royal family, and against Monarchy, that it was thought a strange omission if he was forgot, and an odd strain of clemency, if it was intended he should be forgiven.¹³

Despite his amnesty, Milton’s politics dominated his reception through the early eighteenth century and well beyond (as evidenced by Johnson’s bitterness toward Milton over a century later).

It is too easy to consider the Restoration as an event delimited by some months in 1660. Skewed by the perspective of time and by a history replete with successful revolutions against absolute monarchy, we are perhaps unable to fully appreciate the depth of the emotional responses to the revolutionaries and the Regicides, among whom Milton was indelibly numbered. “Blinde Milton” was, in a very real sense, the last “regicide,” the one who got away but had been (according to some) punished with blindness by a God who disapproved of his role in the affairs of the Commonwealth and his writings against Charles I. For those separated not only by time but by a history that enshrines republican, anti-monarchical revolution, an interesting parallel to Milton’s infamy in the Restoration might be provided by the fortunes of Benedict Arnold following the American Revolutionary War. After his attempt to sell the plans of West Point to the British, Arnold’s name itself became a pejorative that remains synonymous with treachery to this day. So deep ran the animosity against this former war hero that the Saratoga battlefield is home to a monument honoring only Arnold’s left leg, wounded in battle there and considered thus free of the later ignominy of its master. His name was summarily omitted or physically scratched out of monuments at West Point. It is not difficult to imagine that Milton’s reputation in the decades following the Restoration would have been comparable to Arnold’s, if not worse, for his crimes against Charles I and his memory.

As has recently been demonstrated by controversies over the popularity of Shakespeare and the sale of playbooks, discussing a “popular culture” or trying to gauge an author’s “popularity” in the early-modern period is a risky endeavor.¹⁴ But in Milton’s case, beyond the evidence provided by the dust and heat of the early Restoration, there are several indications of his continuing infamy in what may be considered Restoration “popular culture.” To get a sense of this, one need only trace Milton’s portrayal as one of the “infernal saints” of the English Civil Wars.

Appearing annually in London from 1664 until 1777, Poor Robin an Almanack maintained sustained vehemence against “Fanaticks and Regicides” both dead and alive. Although it was a parody of more serious almanacs and unrelenting in its mockery of astrologers, the publication remains a testament to the long-lasting and deep-seated emotions that remained active in the memory of the revolution. As Joseph Wittreich notes, Milton’s appearance in Poor Robin as one of the “mock-saints” of the Revolution “reveals how profoundly early representations of Milton tainted the reception of Paradise Lost.”¹⁵ The full title of the almanac bears attention here (this one from 1665):

Poor Robin, an ALMANACK After a New Fashion. Being the first after Bissextile, or Leap-year, WHEREIN The Reader may see (if he be not blind) many remarkable things worthy of Observation. Containing a two-fold Kalender, Viz The Julian or English; and the Round-heads or Fanaticks: with their several Saints daies, and Observations, upon every month. ¹⁶

The title page undergoes subtle variations each year, but it continually maintains its mockery of “Round-heads or Fanaticks.” And “Blind Milton” is named among the “Fanatick” saints every year from 1664 until 1670. After a three-year hiatus, he appears again in 1674–1677. It is a good indicator of the continuing cultural trauma associated with the English Civil Wars that the feature of a “Fanaticks” calendar of saints is maintained even until as late as the 1777 issue, which proclaims itself with pride the “one hundred fifteenth edition” of the almanac. The invective modulates as years pass. For instance, in 1695, the year in which Hume’s commentary on Paradise Lost was published, the title proclaims that its “twofold Kalendar” contains the Julian and that of the “Round-heads, Whimzey-heads, Magot-heads, Paper-scull’d, Slender-witted, Mugletonian, or Fanatick Account; with their several Saints-days.” The dual calendar is arranged with the month in columns across facing pages. In the third column (following the days of the month) the almanac promises to give “all the principal and observable Saints days, with the most remarkable Hero’s, murthered for their loyalty, during these late times of Rebellion.” This is mirrored by the list of “mock saints” in the seventh column on the facing page, which the author explains is “the Roundheads or Fanaticks Kalender, with the Names of their Chief Ringleaders, most eminent for villany.”¹⁷ As long as Milton is named among those “eminent for villany,” he is always listed in November, a month in which the almanac is usually particularly concerned with both the Gunpowder plot and the Civil Wars, sometimes conflating and comparing the two in memorable ways. For instance, the 1667 almanac prints verses for November that explicitly compare the plot with the English Civil War, and makes the observation that Guy Faux was “outdone” in zeal and infamy by the later acts of Parliament itself.

This month some Papists had intent

For to blow up the Parliament.

This month a Parliament did spring

Some of whose members kill’d their King.

Th’ one out of zeal would rear their own,

Th’ other of zeal would pull al down.

Religion both sides did pretend,

But either to a different end.

Bad in them both, but yet compare

Faux in the Vault, those in the Chair,

You’l find comparing one by one

That Faux was by the last out done

For those by a pretence of zeal

Devourd Religion at a meal;

Murderd the King, enslaved the Land,

To wicked Tyrants base command

All things turned topsie turvy;

Nothing done but what was scurvy;

Prosperity made desolation.

A happy Kingdom, a ruined Nation

Till Charles again did all restore

And setled peace as twas before.

The trait that unifies the Powder Plot and the regicides is identified here as pretended “zeal.” As we’ll see in the chapters to follow, “zeal” becomes a loaded term during this period, often identified with religious fanatics or enthusiasts, and with Milton. The term serves as a sort of shorthand to identify political and religious nonconformists, particularly when the brand of zeal is characterized as false or “pretended.” Zeal is always suspicious, and in the rare cases in which it is true and acceptable it presumably aligns only with loyalty and conformity. After disappearing from the almanac for three years, “Blind Milton’s” 1674 readmission to the company of plotters such as “Guido Faux,” Tantalus, and Henry Ireton might be a result of his stirring abroad again in print in 1673 with the publication of his Poems &c. On Several Occasions and On True Religion, the last taking direct aim at the Stuart court’s Catholic leanings. Regardless of the motivation to variously remove or reinstate Milton in the rolls of the “infernal saints,” his frequent presence there indicates that the publication of Paradise Lost, followed by that of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, had not yet effaced the public’s perception of a “fanatical” and political Milton.

Indeed, the longevity of Milton’s anathema finds him once again enshrined as a sort of “infernal saint” in a collection of brief lives that appeared between 1719 and 1720, entitled The HISTORY of King-Killers; or the Fanatick Martyrology, which claims to contain “Three Hundred Sixty Five Hellish Saints of that Crew, Infamous for Treason, Rebellion, Perjury, Rapine, Murder, &c. being one for every Day in the Year.” The anonymous author congenially claims that his volumes were “Publish’d for the Consolation of the Sanctify’d Tribe of Blood-Thirsty Republicans; and for the Information of true Christians, and sincere Lovers of Monarchy.”¹⁸ The King-Killers’ life of Milton, headed “John Milton Poetical pernicious Rebel. November 9th,” appears to use as its source text Anthony à Wood’s 1691 life of Milton. If Helen Darbishire was outraged at how Wood “began the evil work of twisting facts and misinterpreting motives” in his biographical entry on Milton, one wonders how she would have reacted to the life found here.¹⁹ Where Wood’s bias was largely detected when he omitted praise provided by Aubrey and the “anonymous biographer,” the author of the life in King-Killers actively inserts pejorative political commentary. Wood wrote of Milton’s visit to Paris that “the manners and genius of that place being not agreeable to his mind, he soon left it that thence by Geneva and other places of note, he went into Italy.”²⁰ The author of King-Killers darkly expands the significance of the stop in Geneva, asserting that Milton “was at Paris, but not liking that Place, he went to Geneva, perhaps to improve himself in Calvinistical Notions of Rebellion.”²¹ As would be expected, this biased life takes almost verbatim Wood’s note that “the Rebellion … breaking forth, Milton sided with the Faction, and being a man of parts, was therefore more capable than another of doing mischief, especially by his pen.”²² Wood sketches Milton’s political trajectory in less-than-neutral terms, saying that Milton “arrived to that monstrous and unparallel’d height of profligate impudence, as in print to justify the most execrable Murder of him the best of Kings” and then reports that “we find him a Commonwealths man, a hater of all things that looked toward a single person, a great reproacher of the Universities, scholastical degrees, decency and uniformity in the Church.” Wood then tersely says that “when Oliver ascended the Throne, he [Milton] became Latin Secretary, and proved to him very serviceable… and did great matters to obtain a name and wealth.”²³ This last clause is condemned by Darbishire who indignantly replies that “no falser word has been said of Milton.”²⁴ But Wood’s anonymous reviser in King-Killers goes farther again. After following Wood almost verbatim, the author charges Milton not with a desire for worldly advancement but with hypocrisy: “When Oliver Cromwel ascended the Throne, he forgot all his Common-wealth Principles, and Aversion to a single Person, for he only hated the Right, and became Latin Secretary to that Usurper, where he prov’d very servicable to him.”²⁵ Furthermore, in a departure from Wood, the author of the life in King-Killers treats The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates and Eikonoklastes as murders committed in print by someone complicit in the physical murder of the king.

Such an hellish Author was this to assert in Print the Rights of Subjects to murder their Sovereigns. Having committed that murder on his Person, he also endeavour’d to destroy that Prince’s Reputation by writing another virulent Libel entitul’d Iconaclastes, being an Answer to his Majesty’s Book call’d Eikon Basilike.²⁶

The brief life in King-Killers dismisses Milton’s poetical writings with a terse statement that they “are not to our Purpose,” alluding to their subsequent success as having a corrupting effect on some people, and bemoaning the fact that “this applauded Poet, and most infamous Traytor, and on that Account the more cry’d up by his wicked Brethren, was suffered to dye undisturb’d in his House.” This is coupled with his assertion that after it “pleas’d God to strike him [Milton] blind,” the poet continued “blind… in his Soul as Body, for he never repented of all his Villaines.”²⁷ The charge that Milton was blind in spirit as well as in body is one with significant implications for the reception of his great poem, for it is here, in his blindness, that Milton’s politics and poetics often meet. While the author of King-Killers may find the poetry not to purpose, the way in which Milton’s political reputation impacted the reception of Paradise Lost is, of course, to ours.

We’ve seen Earl Miner claim (following the logic of Johnson) that “adjusted for the literate population” Paradise Lost was “in fact popular among royalists as well as republicans” soon after its publication.²⁸ We’ve already discussed Johnson’s motives for downplaying the adverse circumstances that attended Milton’s later years and the publication of Paradise Lost. In Miner, Moeck, and Jablonski, we see the same argument proposed to emphasize that Paradise Lost was almost immediately recognized as a masterpiece. While I do not mean to ignore the poem’s initial appeal to an educated readership, assessing its actual “popularity” requires establishing an accurate context accounting for the fraught history of the poem’s acceptance. The initial edition of thirteen hundred copies was sold in varied states under several title pages, perhaps reflecting attempts to downplay Milton’s authorship by reducing the size of his name on the title page and in some cases using only his initials. As Joseph Wittreich puts it, the relegation of the author to near anonymity on some title pages may have been an early attempt to “save the poem by saving its reputation from that of its author.”²⁹ In late 1668, the first edition was still available, with the author’s and printer’s names on the title page, and with prefatory material providing arguments for the books and the defense of blank verse. Based on Samuel Simmon’s payment to Milton for his second “five pounds of lawful English money,” it is evident that the first edition finally sold out by April 1669. The second edition appeared in 1674, and the third in 1678. This fulfilled Simmons’s contract with Milton and indicates that approximately four thousand copies of the poem were in circulation at this time. In 1680 Jacob Tonson acquired a partial share in the poem and brought out his impressive fourth-edition folio in 1688.³⁰ This was followed by more folio editions, including the 1695 sixth edition of the poem containing Hume’s extensive Annotations.³¹

In order to put this publication history in context, it is instructive to compare it with John Dryden’s The State of Innocence, the operatic adaptation of Paradise Lost in which he famously “tagged” Milton’s “points.” The State of Innocence was first published by Henry Herringman in 1677. It apparently sold well. By the time Tonson published Paradise Lost’s sixth edition in 1695, Dryden’s adaptation was in its ninth edition as an individual piece and was also available in editions of Dryden’s Works.³² While it may be argued that Dryden’s operatic rendition catered to a different audience than Milton’s epic, its sales drew upon the same literate population referred to by first Johnson and later by Miner, Moeck, and Jablonski. Among this population, Paradise Lost is clearly the less popular work in these years. Dryden’s is clearly an attempt to “popularize” Milton’s topic by adapting it to prevalent tastes and, as we will see emphasized by Nathaniel Lee, to royalist court culture. Saving our analysis of the political ramifications of Dryden’s effort for its proper place in Chapter 2, this comparison asks that we re-examine and carefully assess any claim that Paradise Lost was already a “classic” by 1688 or 1695.

Early Unpublished Responses to Paradise Lost

The earliest known written response to Paradise Lost is found in two letters composed between January and February 1667/8 by Sir John Hobart, Presbyterian, Member of Parliament, and former Commonwealth man. Hobart’s first letter sings Milton’s praises to his cousin in Norwich (confusingly, also named John Hobart). He admits to having been “strangely pleased in a deliberate & repeated reading of him [Milton].”³³ The second letter seems to have been sent before Hobart received a response to the first and is thus perhaps a correction as well as an amplification of the earlier. Reflecting on the previous letter, Hobart may have felt it important that he indicate his awareness of Milton’s political unacceptability. Whatever his motivation for writing it, that second letter demonstrates the problems Milton’s politics posed for even those early readers who appreciated the poem. Keeping in mind that this tortured attempt to deal with Milton is in private correspondence to a cousin (one known to be a Commonwealth man who had sat for Norwich in the Interregnum), one is struck by how much Hobart wrestles with the task of reconciling Milton’s political status with the poetic accomplishment that has so affected him. Nicholas Von Maltzahn, in what is otherwise a thorough and insightful reading of Hobart’s letters, does Hobart a disservice by characterizing him as “laudatory Sir John Hobart” in order to contrast him with another early responder to the poem, the “conflicted John Beale.”³⁴ While Beale, writing to John Evelyn, is explicit in his critique of the “great faults” of the epic (such as the republicanism of the Nimrod passages in Book XII, and Milton’s antimonarchical depiction of tyranny), Hobart’s anxieties are more illustrative of the conflicting anxieties and admirations the poem evoked in early readers.³⁵ The continual eruption of political anxiety in Hobart’s response to the poem is instructive as an early example of the ways in which the trauma of the English Civil Wars continued to dominate the epic’s early reception history.

I have yet soe great a confirmation of my former opinion of ye Poem I sent you, yt if I could well add any thing to wt I saide before I thinke I should still enlarge, & yet not injure ye author by too advantagious a preocupation… The author a criminall & obsolete person, & many of his words being of ye last some moderne creticks will condemne him for being guilty (in this booke as well as others) of ye first too, But perhaps hee may thinke this continued (& sure extreordinary) Peice may purchase him soe high a place amounge our eminent Poets, That hee may use ye liberty of Homer and Virgill, who resussitated many words (as I have heard) from obscurity, and incorporated them, wth ye Greeke & Latine (then in use): If ye booke bee not come downe into your Norwch Shopps… pray Sr bee guided by Enquiring for lost Paradise…. Mr. Milton ye author, who has been soe of severall pieces, good, & bad, but none ye last for want of wit or learning.³⁶

Hobart is quick to acknowledge here, as he failed to do in his first letter, that Milton is a political pariah, asserting plainly that the blind poet is a “criminall & obsolete person.” Furthermore, Hobart explicitly notes that Milton may be condemned as “guilty in this booke [Paradise Lost] as well as others,” of being “the first” (i.e., “criminall”). While couched in a discussion of Milton’s style (both the poet and many of his words are “obsolete”), Hobart here articulates a refusal to wholly exempt Paradise Lost (however “extreordinary” it may be) from Milton’s political criminality. Contrary to Von Maltzahn’s claim that “Hobart was eager to make the common Restoration distinction between Milton’s politics and his poetry,” Hobart clearly implicates Paradise Lost as participating in Milton’s political and regicidal criminality and obsolescence.³⁷ Instead of creating a distinction, Hobart’s convoluted syntax merges concerns about Milton’s criminality and politics with ostensible concerns about poetic style. Milton is both “criminal and obsolete,” and many of Milton’s obsolete words will incite “modern creticks” to condemn him of being criminal. The link between the aesthetic and the political anxiety here is undeniable. Von Maltzahn notes that Hobart elsewhere associates the word “obsolete” with the cause of Buckingham and meant it to “signify rebellious independency, or any alliance with the sects.”³⁸ Despite this, Von Maltzahn claims Hobart’s response to the poem’s versification “shows no apparent ideological interest” and “instead indicates the ready recognition of classical precedent.”³⁹ Yet style and political content are intricately conflated in Hobart’s reflections upon the poem, and classical precedent is raised as a way in which Milton hopes to cloak or to be excused for his linguistic, political, and religious heterodoxies.

Hobart’s aesthetic concerns serve as shorthand for anxiety about political meaning, enmeshing Milton’s poem in a dense network of associations that seem illicit in the telling. It is worth considering how Milton’s stylistic license in “resuscitating” words from obscurity is conflated with the political charge of being a “criminal.” Hobart wonders if Milton’s use of “obsolete” words is evidence of the poet’s intent to gain fame and reputation (and perhaps clemency or forgiveness) through the grandeur of his epic. According to Hobart, Milton hopes to “purchase so high a place” in poetry that he will be permitted to revive obsolete words in the same way that Homer and Virgil were granted similar linguistic freedom. However, the stylistic freedom identified by Hobart threatens at every turn to collapse into the political freedom he has characterized as “criminal and obsolete.” Hobart’s comparison of Milton to Homer and Virgil in this context raises the specter of ancient liberty in more pressing (and threatening) ways than in the free use of vocabulary. The anxiety that lurks here is that Milton may seek a high place to justify not only his poetic but his political license.

As Dustin Griffin has noted, later writers such as John Toland and Richardson would explicitly place Milton among classical republicans in an attempt to extract him from the traumatic context of recent English political conflict. Thus Richardson would claim: “’tis Certain he was a Republican: So was Cato, So was Brutus, So was Phocion, Aristides. Such were by Much the Most of the Greatest Names of Roman and Greek Antiquity.”⁴⁰ Griffin asserts that Toland and Richardson attempt a sleight of hand so that “in Milton’s case classical precedent serves not to adorn abstract argument about ‘liberty’ or civic virtue but to remove the opprobrium of 1649.”⁴¹ The complex and condensed critique in Hobart’s letter provides a compelling example of how even the earliest, and presumably most sympathetic, readers of Paradise Lost recognized and wrestled with the presence of the political Milton in the poem and strove to contextualize both in a way that might justify their enjoyment of Paradise Lost.

Another, unfortunately undated, example of how an early reader naturally associated Milton’s politics with his Paradise Lost is found in early-modern marginalia upon free papers bound with a first-edition Eikonoklastes. In this note, the reader identifies Milton with Satan in Paradise Lost, yoking Milton’s most controversial and hated polemical work to Milton’s epic. He complains, “Milton’s spirit may be compared to his own description of the Gates of Hell, ‘grating harsh Thunder’; He sat, like his own Satan upon the Tree of knowledge, over the unfortunate Charles, feeding like a ‘Cormorant’ upon his suffering.”⁴² As we’ll see, identification of Milton with Satan would occur throughout the late seventeenth century, often pressed into service as a negative comment upon Milton’s politics. Here, the unidentified annotator enriches the identification by placing Milton/Satan in the tree of knowledge as a cormorant, whereas in Paradise Lost Satan perches in the tree of life plotting his assault on mankind. The use of the tree of knowledge, although possibly an unintentional slip, intensifies the association of Milton/Satan with temptation, the Fall, and with the dangers of excessive or unseemly knowledge. Eikonoklastes, Milton’s work inspiring the most venom among his contemporaries despite being grudgingly admired for its wit, is thus inscribed into Paradise Lost and the epic is used to illuminate the tract. As in Hobart’s private correspondence, the annotator of this copy was clearly unable or unwilling to separate Milton’s politics from his poetry.⁴³

Early Published Responses to Paradise Lost

In the 1674 second edition of Paradise Lost (the first to present the poem in its familiar twelve-book structure), early readers are met with religious and political anxiety before they even get to the poem itself – in the commendatory verses that precede the text. Milton’s colleague under Cromwell in the Commonwealth, Andrew Marvell, approaches the epic with caution and expresses discomfort ahead of admiration in one of the earliest published responses to the poem, “On Mr. Milton’s Paradise Lost.”

When I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold,

In slender Book his vast Design unfold,

Messiah Crowned, Gods Reconcil’d Decree,

Rebelling Angels, the Forbidden Tree,

Heav’n, Hell, Earth, Chaos, All; the Argument

Held me a while misdoubting his Intent,

That he would ruine (for I saw him strong)

The sacred Truths to Fable and old Song,

(So Sampson groap’d the Temples Posts in spight)

The World o’rewhelming to revenge his sight.⁴⁴

Marvell’s verses are remarkable not only for how they preface Milton’s epic with a lesson in how to read it but for Marvell’s cautious approach to praise. Marvell had apparently read Paradise Lost in both the ten and (forthcoming) twelve book edition, and alludes to Samson Agonistes as well as to his own (private) praise for Milton’s Defensio Secunda.⁴⁵ Andrew Shifflett has argued that Marvell diverges from predictable patterns of commendation by “straining praise through the sieve of doubt.”⁴⁶ As perceptive as this is, instead of doubt, I rather think the overarching obstacle to be overcome in Marvell’s reenacted reading of Milton’s epic is anxiety. The anxiety expressed here is multi-layered – Milton may be blind, but Marvell recognizes that he remains bold and retains the strength that Marvell saw in him before the Restoration. Milton’s plan to write sacred truth into a plot, to include even the Son and God the Father as characters, threatens potential readers with its ambition and the possibility it might teeter into blasphemy. But another layer of anxiety here is that Marvell doubts his old acquaintance’s “intent.” In addition to worrying that Milton might ruin sacred truth by making it fiction and conflating it with classical myth, Marvell’s expresses anxiety about Milton’s possible motivations as he casts the blind poet as Sampson and worries that Milton would pull the entire edifice of sacred truth down to “revenge his sight.” As noted by Nigel Smith, in these lines “the reader is also made a spectator to Samson Agonistes (ll. 9–10), assimilating its own daringness to that of Paradise Lost.”⁴⁷ The image of Milton as Samson reminds readers of the poet’s strength – as well as of the dangers he might pose even when he seems to be at his weakest.

Marvell’s fear that Milton would use Paradise Lost to “revenge his sight” foregrounds Milton’s biographical identity as necessary – or at least relevant – context for interpreting the poem, and more specifically highlights Milton’s identity as a political pamphleteer who had defended regicide. As we’ve seen, throughout the Restoration, Milton’s blindness was inextricably linked with his role in the Protectorate and became a sort of shorthand symbol for Milton’s radicalisms. As early as 1654, Milton had defended himself in his Second Defense of the People of England against charges that his blindness was a judgment for his political writings, acknowledging that “the royalists think that I am now undergoing this suffering as a penance, and they accordingly rejoice” (YP 4.1, 587). His response to this was that he “never, at any time, wrote anything I did not think agreeable to truth, justice, and piety.” Moreover, Milton cast his blindness as a form of valorous self-sacrifice, pointing out that he had lost his eyesight in service to a righteous cause:

When the business of replying to the royal defense [Salmasius’s Defense of The Reign of Charles I] had been officially assigned to me, and at that same time I was afflicted at once with ill health and the virtual loss of my remaining eye, and the doctors were making learned predictions that if I should undertake this task, I would shortly lose both eyes, I was not in the least deterred by the warning.

(YP 4.1, 588)

Rebutting charges that his blindness was a judgment for defending regicide, Milton characterizes his affliction as a result of doing his patriotic and religious duty. Marvell’s worry about Milton’s desire to “revenge his sight” is thus a bit coy. It smuggles into the commendatory poem anxiety that Milton might yet seek revenge for political loss upon the Restoration and that Paradise Lost might be bent in service of that project. The fear then is that Milton’s lost paradise might in fact be the dream of a commonwealth free from single-person rule.

In addition, Marvell’s attack on Dryden at the close of his poem (inserting Dryden into the drama of the poem’s birth narrative as a poet who attempted to “tag” Milton’s points) introduces a politicized debate over verse into the argument and cleverly asserts the superiority of Milton’s blank verse. As Howard Erskine-Hill has noted, the first lines of Marvell’s poem “show how readers probably responded to Milton at this time, and the words ‘blind, yet bold’ say it all.”⁴⁸ Marvell’s commendatory verses compress the experience of reading Paradise Lost in its time, moving rapidly from anxiety to admiration. Having defended Milton in the second part of The Rehearsal Transpros’d (1673), Marvell’s commendatory verses should be considered a further defense of Milton, as well as a lesson in how to read his epic even while aware of the challenges it posed in the political and cultural moment.

However masterful and nuanced Milton’s epic was, the weight of Milton’s political reputation loomed large for early readers. William Winstanley’s entry on Milton in his 1687 Lives of the Most Famous English Poets summarizes how, for some at least, Milton’s politics would forever overwhelm their ability to appreciate his late poetry:

John Milton was one, whose natural parts might deservedly give him a place amongst the principal of our English Poets, having written two Heroick Poems and a Tragedy; namely, Paradice Lost, Paradice Regain’d, and Sampson Agonista; But his Fame is gone out like a Candle in a Snuff, and his Memory will always stink, which might have ever lived in honourable Repute, had not he been a notorious Traytor, and most impiously and villainously bely’d that blessed Martyr King Charles the First.⁴⁹

The political prejudice against Milton – so raw in Winstanley’s lines – had a long afterlife. There was no one moment when Paradise Lost transcended Milton’s reputation. For Richard Bentley, preparing his infamous 1732 edition of Paradise Lost, Milton’s position as an outcast was yet more reason to marvel that he wrote the epic during these years. In due course, we’ll examine how Bentley made tactical use of an exaggerated image of the poet as friendless and persecuted. We’ve already discussed how Milton’s politics provided motivation for much of the hostility in Johnson’s 1779 Lives of the Poets and resulted in Johnson’s scoffing at the idea that Milton was isolated or rightly feared persecution. Even in the twentieth century, T.S. Eliot grappled with the manner in which Milton’s politics intruded on his ability to appreciate the poetry. Eliot explains:

There is one prejudice against Milton, apparent on almost every page of Johnson’s Life of Milton, which I imagine is still general: we, however, with a longer historical perspective, are in a better position than was Johnson to recognize it and to make allowance for it. This is a prejudice which I share myself: an antipathy towards Milton the man …. The fact is simply that the Civil War of the seventeenth century, in which Milton is a symbolic figure, has never concluded.⁵⁰

In 1947 Eliot imagined the political bias against Milton was still “general.” In an odd way, the twentieth-century poet reenacts the challenge facing the earliest readers of Milton’s epic. Eliot, born an American, later became a subject of the British crown and converted to Anglicanism. He not only subjected himself to the monarchial and religious rule explicitly rejected by Milton but joined the society of Charles the Martyr. It is difficult to imagine a movement more contrary to Milton’s spirit than Eliot’s trajectory from citizen to subject, from republic to monarchy, and from citizen of a secular state to voluntary member of a society idealizing a monarch-as-martyr.⁵¹

The following chapters are concerned with a movement even more remarkable than Eliot’s. How much harder is it to imagine moving from anathema to appreciation of Milton in the years following the cataclysm of revolution? In a nation so traumatized that annual almanacs continually renewed attacks against long-dead “fanaticks” and regicides, it had to be difficult to move beyond trauma and against the resistant current of popular culture toward appreciating one so symbolic of the Civil Wars. This move from disdain to appreciation may be most clearly demonstrated by the changing public attitudes of Joseph Addison, to whom we turn in his youth briefly before encountering his adult criticisms in Chapter 5.

Addison’s Early Comment on Paradise Lost: A Case Study

Joseph Addison’s 1712 Spectator essays on Paradise Lost have traditionally (and with some exaggeration) been given credit for bringing the virtues of Milton’s poem to light and making it acceptable and even fashionable to enjoy. Yet Addison’s earlier (1694) verses on Milton provide stark evidence for how fraught even his early engagement with Paradise Lost was. His early comment on Paradise Lost provides not only an interesting starting point for investigating his relationship with the poem but also a good baseline from which to launch an inquiry into the critical “interventions” of Hume and John Dennis as well. Appearing a year before Hume’s commentary would accompany the third Tonson folio of the epic, Addison’s earliest printed comment on Milton demonstrates that Paradise Lost was neither free from controversy nor wholeheartedly appropriated by Whigs even after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the publication of Tonson’s folios. Addison’s complex engagement with the poem and Milton’s political reputation challenges the teleology of Milton’s reputation presented by even as careful a scholar as R.G. Moyles, who introduces his discussion of Tonson’s 1691 edition with the claim that “by the last decade of the seventeenth century Milton’s notoriety as an anti-royalist pamphleteer had largely faded from memory; his reputation as England’s foremost poet was growing steadily.”⁵²

Addison’s “Account of the Greatest English Poets” is a poem in the “senate of poets” tradition that offers brief commentary on each poet included by the young author, who was then a scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford. Abigail Williams has examined the “Account” to interrogate the formation of a “Whig” literary tradition that has largely become invisible to later generations. Her focus is thus on the last author that Addison treats, Charles Montagu, author of the Epistle to Dorset celebrating the battle at the River Boyne and the promise of William III’s reign. Williams’s characterization of the poets preceding Montagu in Addison’s procession is of note. She writes, “Addison’s ‘greatest English poets’ are the same as those found in countless other canonical histories of English poetry, until we reach the last named author [Montagu].”⁵³ Indeed, Addison includes Chaucer, Spenser, Cowley, Milton, Waller, Dryden, and Congreve before getting to Montagu. However, Williams resists Richard Terry’s impulse to frame Addison’s “Account” as a milestone in the establishment of an English canon. Terry writes, “the ‘Account’ traces a trajectory of refinement in English poetry from its uncouth beginnings with Chaucer through to an apex of correctness and limpidity represented by Dryden.”⁵⁴ Demonstrating just how flexible a concept canonization can be, Williams disagrees with Terry’s contention that Dryden is at Addison’s “apex” of poetic achievement, instead highlighting his praise of Montagu as a locus where Addison’s aesthetic and political aims coincide.

As Addison tells it, the excellence of Montagu’s verse is inseparable from the excellence of its subject matter: moreover, the praise of the literary merits of the poem displays Addison’s own commitment to the Williamite regime. Aesthetic and evaluative judgements cannot be separated here from political concerns, since the appraisal of Montagu’s Epistle conflates literary form and political content.⁵⁵

Given Williams’s recognition that “aesthetic and evaluative judgements” are inseparable from “political concerns” in Addison’s account of poetry, what then, are we to make of Milton’s appearance in the “Account”? Naturally, political and aesthetic concerns collide and combine here as well. Addison does not hesitate to critique those authors he includes as among those “Muse-possest” poets in his senate or progress. He introduces Chaucer at the head of his list only to dismiss his relevance to the age, claiming that “Age has rusted what the Poet writ, / Worn out his language, and obscur’d his wit.” Spenser, who wrote for a “barb’rous age,” is pleasing only when viewed from afar. Addison says that upon closer inspection by those of a more “understanding age,” Spenser’s “pleasing landscapes fade away.” And Cowley, although a “mighty genius,” is blamed for providing a surfeit of wit which prompts Addison to exclaim paradoxically, “He more had pleas’d us, had he pleas’d us less.” An even more complicated case for Addison, Milton is included in this procession of “greatest English poets” only to be quite sternly expelled from it. John Shawcross isn’t wrong when he prefaces Addison’s poem with the statement that “this is the earliest tribute to Milton’s greatness which Joseph Addison (1672–1719) published,” but the statement elides the fraught nature of the engagement.⁵⁶ Addison’s tribute is overshadowed by the excoriation demanded by Milton’s politics. While Chaucer and Spenser are obsolete because of changes in language and taste, Milton’s fault is purely his own and purely political.

But Milton next, with high and haughty stalks,

Unfetter’d in majestick numbers walks;

No vulgar heroe can his Muse ingage;

Nor earth’s wide scene confine his hallow’d rage,

See! see, he upward springs, and tow’ring high

Spurns the dull province of mortality,

Shakes heav’ns eternal throne with dire alarms,

And sets th’ Almighty thunderer in arms.

What-e’er his pen describes I more than see,

Whilst ev’ry verse, array’d in majesty,

Bold, and sublime, my whole attention draws,

And seems above the critick’s nicer laws.

How are you struck with terror and delight,

When angel with arch-angel copes in fight!

When great Messiah’s out-spread banner shines,

How does the chariot rattle in his lines!

What sounds of brazen wheels, what thunder, scare,

And stun the reader with the din of war!

With fear my spirits and my blood retire,

To see the Seraphs sunk in clouds of fire;

But when, with eager step, from hence I rise,

And view the first gay scenes of Paradise;

What tongue, what words of rapture can express

A vision so profuse of pleasantness.

Oh had the Poet ne’er profan’d his pen,

To vernish o’er the guilt of faithless men;

His other works might have deserv’d applause!

But now the language can’t support the cause;

While the clean current, tho’ serene and bright,

Betrays a bottom odious to the sight.⁵⁷

Addison’s portrayal and dismissal of Milton seems more emotionally invested and reluctant than his criticism of Chaucer, Spenser, or Cowley. The most peculiar feature of these lines is the manner in which the virtues of Milton’s epic are first presented and lauded (even imitated), and then retrospectively rejected with Addison’s sudden lament, “Oh had the Poet ne’er profan’d his pen.” Addison’s readers are allowed to enjoy the sometimes-impassioned descriptions of Milton’s poem:

With fear my spirits and my blood retire,

To see the Seraphs sunk in clouds of fire;

But when, with eager steps from hence I rise,

And view the first gay scenes of Paradise;

What tongue, what words of rapture can express

A vision so profuse of pleasantness.⁵⁸

These lines enact an encounter with sublimity foreshadowing Addison’s praise of Milton almost two decades later in his Spectator essays on Paradise Lost. Here, however, immediately after a rapturous entry into paradise, the “Account” re-enacts the Fall, expelling readers from a poem (and a paradise) suddenly “profan’d” by the poet’s prose as the very beauties that Addison is imitating are abruptly rebuked and denied. Even a “vision so profuse of pleasantness” can’t withstand the taint of Milton’s politics. The critic who will later claim that our language “sunk beneath” Milton’s greatness now claims that Milton’s (presumably grand) language can’t support the “cause,” or excuse Milton’s former crimes.

As Addison complains that if Milton had not “varnish’d” the actions of the regicides “his other works might have deserv’d applause,” he rejects Milton’s entire body of work, including the epic he has just praised. Although the ambiguous phrase “other works” may allude to works other than Paradise Lost, it more likely indicates that the prose has contaminated all Milton’s “other works” including the epic. For no matter how “clean, serene, or bright” the poetry itself may appear, it is not permissible to enjoy it. In fact, it is the very clarity of the poetry that allows readers to see through to the ever-present muddied bottom of Milton’s politics. Addison’s final words on Milton here, his image of a “bottom odious to the sight,” grotesquely emphasize the indelible corruption that has seemingly ruined even Paradise Lost forever.

That Paradise Lost is not only guilty by association but is itself unacceptably complicit in Milton’s regrettable politics is supported by a closer reading of Addison’s early lines of apparent praise. Describing Milton and his muse, Addison continually casts Milton as his Satan. In his first line, Milton’s approach with “high and haughty stalks” evokes Satan striding to battle in Book VI (“Satan with vast and haughty strides advanced” (6.109)) as well as Roscommon’s paraphrase of that line in his 1685 Essay on Blanc Verse (appended to his Essay on Translated Verse). In words that remind us of how Satan “springs upward like a Pyramid of fire / Into the wild expanse” as he leaves Chaos (2.1013–14), or perhaps the combustible way the fiend “started up in his own shape” when discovered squat like a toad at the ear of Eve, Addison tells us that Milton in his “hallow’d rage / … upward springs and tow’ring high / Spurns the dull province of mortality.” Not only that, but it is this raging Milton who “Shakes heav’ns eternal throne with dire alarms, / And sets th’ Almighty thunderer in arms.” Addison’s description of Milton “tow’ring high” echoes a moment in Paradise Lost Addison will highlight as an example of sublimity in 1712, when Satan “above the rest, / In shape and gesture proudly eminent / stood like a tow’r” (1.590). By conflating Milton and Satan, Addison is careful to never lose sight of Milton the rebel and regicide, from first to last portraying the author of Paradise Lost as a bold and defiant rebel who challenged the very throne. Highlighting the most martial and anti-monarchical aspects of the epic, Addison intimates that even in his poetic robes, Milton is a subtle seducer working the sleeper/reader’s organs of fancy to induce dreams of disobedience in readers who are not on their guard. Throughout the “Account,” Addison prepares readers for his eventual (even if reluctant and wistful) rejection of the poem and poet from his canonizing critique.⁵⁹

As we’ve seen, Addison isn’t alone in his conflicted reaction to Milton and his poetry. Other commentators writing around the same time relish contemplation of Milton in hell after his death. In his 1697 Dictionary Historical and Critical, Peter Bayle’s entry for “Milton” reports that Paradise Regained “is not near so good [as Paradise Lost], which made some wags say, that Milton is easily found in Paradise lost, but not in Paradise regained.”⁶⁰ Thomas Yalden and Alexander Oldys play with this same witticism in their verses on Milton, exposing how the quip comments both on the perceived value of the poems in comparison and upon Milton’s supposed damnation for his political views. Yalden, responding in 1698 to John Toland’s publication of Milton’s prose, explains the problem posed by Milton more explicitly than Addison (and perhaps with Addison’s lines in mind):

These sacred lines with wonder we peruse,

And praise the flights of a seraphic muse,

Till thy seditious prose provokes our rage,

Ands soils the beauties of thy brightest page.

As they did rebels to th’ Almighty grow,

So thou profane’st his image here below.

…

Apostate bard! May not thy guilty ghost,

Discover to its own eternal cost,

That as they heaven, thou paradise hast lost!⁶¹

Oldys, on the other hand, imagines the recently deceased John Dryden being greeted by Milton in heaven. Milton has to explain (or defend!) his presence there, telling Dryden that he only escaped hell due to having written Paradise Lost:

Thine was indeed the state of innocence,

   Mine of offence,

With studied treason and self-interest stained,

Till Paradise Lost wrought Paradise Regained.⁶²

Addison’s professed inability to read Paradise Lost in 1694 without being obstructed by Milton’s politics (that “bottom odious”), poignantly demonstrates the difficulty Paradise Lost posed even to one who would later become one of the epic’s greatest popularizers. If, as Williams has proposed, Addison’s “Account” reflects and participates in an evolution of “Whig” literary culture, it is clear that this culture deems Milton unsuitable for the purpose in 1694. When we again encounter Addison, we will explore the strategies by which he later sought to actively cleanse Paradise Lost of the contamination that seemed insurmountable to him when he wrote the “Account.” His personal reconciliation with the poem is part of a larger critical grappling for means by which to value Paradise Lost while avoiding or neutralizing its challenges to political and religious orthodoxy.

If (unlike Samuel Johnson) we recognize the profound challenges Milton’s reputation posed in the Restoration and beyond, the history of the poem’s reception becomes not only more accurate but more useful to understanding its role in the development of English literary criticism. A desire to reconcile the enjoyment of the poem with the anxiety it proprompted readers to seek new ways of responding to controversial literature. Paradise Lost thus incited critiques marked by a dynamic of recovery and repression similar to that we’ve observed in Addison’s “Account.” Considered in the context of Milton’s Restoration reputation, it becomes clear that early critical engagements with Paradise Lost are not necessarily evidence of the poem’s rapid ascent to canonical, classical status. Instead, these early commentaries and critiques might be more accurately considered interventions undertaken in hopes of separating the poem from poet and politics, thus absolving its readership from the anxiety and guilt felt by readers such as John Hobart or the young Joseph Addison. The first such intervention, explored in Chapter 2, showcases the most radical and simplest solution to the problem of Paradise Lost. If Milton’s epic is unacceptable, why not rewrite it?

Notes

Joseph Addison, “An Account of the Greatest English Poets,” in The Annual Miscellany for the Year 1694 (London: Jacob Tonson, 1694), 322–323.

Jonathan Richardson, “Life of the Author” (1734) in Helen Darbishire, Early Lives of Milton (London: Constable and Co., 1932), 276.

Ibid.

Samuel Johnson, “Milton,” in The Lives of the Poets. vol. 1, edited by Roger Lonsdale (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006), 268–269.

Ibid., 269–270.

Earl Miner, William Moeck, and Steven Jablonski, Paradise Lost, 1668–1968: Three Centuries of Commentary (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2004), 17.

Ants Oras, Milton’s Editors and Commentators from Patrick Hume to Henry John Todd (1695–1801) (New York: Haskell House, 1964), 24.

See David Masson, The Life of John Milton: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time, 6 Vols (Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1965), 5.652.

Anonymous, quoted in Masson, 5.659.

In particular, Milton softens his stance on having a permanent parliamentary body and indicates at least a willingness to accept the Harringtonian model of limited rotation of members.

Charles II, King of England, “A Proclamation for Calling In, and Suppressing of Two Books Written by John Milton,” 13 August 1660.

We know that Milton’s fate was deliberated in mid-June by evidence of the bill calling for Milton and Goodwin’s books to be burnt by the common hangman and resolving that Milton and Goodwin be brought before the House. See Masson, 6.174.

Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Time, (London: Printed for the Company of Booksellers, 1725). Quoted in John Shawcross, Milton: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1970), 247.

I am, of course, thinking of the critical conversation between Peter Blaney, Alan Farmer, and Zachary Lesser over the “popularity” of playbooks.

Joseph Wittreich, “‘Under The Seal of Silence’: Repressions, Receptions, And The Politics Of Paradise Lost,” in Soundings of Things Done: Essays in Early Modern Literature in Honor of S. K. Heninger Jr (Newark, DE: U of Delaware P, 1997), 293–323, 302.

Poor Robin an Almanack, 1665. Available from Early English Books Online and Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Poor Robin, 1667. In the 1671 edition, William Winstanley is named the author “Poor Robin.”

Anonymous, The History of King-Killers; or, the Fanatick Martyrology, vol 2. Printed for S. Redmayne, T. Jauncy at the Angle with Temple-bar, etc. (1720). Available from Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Darbishire, x.

Wood, Fasti Oxonienses (1691), reprinted in Darbishire, 37.

King-Killers,King-Killers, 29.

Wood, 38. Compare to King-Killers, 29.

Wood, 39.

Darbishire, x.

King-Killers,King-Killers, 30.

Ibid., 31. Wood is more even-handed about Eikonoklastes, saying it was “published to the horror of all sober men, nay even to the Presbyterians themselves, yet by the then dominant party it was esteemed an excellent piece, and perform’d answerably to the expectation of his Wit and Pen.” Darbishire, 43.

King-Killers,King-Killers, 31.

Miner et al., 17. The author of the essay “Early Comment” in this volume recognizes that estimates of the literate population in England at the time of publication are “not specific or restricted to Milton.” Among this population, however, they claim the poem “uniquely attracted distinguished commentary at an unparalleled rate” (31). This, perhaps, is true. However, far from “exploding the myth of the poem’s unpopularity,” the early commentary is better seen as necessary because of Milton’s unpopularity and the resulting ambiguous responses to the poem.

Wittreich, 301. This interpretation of the title pages is also found earlier in Masson and in Hugh Amory’s “Things Unattempted Yet: A Bibliography of the First Edition of Paradise Lost,” The Book Collector 32 (1983), 41–66.

His partner in this endeavor was the publisher Richard Bently (not to be confused with Dr. Richard Bentley of the 1732 edition). Tonson acquired sole rights to Paradise Lost in 1691 when he produced the fifth-edition folio.

The most detailed discussion of Paradise Lost’s textual transmission is that in R. G. Moyles, The Text of Paradise Lost: A Study in Editorial Procedure (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985).

Even if one discounts copies of the play advertised as part of collected Works, it is clear that Dryden’s adaptation was more “popular” than the original. Indeed, Dryden’s claim to have initially published it in response to “many hundred copies of it being dispersed” seems validated by the survival of several manuscripts. See Hugh Macdonald, John Dryden: A Bibliography of Early Editions and Drydeniana (London: Dawson’s, 1966).

John Hobart’s letters, Bodleian Library MS Tanner 45, fo. 258 and MS Tanner 45*, fo.271. Some of the relevant passages are transcribed in James Rosenheim, “An Early Appreciation of Paradise Lost,” Journal of Modern Philology 75 (1978), 280.

Nicholas Von Maltzahn, “The First Reception of Paradise Lost (1667),” Review of English Studies: A Quarterly Journal of English Literature and the English Language 47.188 (November 1996), 479–499.

For a review of Beale’s conflicting views on Milton, see Von Maltzahn, 494–499.

Hobart, MS Tanner 45, fo. 258 and MS Tanner 45*, fo.271.

See Von Maltzahn, 492. Von Maltzahn puts much weight on Hobart’s claim that “some modern creticks” will condemn the poem as criminal, claiming that Hobart himself “was not put off by such doubts.” This may be. But he recognized the precarious situation of the poem and felt a need to acknowledge such in his letter to his cousin. Indeed, the concern seems to motivate and permeate his second letter.

Ibid., 491–492.

Ibid., 492.

Richardson, 214.

Dustin Griffin, Regaining Paradise (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986), 14.

This copy of Eikonoklastes is maintained in the Wrenn Library Collection of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. Call number Wj M642 649e WRE.

Other examples of unpublished correspondence where Milton’s poetry is shown to be continually associated with his status as political outcast include letters by John Beale and Abraham Hill. Von Maltzahn discusses Beale in “The First Reception of Paradise Lost (1667).” For Beale and Hill, see William Poole, “Two Early Readers of Milton: John Beale and Abraham Hill,” Milton Quarterly 38 (2004), 76–99.

Andrew Marvell, “On Paradise Lost,” in Paradise Lost, edited by John Milton (London: S. Simmons, 1674).

For evidence of Marvell’s familiarity with the ten and twelve book versions of the epic, as well as his reference to his praise of the Defensio Secunda, see Nigel Smith, Introduction to “On Mr. Milton’s Paradise Lost,” in The Poems of Andrew Marvell, edited by Nigel Smith (New York: Routledge, 2013), 180–184.

A. Shifflett, “‘By Lucan Driv’n About’ + Literary and Political Strategies in the Stoic and Intertextual Poetic Tradition of Milton: A Jonsonian Marvell’s Lucanic Milton,” Renaissance Quarterly 49.4 (1996), 803–823, pp. 807–808.

Smith, 182.

Howard Erskine-Hill, “On Historical Commentary: The Example of Milton and Dryden,” in Presenting Poetry: Composition, Publication, Reception, edited by Howard Erskine-Hill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 60.

William Winstanley, “Milton,” in The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (London: H. Clark, 1687), 195. Also reprinted in Shawcross, 97.

T. S. Eliot, “Milton II,” in On Poetry and Poet (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957), 167–168. This was Eliot’s Henrietta Hertz Lecture, delivered to the British Academy in 1947.

I am indebted to John Rumrich for first bringing the extent of Eliot’s counter-Miltonic trajectory to my attention in his lecture “Milton’s Satanic Verses,” given at The University of Texas Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas, September 16, 2011.

R. G. Moyles, The Text of Paradise Lost: A Study in Editorial Procedure (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 37.

Abigail Williams, Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture 1681–1714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1.

Richard Terry, Poetry and the Making of the English Literary Past 1660–1781 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 50.

Williams, 6.

Shawcross, 105.

Addison, “An Account.”

Ibid.

A more mature Addison returned to Milton (and Roscommon) in 1704 with his “Milton’s Style Imitated, in a Translation out of the Third Aeneid,” which we will discuss in Chapter 5.

Bayle, quoted in Shawcross, 116.

Thomas Yalden, “On the Reprinting of Milton’s Prose Works” (1698) reprinted in Shawcross, 122–123.

Alexander Oldys, “An Ode by Way of Elegy on … Mr. Dryden” (London, 1700). Reprinted in Shawcross, 124.

2 “Sad Conclusions”Paradise Lost, John Dryden, and Political Genre

DOI: 10.4324/9781003276395-3

Oliver Cromwell died at three in the afternoon on Friday, September 3, 1658. The diary of Thomas Burton, a member of the parliaments of Oliver and Richard Cromwell from 1656 to 1659, relates that although the body had been carefully bound and laid in a lead-lined coffin, it rapidly swelled and burst, “from whence came such filth, that raised such a deadly and noisome stink, that it was found prudent to bury him immediately, which was done in as private a manner as possible.”¹ The coffin of state was taken to Somerset House while effigies were prepared for public viewing and the funeral procession. Burton relates that the wax effigy of the Protector was

apparelled in a rich and costly suit of velvet, robed in a little robe of purple velvet, laced with a rich gold lace, furred with ermine. Upon the kirtle was a large robe of purple velvet, laced and furred as the former, with strings and tassels of gold …. Upon his head was placed a purple velvet cap, furred with ermines suitable to the robes. Behind the head was placed a rich chair of tissued gold, whereon was placed an Imperial crown, which lay high, that the people might behold it.²

On Thursday the 23rd of November a great funeral procession accompanied this effigy, holding the orb and scepter of state and now laid in an open chariot draped in black velvet, from Somerset House to Westminster Abbey. Among those listed as part of the procession, we find the “Secretaries of the French and Latin tongues, Mr. Dradon, Mr. Marvel, Mr. Sterry, Mr. John Milton, Mr. Hartlibbe, Sen.”³ Here we witness fifty-year-old John Milton, blind, being led alongside thirty-seven-year-old Andrew Marvell and (almost certainly) twenty-seven-year-old John Dryden (listed here as “Mr. Dradon,” but elsewhere in a provision for mourning cloth as “Mr. Drayden”).⁴ Winding through London streets lined with soldiers and mourners, this part of the procession was a solemn and literal progress of poets.

In the twilight of the Protectorate and on the eve of the Restoration, these three had their greatest poetic works yet ahead of them, and each would forge a different path through the crises to come. Arguably, Dryden would be most politically adept at navigating the turbulent period after the Restoration, but all three responded in different ways to the failure of the Commonwealth and the return of the monarchy. It has long been suspected that Marvell had a hand in the improbable clemency afforded Milton upon the Restoration.⁵ For Dryden’s part, he has loomed large in the mythology of Paradise Lost’s reception. Describing Milton’s “closest acquaintances,” John Aubrey tells us these include “Jo. Dryden Esq. Poet Laureate, who very much admires him, & went to him to have leave to putt his Paradise-lost into a Drama in Rhyme: Mr. Milton received him civilly, & told him he would give him leave to tagge his Verses.”⁶ Aubrey’s notes, compiled sometime before 1681, are terse as usual. Nonetheless, they convey a condescending humor toward Dryden, whom one can’t help picture at Milton’s door, hat in hand, to request permission to rewrite Paradise Lost. Milton’s dry response, giving Dryden permission to tag his verses, reduces Dryden to adding frilly accouterment to Milton’s epic. This is as we find it described in Marvell’s prefatory poem “On Mr. Milton’s Paradise Lost,” printed with the second (1674) edition of Paradise Lost. Here, Marvell assures Milton:

Well mightest thou scorn thy readers to allure

With tinkling rhyme, of thy own sense secure;

While the town-Bayes writes all the while and spells,

And like a pack-horse tires without his bells:

Their fancies like our bushy-points appear,

The poets tag them, we for fashion wear.

Marvell’s reference to the “town-Bayes” alludes to Dryden’s status as poet-laureate, crowned with bay leaves, and also to his satirical representation as “John Bayes” in the Duke of Buckingham’s The Rehearsal (which by 1674 had spurred a literary scuffle that Marvell seems to have relished participating in, and in which Milton was unfairly implicated). Marvell’s comparison of rhyming to the “tagging” of points (the brass caps put on tassels in order to make them fashionable in Restoration England) seems an obvious swipe at Dryden’s “operatic,” version of Paradise Lost. That rhymed version of Milton’s epic, Dryden’s The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man, was entered in the Stationer’s Register on April 17, 1674, but was certainly (as the author himself complains) circulating in manuscript before that. It is unclear if Marvell’s poem influenced Aubrey’s note recalling Milton’s response to Dryden, or if the two accounts are independent of one another with a common source in Milton himself. Regardless, both reports disparagingly suggest Dryden’s adaptation of Paradise Lost was merely a trivial embellishment of the poem, an ill-advised attempt to adapt it to a flighty and silly fashion popular at court.

We have already encountered Dryden as a character in one of the competing birth narratives of Paradise Lost recounted by Jonathan Richardson in 1734. Richardson was the first biographer of Milton to tell how the joint efforts of Lord Dorset and John Dryden rescued Paradise Lost from obscurity. Richardson reports third-hand that he heard that Lord Dorset found Paradise Lost in a bookseller’s shop in Little-Britain, where the bookseller begged him to speak well of it because it “lay on his hands as Waste Paper.” Richardson then tells how Dorset sent the poem to Dryden, who “in a short time return’d it: This Man (says Dryden) Cuts us All Out, and the Ancients too.” What is more, Richardson tells us that a certain “North-Country Gentleman” reported that Milton’s poem had such an impact on Dryden that he told the gentlemen that he wouldn’t have rhymed his Virgil if he were to begin it again.⁷ It is an entertaining story that serves as seemingly powerful evidence of Dryden’s esteem for Paradise Lost. Yet it must be noted that Richardson’s tale of Dryden’s early “discovery” of Paradise Lost is followed by a reflection (that related by the North-Country Gentleman) that needs must date much later. Dryden’s Virgil was published in 1697, three years before his death in 1700, which means Dryden’s high praise of Milton’s blank verse would have happened not only many decades after Dryden had himself rhymed Paradise Lost in his State of Innocence (as Richardson notes) but also after Dryden had declared in his preface to the Aeneid that Paradise Lost was not an epic poem. This complicated little knot of narratives reminds us that there is little simple about sorting out Dryden’s attitudes toward Milton and his late masterpiece. The complexity of Dryden’s engagement with Milton is not solely a result of these second- and third-hand reports of his reactions but is vexing even if we constrain our evidence to only Dryden’s own written comments about the poem.

The story of Lord Dorset finding Paradise Lost neglected in a bookseller’s stall, and Dryden’s subsequent endorsement of the poem, is an example of what I’ve earlier termed the “heroic narratives” of Paradise Lost’s reception. In these formulations, the poem was neglected upon publication (and Milton, consequently, is often described as having been taken advantage of by Simmons’s terms for the purchase of the poem), but the poem’s rediscovery by Dorset and Dryden quickly catapults it to the status of a “classic.” These narratives remain attractive to Milton scholars because they suggest that the poem’s greatness was such that it quickly overcame any obstacles to its reception. They are “heroic” in the way they suppose that the poem’s inherent, superlative qualities quickly rose above prejudice toward Milton and his reviled Interregnum politics. At the same time, however, these narratives suppress much of the controversy surrounding Milton’s Restoration reputation and the poem. Dryden is often credited with spurring this rapid rise to respectability by having given the poem his stamp of approval through his pronouncement to Dorset (as reported by Richardson) and by his providing the epigram beneath Milton’s portrait in the 1688 Folio. This chapter will complicate this tale as it reevaluates Dryden’s conflicted relationship to Milton and his poem. As Marvell’s snide reference to Dryden and his rhyming of Paradise Lost shows, the three men had taken very different paths following Cromwell’s funeral procession, and in the Restoration they no longer marched in step – if ever they had.

The difficulty of trying to nail down Dryden’s influence on the reception of Paradise Lost is of a piece with Dryden’s studied ambiguity more generally in politics, religion, and literary criticism. As he himself puts it in the Epistle Dedicatory to 1668’s Of Dramatick Poesie:

Sometimes, like a Schollar in a Fencing-School, I put forth myself, and show my own ill play, on purpose to be better taught. Sometimes I stand desperately to my Armes, like the Foot when deserted by their Horse, not in hope to overcome, but only to yield on more honorable termes.⁸

When Dryden plays poorly, he does so on purpose. When he sticks to a position, he does so only as an exercise. He carefully establishes plausible deniability for every opinion he puts forth – something that may explain his ability to appear in a different light to different scholars. A clever strategy in the preface of the Essay, where Dryden will ventriloquize many differing viewpoints, this rhetorical approach takes on a different valence when one is trying to determine Dryden’s attitude toward Paradise Lost based on the complex and often contradictory ways in which he engaged with the poem.

Any attempt to parse Dryden’s critiques of Paradise Lost must start with his rhymed adaptation, The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man. It is here where the complexity of Dryden’s attitude toward Milton and his epic begins to become most obvious. Vinton Dearing captured the paradox when he observed that The State of Innocence presents readers with a “curious mixture of admiration and rejection.”⁹ What admiration for Milton is to be found in Dryden’s poem, beyond the cliché that imitation is a form of flattery, must be located mostly in the preface where Dryden makes his perfunctory bows toward the original author. Accordingly, although the preface (“The Author’s Apology for Heroick Poetry, and Poetick Licence”) to The State of Innocence is Dryden’s first explicit treatment of Milton in his critical writings, vigilant readers must weigh it with a full awareness that its reverence toward Milton may be more obligatory and polite than genuine.

“The Author’s Apology,” prefacing The State of Innocence is in many ways a typical prefatory performance of authorial modesty:

[T]ruly, I should be sorry, for my own sake, that any one should take the pains to compare them together, the Original being undoubtedly one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime POEMS, which either this Age or Nation has produc’d.¹⁰

Taken at face value, this is one of the most positive characterizations of Milton’s poem that Dryden would make in print and it resonates with Richardson’s report detailing Dryden’s esteem for the poem. In addition, it has been credited as being the first printed association of Paradise Lost with sublimity. However, before examining Dryden’s critique in the preface and in his adaptation of the poem itself, it is prudent to consider the paratextual materials that precede it in the first printing of The State of Innocence.

The framing apparatus printed with The State of Innocence includes not only “The Author’s Apology” but also a dedication “To Her Royal Highness The Dutchess” and Nathaniel Lee’s commendatory poem “To Mr. Dryden on his Poem of PARADICE.” The dedication places Dryden’s work (in stark contrast to Milton’s original) firmly in the courtly conventions of patronage and courtly compliment. Dryden tells the Duchess of York: “I have already wav’d the Subject of your Greatness, to resign my self to the Contemplation of what is more peculiarly Yours. Greatness is indeed communicated to some few of both Sexes; but Beauty is confin’d to a more narrow compass.”¹¹ The dedication that follows continually circles back to Mary of Modena’s physical beauty and finally explicitly links her to Dryden’s portrayal of Eve:

Your Person is a Paradise, and Your Soul a Cherubin within to guard it. Moral Perfections are rais’d higher by You in the Softer Sex; as if Men were of too course a Mould for Heaven to work on, and that the Image of Divinity could not be cast to likeness in so harsh a Metal. Your person is so admirable, that it can scarce receive Addition when it shall be glorify’d; and your Soul, which shines through it, finds it of a Substance so near her own, that she will be pleas’d to pass an Age within it, and to be confin’d to such a Palace.¹²

The Duchess’s beautiful, physical body is a “Paradise” while her soul guards and resides reveling in that beauty, elevating Mary’s physical beauty as the more important of these two aspects. According to Dryden’s panegyric, the Duchess’s beauty in the flesh approximates the beauty of her soul and is so near perfection it will gain little by being “glorify’d” after death. Finally, Dryden suggests that Mary’s beauty holds an absolute sway over those who see her: “You have subverted (may I dare to accuse you of it) even our Fundamental Laws; and Reign absolute over the hearts of a stubborn and Free-born people tenacious almost to madness of their Liberty.” In a paratext preceding a work based on Milton’s Paradise Lost, it should give us pause to find physical beauty valued above the virtue of a soul, and to find the author suggesting beauty can subvert England to absolute rule, even if it is couched in the language of playful courtship and patronage conventions. Indeed, because of echoes and resemblances in the text of the opera that follows, it is tempting and perhaps not unwarranted to use the values put forth in this dedication as a key for reading the opera. Dryden’s rapturous pursuit of the theme of Mary’s physical beauty as the quality most uniquely hers cannot help but influence our reading of his Eve, who has been characterized as a Restoration coquette. As Dearing quipped, “if Milton’s Eve is Pamela, Dryden’s is Shamela.”¹³ The dedication, so unlike anything ever penned by Milton, manages to subvert the epic and Milton’s poetic and political career before we even approach the opera itself.

Nathaniel Lee’s poem, “To Mr. Dryden, on his Poem of PARADICE,” precedes and also undercuts Dryden’s praise of Milton in the “Apology.” If Dryden’s dedication might be read as a subtle key to the value inversions between Paradise Lost and State of Innocence, Lee’s commendatory poem makes explicit the implicit critiques of Paradise Lost in The State of Innocence as he explains Dryden’s project in clear terms:

To the dead Bard your Fame a little owes,

For Milton did the wealthy Mine disclose,

And rudely cast what you well dispose.

He roughly drew, on an old-fashion’d Ground,

A Chaos; for no perfect World was found,

‘Till through the Heap your mighty Genius shin’d;

His was the Golden Ore, which you refined.¹⁴

In Lee’s laudatory description, Dryden not only imitates Milton, but he also improves Milton in a manner analogous to God’s ordering of the universe and encroachment on the reign of Chaos and “Old Night” in Paradise Lost. What was “rough” and “old-fashion’d” in Milton’s poem is now smooth and fashionable in Dryden’s opera. While Milton worked with gold, Lee claims it was unrefined until Dryden reworked it, and (in another sense of “refine,” present along with the metallurgical meaning) made it suitable for court culture. Lee emphasizes this aspect of Dryden’s reworking (correction) of Milton’s poem as he continues:

He first beheld the Beauteous rustick Maid,

And to a Place of Strength the Prize convey’d;

You took her thence, to Court this Virgin brought,

Drest her with Gems, new weav’d her hard-spun Thought,

And softest Language, sweetest Manners taught:

‘Till from a Comet she a Star did rise,

Not to affright; but to please our wondering Eyes.¹⁵

Lee suggests that Milton’s poem (collapsed into a feminine construct that seems to represent both Eve and the entire epic at once), despite being “Beauteous” was “rustick” and thus unfit for courtly life. Dryden, through his reworking of the poem’s plot and his use of fashionable rhyme, dressed up Milton’s creation and brought her to court newly bedazzled in sparkling gems. Lee’s formulation suggests Dryden accomplished a feat that would have turned Milton in his grave. Paradise Lost/Eve is transformed from Milton’s serious accomplishment (a deliberate evolution of the epic form) into an entertainment that resembles a Restoration actress tricked out in gems and brought to court. Paradise Lost’s Eve has become pretty Nell Gwyn preening for her lover, the King. Furthermore, Lee is not coy about the political motivation for this transformation. In his formulation, Dryden took what was a “Comet” in Milton (frightening, especially to monarchs as such an apparition “shakes pestilence and war” from its “horrid hair”) and makes it a benign and pleasing “Star.”¹⁶ Should there be any doubt about the implicit political judgments here, one need only note that Lee ends his praise of the opera with an exhortation that Dryden next employ his pen in even more explicitly political projects. Now that Dryden has vanquished the “Melancholly” of Milton, Lee charges him:

Monarch of Verse, new Themes employ thy Pen;

The Troubles of Majestick CHARLES set down:

Not David vanguish’d more to reach a Crown.

Praise Him, as Cowley did that Hebrew King,

Thy Theme’s as great, do thou as greatly sing.¹⁷

Lee’s poem, while couched in the typical hyperbolic mode of praise to a friend or patron, goes beyond these to suggest that Dryden’s adaptation was necessary to make Paradise Lost acceptable for Restoration court culture. Lee correctly identifies Dryden’s work as a political revision and critique of Milton’s poem.

Much has been made of Dryden’s oft-quoted praise of Paradise Lost from the “Apology” introduced above, but it is important, I think, to recall that readers would likely have read Lee’s poem prior to encountering Dryden’s modesty in the “Apology” and his characterization of Paradise Lost as the “greatest, most noble, and most sublime” of poems. As tempting as it may be to use this as evidence for Dryden’s true appreciation of the relative merits of his work and Milton’s, the statement is enmeshed in conventional early-modern and Restoration protests about the circumstances leading to the publication of Dryden’s poem. Dryden modestly complains that he wouldn’t have published The State of Innocence but to lay it at the feet of the Dutchess; however, he was finally forced to publish it because “many hundred Copies of it” had been “dispers’d abroad, without my Knowledge, or Consent,” and these copies were so faulty that the poem had become a “Libel against” Dryden’s poetic prowess.¹⁸ These are the typical remonstrances found in prefaces of the time – going by the evidence of authorial prefaces, one would be hard-pressed to publish a poem in the Restoration unless one’s friends had importuned upon one to do so or some other such nonsense “forced” one to publish.

Dryden even takes care in the “Apology” to respond with affected embarrassment to Lee’s prefatory poem: “And tho’ I could not refuse the Partiality of my Friend, who is pleas’d to commend me in his Verses, I hope they will rather be esteem’d the effect of his Love to me, then of his deliberate and sober Judgment. His Genius is able to make beautiful what he pleases.”¹⁹ What this modest objection reveals, however, is that Lee’s poem was an authorially sanctioned part of the volume’s printing and presentation. Dryden could have refused Lee’s “partiality,” but it instead seems likely he [Dryden] had a hand in the verses and welcomed an exposition of his intent and method that freed him from risking an appearance of hubris or disrespect toward Milton if he himself explained his project. Even in the “Apology,” Dryden’s humble downplaying of the sentiment in Lee’s verses is undercut by his immediate defense of them: “I doubt not but he [Lee] will hear of his Kindness from many of our Contemporaries: For we are fallen into an Age of Illiterate, Censorious, and Detracting People; who thus qualify’d, set up for Criticks.”²⁰ Thus readers are told what to think of people who disagree with Lee’s versification and with his high estimation of Dryden’s State of Innocence in comparison to Paradise Lost.

Dryden’s “Apology” then launches into a discourse on the nature of criticism itself, relying heavily on Longinus to defend a poet who reaches for the sublime and yet sometimes fails to reach it. Contrary to what the “illiterate, censorious” critics might say, poets who reach but fall short are to be preferred over those who take a less risky way. Here, and in his defense of “Heroick Poetry,” Dryden has one eye on critics of Milton while most of his concern is to counter critics of his own adaptation. Finding critics at home “illiterate, censorious and detracting,” Dryden looks beyond English shores to find models of apt criticism and proper approval for epic:

’Tis worth our consideration … how much these Hyper-criticks of English Poetry, differ from the Opinion of the Greek and Latin Judges of Antiquity, from the Italians and French who have succeeded them; and indeed, from the general Taste and Approbation of all Ages.²¹

Snubbing the unappreciative and ill-qualified “hyper-critics” of his own nation, Dryden names French and Italian critics as heirs to the tradition of Aristotle and Horace, praising in particular Boileau and Rapin (“the latter of which is alone sufficient, were all other Criticks lost, to teach anew the Rules of Writing”).²² Invoking these French critics to testify to the superiority of the heroic genre, Dryden seeks to justify not Milton’s epic, but his own “heroic” plays as well as The State of Innocence.

In 1935, P.S. Havens undertook a defense of The State of Innocence and Fall of Man. Taking Dryden’s protestations of his reluctance to publish at face value, Havens goes so far as to characterize Dryden’s reworking of Milton as “humble.”

[T]he assumption that Dryden’s The State of Innocence is an impertinent attempt to beat Milton at his own game is unwarranted. The play was a very humble attempt, if anything, to test certain opinions which Dryden held, and it was set before the world in all reluctance.²³

Havens’ generous opinion hinges on his belief that the State of Innocence, read in light of Dryden’s preface (for “every student of Dryden knows that the prefaces must be studied in light of the plays and the plays in light of the prefaces”) demonstrates that Dryden was using his work upon The State of Innocence as an experiment that would help him complete a future project. “Dryden,” explains Havens, “had another important purpose in mind in re-working Paradise Lost – that of preparing himself for the writing of the great epic which he long contemplated but never produced.”²⁴ Let us set aside for a moment Lee’s authorized prefatory poem, which leads one to at least suspect that Dryden’s opera was an attempt to improve Milton’s original for Restoration audiences and the court. Let us also set aside Havens’ exhortation that “it should be recalled at the outset that Dryden held Milton in the highest esteem,” an opinion Havens bolsters by referring to the epigram Dryden contributed to the 1688 folio and the “many times in his prose writing Dryden … expressed his admiration for Paradise Lost and its author.”²⁵ The remainder of this chapter will answer these claims in due course. Haven’s argument that Dryden was using The State of Innocence as practice for his own epic usefully amplifies how Dryden’s revision serves as a critique of Milton’s employment of epic.

In the “Apology” we find Dryden defending “heroique poetry” or epic from the Restoration preference for dramatic tragedy. He acknowledges the current preference for tragedy even as he claims that those who prefer it to epic do so because they cannot understand epic.

Heroique Poetry, which they [English critics] contemn, has ever been esteem’d, and ever will be, the greatest work of humane Nature …. I do not dispute the preference of Tragedy; let every Man enjoy his tast: but ’tis unjust, that they who have not the least notion of Heroique writing, should therefore condemn the pleasure which others receive from it, because they cannot comprehend it.²⁶

This defense of epic invites us to consider The State of Innocence’s relationship to epic, drama, and tragedy. The Stationers’ Register entry of April 17, 1674, names The State of Innocence “An heroick opera,” and the first edition title page calls it “An Opera. Written in Heroique Verse.” Dryden refers to it as an opera in the “Apology.” Dearing suggests that one should “regard The State of Innocence as another of Dryden’s experiments in dramatic structure.”²⁷ James Winn has suggested that in The State of Innocence we see Dryden “testing the capacity of opera to accommodate serious content, and studying the differences between heroic drama and heroic poetry.”²⁸ However, the other way to understand Dryden’s rewriting of Paradise Lost is that he sought to correct what he saw as Milton’s mistake of genre. In this reading, The State of Innocence is not in fact an epic adapted to the stage, but instead reimagines Paradise Lost as a dramatic tragedy, because Dryden’s primary critique of the poem was that it was not, in fact, an epic. In the process, Dryden creates a work more suited to the tastes of the Restoration and the court.

Dryden’s rewriting of Eve, much remarked upon by readers of the opera from Nathaniel Lee until today, demonstrates Dryden’s reworking of Paradise Lost’s genre as well as his attunement to Restoration culture. This is perhaps most evident in how the foreshadowing flirtation with narcissism in Eve’s relation of her birth narrative in Paradise Lost becomes instead the defining hallmark of her character in Dryden’s version. Dryden’s Eve is at once an exemplar of Restoration coquetry, while also becoming a repository for the poet’s most misogynistic tendencies. Upon meeting Adam, Dryden’s Eve exclaims with admirable honesty and unbridled narcissism, “Yet pleas’d I hear thee, and above the rest; / I, next my self, admire and love thee best” (II.iii.44–4). Dryden’s Eve seems fully versed in Restoration courting rituals, explaining to Adam that “some restraining thought, I know not why, / Tells me, you long should beg, I long deny” (II.iii.54–5). As she eventually acquiesces to a relationship with Adam, the language of commercial exchange dominates her description of the arrangement. Eve exchanges her “sovereignty” in return for Adam agreeing to be her “defense,” promising that in recompense she will be his “delight.” Ultimately, unlike in Paradise Lost, Dryden’s Eve appears to define her role in primarily sexual terms:

Heav’n from whence Love (our greatest Blessing) came,

Can give no more, but still to be the same.

Thou more of pleasure may’st with me partake;

I, more of pride, because thy bliss I make.

(III.i.27–30)

Not only does Eve define her worth solely in terms of the pleasure she brings Adam, but she also proposes a sort of static (“still to be the same”), erotically charged, Paradise that smacks of Spenser’s bower of bliss, or the similar bower Dalilia suggests she can provide for the blind Samson in Samson Agonistes.²⁹ This change lowers what is at stake in Dryden’s Eden when compared to Milton’s, a decidedly non-static Paradise where Adam and Eve learn there is potential for humans to eventually ascend through right contemplation. Once Dryden’s Eve has pledged her fealty to Adam and promised to find her pleasure only in giving him pleasure, she then goes on to extol (within Lucifer’s earshot) the joys of sexual bliss experienced with Adam. Not unremarkably, this is followed shortly by Lucifer’s contemplation of his power to rape Eve, suggesting that he could “Enjoy and blast her, in the act of love” (III.i.95). The lesser nature of Dryden’s Eve compared to Milton’s may be simply a result of Dryden’s having been in tune with Restoration expectations of stage “heroines,” and the market for them. She is not so different from the women portrayed in his other dramatic works, or for that matter many of the female roles on the Restoration stage. And yet, the transformation of Eve has a significant impact on the nature of the Fall in The State of Innocence.

In Paradise Lost one might regard Eve’s desire to garden separately and her eagerness to attempt an individual stand against temptation as a reasonable result of her having listened to Raphael’s description of Abdiel’s praiseworthy single combat against Satan and his host. In Dryden’s version, however, Eve only learns about the threat of Satan secondhand from Adam (unlike in Paradise Lost, she is excluded from the angelic conversation, and Milton’s unique story of Abdiel’s stand is omitted entirely from Dryden’s opera). In Paradise Lost, confronted with Adam’s resistance to working apart, Eve asks reasonably about the relationship of security and freedom as well as that of virtue and trial.

And what is faith, love, virtue, unassayed

Alone, without exteriour help sustained?

Let us not then suspect our happy state

Left so imperfect by the Maker wise,

As not secure to single or combined.

Frail is our happiness, if this be so,

And Eden were no Eden, thus exposed.

(9.335–41)

This, Eve’s argument in Paradise Lost, and her desire for an opportunity to prove her merit through trial, echoes Milton’s depiction of virtue in Areopagitica.

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.

(YP 2.515)

Furthermore, Areopagitica provides Milton’s explanation of how the prohibition against the tree of knowledge of good and evil in Paradise Lost allowed the operation of free will by being an active temptation placed in front of agents free to disobey the arbitrary rule against it.

Many there be that complain of divin Providence for suffering Adam to transgresse, foolish tongues! when God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had bin else a meer artificiall Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions. We our selves esteem not of that obedience, or love, or gift, which is of force: God therefore left him free, set before him a provoking object, ever almost in his eyes; herein consisted his merit, herein the right of his reward, the praise of his abstinence.

(YP 2.527)

Dryden’s Adam – despite his prelapsarian state – becomes one of those “foolish tongues” who would complain that God allowed the fall despite his foreknowledge. In Dryden’s longest and most original addition to the plot, at the outset of Act Four, Adam disputes with his angelic messengers about the possibility of free will and the problem of evil. After having first argued that free will is not compatible with foreknowledge, Adam finally concludes freewill (even if possible) is an unwelcome gift and suggests constraint would be better than freedom.

Hard state of life! since Heav’n fore-knows my will,

Why am I not ty’d up from doing ill?

Why am I trusted with my self at large,

When he’s more able to sustain the charge?

Since Angels fell, whose strength was more than mine,

’Twould show more grace my frailty to confine.

Fore-knowing the success, to leave me free,

Excuses him, and yet supports not me.

(IV.i.113–20)

Immediately following Adam’s accusation against God, Dryden’s Eve unknowingly highlights and pushes on Adam’s conflicted beliefs about free will as she makes her argument about gardening separately. Retaining the echo of Areopagitica found in Paradise Lost, Dryden’s Eve reproves Adam and demonstrates a superior understanding of how free will is necessary to gain merit and true happiness in Eden (and marriage).

ADAM. I would not; why would’st thou, then, be alone?

EVE. Because thus warn’d, I know my self secure,

And long my little trial to endure:

T’ approve my faith; thy needless fears remove;

Gain thy esteem, and so deserve thy love.

If all this shake not thy obdurate will,

Know that, ev’n present, I am absent still:

And then what pleasure hop’st thou in my stay

When I’m constrain’d, and wish my self away?

ADAM. Constraint does ill with love and beauty sute;

I would persuade; but not be absolute.

Better be much remiss than too severe;

If pleas’d in absence thou wilt still be here:

Go; in thy native innocence proceed,

And summon all thy reason at thy need.

EVE. My Soul, my eyes delight; in this I find

Thou lov’st; because to love is to be kind. Embracing him

Seeking my trial, I am still on guard:

Tryals less sought, would find us less prepar’d.

(IV.i.176–194)

Adam, having earlier in the same scene unsuccessfully argued against free will, can hardly effectively counter Eve’s arguments that echo the angelic. It is of note here that Dryden has reassigned a line from Adam to Eve (“know that even present, I am absent still…”) for in Paradise Lost it is Adam who relents and tells Eve to go, “thy stay, not free, absents thee more” (9.372).

The argument over gardening separately highlights an inversion in The State of Innocence – it is Eve rather than Adam who understands instinctually the necessity of free will and trial for meaningful merit or goodness to exist. Dryden’s Adam, on the other hand, remains baffled by the paradox between free will and the problem of evil, asserting that humankind would be “better constrain’d to good, than free to ill” (IV.i.104). This is a stark contrast to Paradise Lost where Adam demonstrates an inherently Miltonic understanding of merit, of the relationship between free will, security, and happiness when he tells Eve that constraint would be a greater evil than risk and temptation. In Dryden’s revision of the first marital argument, Adam allows Eve’s departure because of uxoriousness, not because of an appreciation of how merit works. Alone, as Eve strikes off to face whatever temptations or foe lurks in the garden, Dryden’s Adam complains once again about the way his world has been ordered.

ADAM. In love, what use of prudence can there be?

More perfect I, and yet more pow’rful she.

Blame me not, Heav’n if thou love’s pow’r had’st try’d,

What could be so unjust to be deny’d?

One look of hers my resolution breaks;

Reason it self turns folly when she speaks:

And aw’d by her whom it was made to sway,

Flatters her pow’r, and does its own betray.

(IV.i.197–204)

This characterization of the relationship of Adam and Eve in Dryden is critical as he adjusts Paradise Lost from epic to tragic.

In The State of Innocence, Adam’s prideful refusal to acknowledge the goodness of free will (becoming what Milton called a “foolish tongue” complaining about God) and his uxoriousness set him up as the tragic hero of the drama. As Havens noted,

Dryden … did know, with a surer instinct in this respect than that which Milton finally followed, that the dramatic form is better suited to a tragic theme than the epic form. Consequently, Dryden ousts the devil as even a remote candidate for the position of hero and substitutes Adam, whom he creates in the Aristotelian pattern of one more good than evil, who, through a flaw in his own character, brings about his own downfall.³⁰

If we read The State of Innocence as an attempt by Dryden correct Milton’s mistake of genre and rewrite the epic as tragedy, the revision of Adam and the introduction of these tragic flaws of pride and uxoriousness (if present much more muted in Paradise Lost) is a key movement in this direction.

The State of Innocence actualizes Dryden’s criticisms of Paradise Lost by correcting and supplanting Milton’s epic with a fashionable tragic drama. Given the status of the two works today, it may seem contrarian to suggest that this was successful, but Restoration readers provide evidence that it was far from a failure. Based on the sheer number of editions, The State of Innocence far outsold Paradise Lost through the end of the century. It is not too much of a stretch to characterize Dryden’s opera as an opening salvo in a struggle to negotiate the acceptance or suppression of Milton’s poem, a struggle that was never unconcerned with politics even as it seemed rooted in what appears to be the neutral territory of genre criticism. To supplant Milton’s problematic epic with Dryden’s “more proper” form would suppress Milton’s politics along with his poem as Dryden marched along in step to the changing tides of Restoration court culture.

While Restoration quibbles about genre may appear somewhat esoteric from this distance, dissatisfaction with the genre of Milton’s poem commenced immediately, as evidenced by Dryden’s revision. Prompting decades of discussion, Restoration concerns with Paradise Lost’s very identification as an epic and its execution of epic conventions signify more than some arcane exercise in literary categorization. As with those concerning the poem’s blank verse, critiques of the poem’s genre served as coded engagements with the poem’s politics. Just as rhyme was the poetic equivalent of bowing to Restoration court fashion, so too could genre have political meaning. The most famous near-contemporary pronouncement on Paradise Lost’s genre was Thomas Rymer’s early (and ever unfulfilled) promise to expose Paradise Lost’s shortcomings as epic. In 1678, as Dryden’s revision of the poem as a tragedy circulated in print, Rymer hinted ominously that he had sussed out a genre problem with Milton’s work so serious that he couldn’t classify Paradise Lost an epic. Rymer’s unfulfilled promise, in his The Tragedies of the Last Age Considered, was to provide “some reflections on that Paradise lost of Milton’s, which some are pleas’d to call a Poem.”³¹ Even though the remark was barely an aside in Rymer’s critical work, the comment was well-known throughout Restoration literary circles, and we’ll find it looming in the background of quite a few engagements with the poem. John Dennis would complain to Steele and Barton Booth that “Mr. Rymer in his first Book of Criticism treated the Paradise Lost with Contempt.”³² Quite recently, as we’ve noted in previous chapters, none other than John Dryden has been given credit for protecting Milton from Rymer’s criticism. Most striking is the claim by Earl Miner and the editors of the 2004 variorum of critical commentary on Paradise Lost that among the poem’s early readers:

One threatening voice was heard, that of Thomas Rymer, who proposed to demolish the poem with the assumptions of the latest French theory. (The more some things change …) But Dryden out-maneuvered him.³³

In this formulation, Dryden outmaneuvered Rymer and staved off the “latest French theory” the latter would have brandished against Paradise Lost. This statement is among the best evidence demonstrating how Richardson’s account, despite being such belated hearsay, has long wielded outsized influence for scholars assessing Dryden’s relationship to Milton. Like Richardson proclaiming in 1734 that after Dorset sent the poem to Dryden the “book was now fallen into Good hands,” in the formulation of Miner et al., Dryden stood firmly between the poem and its detractors. At the risk of sounding a bit too much like John Dennis or Richard Bentley, we might ask just how good were the hands that immediately set out to “tag Milton’s points” and produce The State of Innocence.

Examining Dryden’s earliest responses to Paradise Lost, we continually find him as a great critic of its language and genre, as a threatening voice in its own right that caused countless maneuvers and counter-maneuvers within the young field of literary criticism growing around the poem. Although Dryden’s “Apology” did not explicitly state Dryden’s doubts about the genre of Milton’s poem, his rewriting clearly participates in that conversation, and in fact did more violence to it than Rymer’s more cryptic and ever-pending critique.

One of the few contemporaries to explicitly note Dryden’s rough treatment of Paradise Lost was John Dennis. In 1719, Dennis was angry that his tragedy, an adaptation of Coriolanus entitled The Invader of His Country, had been postponed by Richard Steele and the managers of the Drury Lane Theater. Dennis didn’t take such things well. As was his usual practice, he fired off several caustic letters to Steele and Barton Booth to make sure they were fully aware of the neglect and abuse he had endured at their hands. There are four of these letters, but the one that most interests us now is the third in the series, addressing Booth as Judas Iscariot, Esquire, and entitled somewhat hyperbolically, “On the Degeneracy of the Publick Taste.” Why, Dennis asks, should the managers of the Drury Lane cater to a public who would “damn Shakespeare, if living” and would even treat Milton the same way?³⁴ Milton’s poor treatment and neglect in his own time is the best illustration Dennis (who as we’ll see in due course, almost always has Milton in mind) can muster of the public’s capriciousness. Dennis introduces as testimony on Milton’s behalf the fact that Dryden, in his Apology prefacing to The State of Innocence, had been the first to publicly exclaim an “extraordinary opinion of Milton’s extraordinary Merit.” Yet, Dennis is quick to qualify this, adding that Dryden once confessed to him that at the time he wrote The State of Innocence he “knew not half the Extent of [Milton’s] excellence.” Dennis editorializes this anecdote with what one can only imagine is a smirk that this “is pretty plain from [Dryden’s] writing The State of Innocence.” Dennis wryly goes on to propose that Dryden’s operatic adaptation of Paradise Lost demonstrates one of two things about Dryden:

either that Mr. Dryden knew not the extent of Milton’s great qualities, or that he design’d to be a Foil to him. But they who knew Mr. Dryden, know very well, that he was not of a Temper to design to be a Foil to any one.³⁵

As he continues his dissection of a “publick taste” so degenerate that it does not clamor for more of his own plays, Dennis also expresses indignation that the Italians recognized Milton’s greatness well before the English – in fact, well before Milton wrote Paradise Lost. He notes as evidence Selvaggi’s epigram in the 1645 Poems and again he can’t resist another editorial comment revealing his suspicion of Dryden’s Milton criticism, proclaiming “Dryden’s epigram which is under Milton’s picture is nothing but a paraphrase” of the Italian’s.³⁶ First appearing in the 1688 Tonson folio beneath the engraving of Milton, Dryden’s epigram runs:

Three poets, in three distant ages born,

Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.

The first in loftiness of thought surpassed;

The next in majesty; in both the last.

The force of nature could no further go:

To make a third she joined the former two.

Selvaggi’s Latin epigram from the 1645 Poems is translated: “Let Greece boast, if she will, of Maeonia’s son, let Rome boast to herself of Maro! England boasts of Milton, in his one self full match for the other two combined.”³⁷ In the same edition of the Poems, just above Selvaggi’s epigram in the “Testimonia,” Dryden would also have found another, by Giovanni Salsilli:

An Epigram, by Giovanni Salsilli, a Roman

On John Milton, Englishman, who deserves a

Coronal fashioned of the triple laurel of

Poesy

– Greek, Latin, and Italian.

Yield, Meles, yield; let Mincius, too, lowering his urn, Yield; let Sebetus cease to have Tasso forever on his tongue. But let the Thames, victor now, sweep on with billows o’ertopping those of every other stream, for, thanks to you, Milton, he will be, in his single self, full match for the other three.³⁸

Ever perceptive, Dennis is quick to note that even Dryden’s most noteworthy and unambiguous published praise of Milton’s genius is not necessarily Dryden’s own sentiment. If Dennis seems unduly dismissive of Dryden’s “paraphrase” of Selvaggi, it is likely because he is passing judgment upon not just this epigram, but upon Dryden’s general treatment of Milton, finding it lacking in genuine respect for both the poem and the author. As we shall see, Dennis had no sympathy for those who failed to respect Milton as the preeminent modern poet.

Enmeshed in an argument about what was fit for the stage and about the nature of tragedy, Dennis’s skeptical treatment of Dryden’s Milton criticism demonstrates an early attempt to undercut a version of the “heroic” narrative giving Dryden a key role in discovering the poem and suggests how Dryden’s politically charged genre-criticism shaped early responses to Paradise Lost. To fully explore this beyond the implications of The State of Innocence, one must revisit Dryden’s scattered pronouncements on the poem to let Dryden’s published Milton criticism speak for itself.

Typical of Dryden, particularly the Dryden who compares himself to a fencing scholar remaining purposely noncommittal, his most direct statements about the genre of Paradise Lost – after the indirect critique provided by his revision of the poem in The State of Innocence – are enmeshed in backhanded compliments to Milton in the 1693 Discourse of Satire prefacing Dryden’s Juvenal:

As for Mr. Milton, whom we all admire with so much Justice, his Subject is not that of an Heroique Poem; properly so call’d: His Design is the Losing of our Happiness; his Event is not prosperous, like that of all other Epique Works: His Heavenly Machines are many, and his Humane Persons are but two. But I will not take Mr. Rymer’s Work out of his Hands. He has promis’d the World a Critique on that Author; wherein, tho’ he will not allow his Poem for Heroick, I hope he will grant us, that his Thoughts are elevated, his Words Sounding, and that no Man has so happily Copy’d the manner of Homer; or so copiously translated his Grecisms, and the Latin Elegancies of Virgil.

(IV, 14–15)

This is the core of Dryden’s written critique of Milton, and we find it reformulated elsewhere in his work without much modification. While 1693 may seem “late” in response to Paradise Lost, despite the 1688 Tonson folio, Milton had not escaped his interregnum reputation, nor would he for some years. We’ve already encountered Joseph Addison’s 1694 repudiation of Paradise Lost as corrupted by Milton’s earlier political prose. Dryden’s complaint that the poem was not an epic because its “event is not prosperous” provoked some responses in Milton’s defense but also undermined attempts (such as Dennis’s) to use Milton as a champion for the moderns in the ongoing conflict with the ancients. One way around the difficulty posed by Dryden, of course, was to redefine the hero of the poem (and thus reinterpret the conclusion). We’ve seen how Dryden manages this by turning Adam into the tragic hero of The State of Innocence. Dryden later explains the need for this in his 1697 Dedication of the Aeneis. After the Iliad, The Aeneid, and Jerusalem Delivered, Dryden proposes that to protect the sanctity of epic:

some Lord Chamberlain should be appointed, some critic of authority should be set before the door to keep out a crowd of little poets, who press for admission, and are not of quality.³⁹

Of these so-called “little poets,” who “are not of quality” (with some overtones of class distinctions as well as critical judgment) Dryden speaks at length only of two: Spenser and Milton. Spenser, he says, would have been admitted had he finished the Faerie Queene and if it had a unified action. “And Milton” would have been admitted to the ranks of epic poets

if the Devil had not been his Heroe instead of Adam, if the Gyant had not foil’d the Knight, and driven him out of his strong hold, to wander through the World with his Lady Errant: and if there had not been more Machining Persons than Humane, in his Poem.⁴⁰

Dryden’s suggestion here that Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost illustrates his opinion of the poem’s faultiness as epic (the giant foils the knight). Milton is thus classed among the “little poets” who should be denied entry into the great roles of epic poets. How far we’ve come from the sentiments in Dryden’s 1688 epigram that matches Milton with Homer and Virgil!

In 1674 (The State of Innocence), 1693 (Discourse of Satire), and 1697 (Aeneis) then, far from “out-maneuvering” Rymer, Dryden sided with him to suggest that Paradise Lost is not an epic. These moments of clear critique leveled against Paradise Lost are not asides in a general approval of Milton or a hardening in Dryden’s old age. Instead, they are of a piece with his treatment of Milton from The State of Innocence onward. They resonated in their time. As we shall see in the chapters to follow, Dryden’s criticism of Milton provided ammunition to those who would follow and served as example for those who would sanitize the poem’s controversial political-religious content.

As for those French theories that Dryden supposedly staved off as threats to Milton, Dryden’s relationship with them is more complicated than one might suppose. Even in the “Apology” to The State of Innocence, Dryden nods in their direction as better alternatives to English critiques and in particular singles out Boileau and Rapin. It should not be surprising then that in the early 1680s Dryden was directly involved in translating Nicolas Boileau’s Art of Poetry with William Soames. Tonson relates in the Fourth Miscellany (1694) that Soames completed the translation in 1680 and afterwards gave it to Dryden for revision, that he “saw the manuscript lye in Mr. Dryden’s Hands for above Six Months,” and that the poet made “very considerable Alterations in it.” According to Tonson, it was Dryden who thought “it would be better to apply the Poem to English Writers, than keep the French Names” and the printer assures us that this was “entirely done by Mr. Dryden.”⁴¹ It having been Dryden’s role to English the translation, it is curious that it doesn’t name Milton. This omission is particularly noticeable in the portion of the poem devoted to epic. Dryden apparently passed over in silence the long segment in which Boileau criticizes attempts to create a Christian epic.

In vain our mistaken authors tried

These ancient ornaments to lay aside;

Thinking our God, and prophets whom he sent,

Might act like those the poets did invent,

To fright poor readers in each line with Hell,

And talk of Satan, Ashtaroth, and Bel.⁴²

In Bolieau’s original, this is a criticism of Tasso. In a translation in which English exemplars have been used throughout, we might be excused if readers thought first of Milton here. It certainly resonates with Dryden’s other critiques of Milton. And if we wonder if Dryden’s critiques of Paradise Lost found purchase along with his praise we can look no farther than the 1695 translation of René Le Bossu’s Treatise on the Epick Poem. In his Preface the anonymous English translator accepts Dryden’s 1693 critique of Milton in his Discourse of Satire as a substitute for Rymer’s.

It were to be wish’d he [the “judicious Rymer”] had passed his Judgment on the famous Milton … but since he has wav’d saying any thing about him, till some other time, I shall crave leave to insert the Opinion of Dryden, a profess’d Poet, and as great a Judge of Poetry.⁴³

The translator then quotes Dryden’s claim from the Discourse of Satire (see above) that Paradise Lost was not an epic because its “event is not prosperous.” The translator follows up to suggest that in Dryden’s critique:

[o]ne may clearly perceive how far short [our English Poets] as well as their Neighbours have fell of the Excellencies and Perfections of Homer and Virgil.⁴⁴

Beyond serving as an example of how Dryden’s critiques of Milton were perceived by contemporaries, the translator’s enlistment of Dryden in Bossu’s Treatise explicitly highlights the political ramifications of genre in Restoration critical discussions. Bossu’s treatise includes an extended treatment of epic conclusions, exploring whether they “ought to leave the Heroe in a happy State, or whether tis allowable to leave him in a miserable condition.”⁴⁵ While on the whole Bossu doesn’t deem sad endings impossible, he knows of no “successful” examples and asserts that such endings are more proper for tragedy. Moreover, he links tragic endings explicitly to politics and anti-monarchical sentiment. He asserts:

Sad Conclusions are proper for Tragedy …. Because in the Popular States of Greece, where Monarchy was Odious, nothing was heard with greater Pleasure and Ardency than the Misfortunes of Kings.⁴⁶

The translator’s eagerness to use Dryden’s genre distinctions as a way to cast Paradise Lost out of the genre of epic and into the genre of tragedy clearly has political stakes here.

These genre critiques are all complicated, of course, by the fact that Paradise Lost had its genesis in tragedy and that its most popular episodes, during the long Restoration and beyond, seem to have been those that retained the most characteristics of drama. Dennis, ever ready to hedge his bets, recognized this and the fact that Milton left behind a tragedy (Samson Agonistes), turning both to his advantage in skirmishes with the Collierites who were attempting to shut down the Restoration theater. Dennis adroitly acknowledges the tragic features of Paradise Lost and yet redeems its politics by recalling the cathartic effect of theater. Thus, he claims in 1698’s The Usefulness of the Stage that it is most necessary for the English to be exposed to such sad conclusions because:

Drama, and particularly Tragedy … [are] instrumental in a peculiar manner to the Welfare of the English Government; because there is no People on the Face of the Earth so prone to Rebellion as the English, or so apt to quarrel amongst themselves.⁴⁷

Dennis turns the worries of Dryden and Bossu’s translator around; he makes what seemed a fatal weakness in Milton’s poem an instrumental strength uniquely suited to the English.

Far from outmaneuvering critics and saving Milton’s epic from threatening voices, Dryden’s rewriting of and pronouncements upon Paradise Lost prompted further critiques and necessitated answering defenses of the poem. Addison, reconciled with Milton’s poem by the time he published his influential 1712 Spectator essays on Paradise Lost, is haunted by Dryden at every turn. He begins his essays with the genteel Mr. Spectator beating an immediate retreat from the genre debate:

I shall waive the discussion of that point which was started some years since, whether Milton’s Paradise Lost may be called an heroic poem. Those who will not give it that title, may call it (if they please) a divine poem.⁴⁸

Despite this casual dismissal, Addison is at pains to answer Dryden’s doubts about the poem’s epic credentials throughout the essays. He cleverly suggests a better ratio of human characters to machining ones by counting prelapsarian Adam and Eve as different characters from those after the Fall. To answer Dryden’s complaint about the poem’s ending, he took two approaches. In the first place, he claimed that the poem’s hero was neither Adam nor Satan, but the Son – a figure completely missing from Dryden’s opera. And finally, perhaps betraying a bit of desperation, Addison suggested the final two lines ought to be omitted so that the poem would end on a “happier note” with: “The world was all before them, where to choose / Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.” A drastic measure, it seems, to answer concerns about the poem’s outcome.

Dryden’s Milton criticism, beginning with the State of Innocence and continuing throughout his scattered critical writings, responded to and energized pervasive Restoration worries about the poem and poet’s religious and political meaning. Dryden’s criticism, despite the later tradition that had him rescuing the poem from obscurity, is the start of a pattern of repressions and recoveries of Paradise Lost throughout the period. The critical dialog, the reactions, and the defenses that Dryden’s engagement with the poem incited from Peter Hume, John Dennis, Joseph Addison, and others not only aided in the poem’s survival but were instrumental in the further development of the very discipline of English literary criticism. Had the fight not been joined, had the political critiques of genre won out without answer – that would have been the saddest conclusion of all.

Notes

Thomas Burton, Esq. “Cromwell’s Death and Funeral Order,” in Diary of Thomas Burton Esq: Volume 2, April 1657 – February 1658, edited by John Towill Rutt (London: H Colburn, 1828), 516–530.

Ibid.

Ibid.

The provision for mourning cloth for “Mr. John Milton,” “Mr. Merville” (Marvell), and “Mr. Drayden” can be found in the State Papers Domestic, volume 182, number 90.

Edward Phillips reports Marvell “acted vigorously in his behalf, and made a considerable party for him.” See Phillips, “The Life of Mr. John Milton,” in The Early Lives of Milton, edited by Helen Darbishire, 49–82. Also see Barbara K. Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography, Blackwell Critical Biographies (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000), 398–405, for an account of Milton’s narrow escape from punishment and execution.

Darbishire, 7.

Ibid., 296.

Vinton A. Dearing (ed.), The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 17.5. (Berkeley: University of California Press). Available at Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (2015). Henceforth, I will refer to this edition of Dryden’s works as “California.”

Dearing, “Commentary,” California, 12.326.

California, 12.86.

California, 12.82.

California, 12.84.

California, 12.326.

Nathaniel Lee’s, “To Mr. Dryden, on his Poem of PARADICE” in the California Dryden (Volume 12) is also reproduced in part in John Shawcross, Milton: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1970), 83.

Ibid.

The comet description in Paradise Lost, 2.710-11, was one of the only passages that caught the attention of Paradise Lost’s licenser for its antimonarchical overtones.

Nathaniel Lee, “To Mr. Dryden, on his Poem of PARADICE.”

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., 86–87.

Ibid., 88.

Ibid., 89.

P. S. Havens, “Dryden’s ‘Tagged’ Version of Paradise Lost,” in The Parrott Presentation Volume, edited by Hardin Craig (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1935), 384.

Ibid.

Ibid.

California, 88.

Dryden, “The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man (1673–1674),” in The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 12: Plays; Amboyna; The State of Innocence; Aureng-Zeb, edited by Vinton A. Dearing. Published online: October 2015 https://www.oxfordscholarlyeditions.com/view/instance.00102632?milestones=79.

James Anderson Winn, John Dryden and His World (New Haven: Yale, 1987), 265. See also Havens, 384 and 392.

See Samson Agonistes, 920–929.

Havens, 385–386.

Thomas Rymer, “Tragedies of the Last Age,” in The Critical Works of Thomas Rymer, edited by Curt Zimansky (Westport: Greenwood Press), 76.

John Dennis, The Critical Works of John Dennis, Vol. 1, edited by Edward Niles Hooker (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1939), 2.169. Further references to Dennis’s critical writings will cite Hooker’s two volumes as Critical Works.

Miner et al., 17.

Dennis, Critical Works, 2.169.

Ibid.

Ibid., 170.

Dennis, Critical Works, 1.157.

Ibid.

California, 5.275.

Ibid., 276.

“The Annual Miscellany for the year 1694, being the fourth Part of Miscellany Poems” (London, 1694). Available on Early English Books Online.

Nicolas Boileau, Art of Poetry, William Soames, trans. (London, 1715), III.192-7.

“The Preface of the Translator” Monsieur Bossu’s treatise of the epick poem… (London, 1695). The preface and translation were done by one “W.J.” Available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Ibid.

See René Le Bossu, “Treatise of the Epick Poem” 1695, above. Book II, chapter XVIII.

Ibid.

Dennis, Critical Works, 1.167.

Joseph Addison, Spectator #267.

3 “So Bold in the Design”John Dennis and the Sublime Paradise Lost

DOI: 10.4324/9781003276395-4

A Man had need have a great deal of time upon his hands, who has leisure enough to Examine a Poet’s Politicks, or a Physician’s Religion.

– John Dennis, Remarks on a Book Entituled Prince Arthur, 1696¹

Queen’ Mary’s death in 1694 prompted an outpouring of elegy. Several Kit-Cat authors published such poems, including Dryden, Steele, Charles Montagu, William Congreve, Matthew Prior, and George Stepney. In fact, the onslaught of elegies commemorating the late Queen was so thick that an anonymous poem, The Mourning Poets, complained that the realm was inundated in “bulky heaps” of the stuff:

What bulky Heaps of doleful Rhyme I see!

Sure all the World runs mad with Elegy;

Lords, Ladies, Knights, Priests, Souldiers, Squires, Physicians,

Beaux, Lawyers, Merchants, Prentices, Musicians,

Play’rs, Footmen, Pedants, Scribes of all Conditions.²

John Dennis’s elegy, entitled The Court of Death, did not escape the notice by the author of this lampoon. In fact, the author of The Mourning Poets singles out Dennis for extended treatment, placing him after Congreve and Dryden, Peter Motteux, and Stepney, but before Tate and Wesley, all of whom he praises with a healthy dose of satire. His verses on Dennis are most marked by their caricature of Dennis’s “sublime” style as the author attempts to “praise” Dennis “in numbers like his own.”

Majestic Dennis next demands my Lays;

Soar, Muse, and strive thy feeble Flight to raise,

In Numbers, like his own, attempt his Praise.

Like Pindar, he, unutterably bold,

Burns like a raging Fire, and cannot be contrould.

Gods! With what State his daring Thoughts arise,

While with sonorous Wings he upwards flyes,

Till he seems lost above his darling Skies!

Some wondrous active Force informs the whole,

Each Word has Life, ev’ry Line a Soul.

Bold Pictures thus the help of Shades disclaim,

There all is Light, all Heat, all dazzles, all is Flame.

How shall I show his vast commanding Force!

His rapid Transports, and unequall’d Course!

His tow’ring Muse which scorns a human Flight!

But shines aloft, and blinds with too excessive Light!

With him my Soul thro rapt’rous Regions flyes,

And drinks at once a rowling Stream of Joys;

Convulsive Transports all my Vitals tear:

Gods! ‘tis too much, too much for Man to bear.

Dennis, thy Words alone thy Thoughts can right,

As Fire is best discover’d by its Light.

I cease, for tho my Blood with Fury boil,

To mock the Thunder is a dang’rous Toil.³

As comically excessive as this praise seems to be, its place in the poem at least leaves open the possibility that Dennis has earned the right to be mocked among other respected poets. Whether satirical or in earnest, the author imitates and highlights a passage in Dennis’s elegy that reaches for the “sublime,” that feature of poetry that Dennis would most emphasize in his criticism – and in particular through his sustained fascination with Milton’s Paradise Lost. In the same year Joseph Addison had declared Paradise Lost irredeemably corrupted by Milton’s politics, we find here evidence of John Dennis’s unusual esteem for Milton.⁴ While not his earliest mention of Milton, Dennis’s elegy for Mary remains an oddly appropriate entry into his Milton criticism. It not only provides an early sampling of Dennis’s critical approach to Milton’s work, but it is revealing about Dennis as a character and critic. Even a cursory examination of Dennis’s elegy on Queen Mary quickly illuminates the outspoken pedantry that earned him the scorn of the wits, including Swift, Pope, Addison, and Steele. The very title page of The Court of Death illustrates differences between Dennis’s elegy and other attempts in the genre. The elegy’s publication by James Knapton, and not Jacob Tonson, may be interpreted (with hindsight) as an early signal that Dennis would never be accepted among the Kit Cats, or by the London wits. Also, Dennis’s title page is quick to proclaim The Court of Death a “Pindarique POEM” in size and placement rivaling the announcement that the poem honors the late Queen. But most typical of Dennis is a feature found in no other elegy to Mary that I have examined. Dennis provides six pages of “preface” justifying his poetic methodology and even includes a postscript to the preface. A few elegies, such as Steele’s or Cibber’s, have typical epistles dedicated to a prospective patron. But Dennis’s inclusion of a defensive critical preface seems unique, awkward, or even tasteless in an elegiac performance. Even this early in his career, when he was known more as a poet than as a critic, Dennis’s preface presages how the critic would come to overshadow the poet in his identity.

Dennis begins his unusual preface to The Court of Death with the mixture of arrogance and defensiveness that distinguishes so much of his writing:

The following Verses seem so bold in the design, and so much bolder in the execution, that tho I have made use of all the little Judgment I had, to distinguish this boldness from such horrible extravagancies as have been lately so falsly and unreasonably laid to my charge, yet lest some people should conclude from a bare appearance that I have gone too far, it will not be amiss to shew what the Ode and its Character is in general, what Pindar and his manner was in particular, and how far it may be convenient to imitate him in our Age, and in our Language and Climate.⁵

Dennis’s defense of his “boldness” and promise to explain the nature of the Pindaric ode is immediately followed by a lengthy quote from Rapin, in French and English, which establishes “sublimity” as a marker of the ode.

The Ode (says Rapin) ought to have as much greatness, elevation and violence, as the Eglogue is oblig’d to have modesty, restraint and simplicity. It is not only great by the sublimeness of its Spirit, but by the greatness of its Subjects. For it is made use of to sing the praises of gods, and to celebrate the most gl[o]rious actions of men.⁶

This is one of Dennis’s earliest characterizations of the sublime, and notable for its suggestion that the sublime may be approached not solely through style or aesthetics, but through an appropriate choice of subject. As he expounds upon the form of the ode in this preface, Dennis employs the terminology of “enthusiasm” that would become central to his later criticism, claiming that passions in the ode should surpass even epic poetry by displaying more “vehemence, more transport and more enthusiasm.” Due to its brevity and purpose to commemorate “great occasions as its subject” Dennis believes the ode must “fly into transport at first and make use immediately of all its fury, and its most violent efforts.”⁷ Nonetheless, Dennis warns that the English language is not suited to all aspects of the Pindaric. In particular, he claims English “is not capable of some of the most violent figures of Pindar; and in aiming at two of his principle qualities, which are his Sublimity and his Magnificence, he [the English author] ought carefully to avoid … Fustian and superfluity of Epithetes.”⁸ Dennis indicts Cowley for having imitated Pindar too closely in the “wildness of his frequent digressions,” and it may be partly for this reason that Dennis chooses not Cowley, but Milton, to serve as the model of his own elegy upon Mary.⁹

In the writing these Pindarick Verses, I had still Milton in my Eye, and was resolv’d to imitate him as far as it could be done without receeding from Pindar’s manner. They have several great qualities common to both, and among the rest, vehemence, elevation, and a terrible Majesty; qualities which are far above me, but the violent desire I had to show, how I honour the Memory of the great Queen that is gone, made me insolently resolve to aspire to them.¹⁰

Dennis later claims in the preface’s “postscript” that his fable or “design” was suggested by the sixth book of the Aeneid. However, The Court of Death’s main action is a debate in Hell to determine the fate of Mary, a scene more reminiscent of Satan’s council meeting in Paradise Lost than Aeneas’s underworld experience in the Aeneid.

The opening stanzas of Dennis’s elegy describe an unexpected visit of the Muse and the ravishing impact of her song upon the poet:

First in my Breast a pleasing Sorrow sprung,

Then thro each Nerve there flew celestial fire;

Convulsive Transports did my Vitals tear,

Gods ‘twas too much, too much for Man to bear! ¹¹

These lines – that sudden flight into transport that Dennis claimed was vital for the Ode to achieve sublimity – were among those the anonymous author of The Mourning Poets singled out to demonstrate (and lampoon) Dennis’s “sublime” style. Dennis’s elegy (particularly when read against its treatment in The Mourning Poets) invites speculation about just how he distinguished between “fustian” and the “sublime.” Dennis’s less-than-satisfactory solution to this problem, explained in his preface, is to recommend that poets submit their poetry to the judgment of “sensible Friends.” Dennis asserts that while the sublime can “warm and strike” such fit readers, false sublime or fustian never will. However, the recommended deference to such an appropriate (perhaps “fit though few”) audience is in ironic contrast to Dennis’s postscript to this very same preface where he dismisses the opinion of a “Young Gentleman who is my Friend, and whose Wit and Learning are very well known in the World,” but who criticized The Court of Death for having “too much description.”¹² Instead of modifying the poem in response to the critique of this sensible friend, Dennis submits his poem to a quite different test, claiming that “If these Verses are of Heav’n, they will be sure to stand, no Malice of Man can hurt or suppress them; but if they are human they will fall, no mortal aid can support them.”¹³ Dennis’s resort to a divine authorizing source to uphold the worth of his verse echoes Milton’s invocation to Book 9 of Paradise Lost, where the poet declares that if his verse isn’t divinely inspired it will sink instead of rise.

         Higher Argument

Remaines, sufficient of it self to raise

That name, unless an age too late, or cold

Climat, or Years damp my intended wing

Deprest, and much they may, if all be mine,

Not Hers who brings it nightly to my Ear.

(9.42-47)

Dennis’s Miltonic appeal to divine inspiration as arbiter of his elegy’s quality suggests that only divinely inspired poetry generates lasting esteem. In submitting his elegy to this test rather than the opinion of a fit audience, Dennis entertains the possibility of genuine inspiration and shuts down aesthetic critique. As the author of The Mourning Poets concedes, “To mock the Thunder is a dang’rous Toil.”¹⁴ Dennis’s reliance on inspiration edges toward the theory that would become the hallmark of Dennis’s more mature criticism: a theory of the sublime that recenters the subject, rather than style, as the source of sublimity.

The Court of Death and its preface foreground much of what would characterize Dennis’s theory and his criticism of Milton as it developed over the next twenty years. As a Pindaric ode, Dennis’s elegy was meant to rapidly reach and sustain the sublime. As a poem with a religious subject (to include the plotting of demons against the divine order of things), it was best suited to incite what Dennis would term the “enthusiastick passions,” so essential to his theory of the sublime. Finally, the elegy attempts explicitly to imitate the features of Paradise Lost that Dennis found so admirable. Dennis’s career-long engagement with Milton’s poem would result in a refined theory about its exceptionalism and surety about its place as “the most lofty, but most irregular Poem, that has been produc’d by the Mind of Man.”¹⁵ As his theories developed over decades, Dennis’s advocacy of the religious sublime would lead him to embrace the poem’s political and religious content – its enthusiasms – in a manner quite different from other early commentators. Unlike Dryden’s attempt to rewrite Paradise Lost for a Restoration court, and unlike those to follow who would seek to carefully navigate and even obscure Milton’s politics, Dennis located Milton’s power and relevance precisely in the political-religious controversies of the poem and author.

Uncurbed Enthusiasms

Dennis’s employment of the term “enthusiastick” to describe the varieties of passion evoking the sublime requires some context before we can fully appreciate his claims about poetry (and Paradise Lost) and the responses he provoked. In the angry letter to Booth and Steele that we encountered in the last chapter, Dennis described “the manly, and powerful, and noble Enthusiasm of Milton.”¹⁶ The characterization of Milton’s verse as enthusiastic invokes Milton (and the poem’s) heterodoxies even as Dennis voices amazement at what he considers a shameful lack of respect for Milton in the Restoration. The seventeenth century’s derogatory understanding of “enthusiasm” has been almost lost to modern usage, but in the years following the Restoration, the word was tainted, most often employed as a pejorative indicating excessive religious zeal and false claims to divine inspiration. Michael Heyd has characterized the traditional seventeenth-century usage as an overtly political label:

The term itself became a standard label by which to designate individuals or groups who allegedly claimed to have direct divine inspiration, whether millenarians, radical sectarians or various prophesiers, as well as alchemists, “empirics” and some contemplative philosophers …. Indeed, by the late seventeenth century, many of the Protestant intellectuals, scientists and theologians were fighting simultaneously on at least two fronts: against the spread of deistic and atheistic views on the one hand, and against “enthusiasm”, prophesying, divinations and other “superstitions” on the other.¹⁷

In one of his earliest published treatises, 1693’s Preface to Miscellanies in Verse and Prose, Dennis indicated his awareness that the term carried considerable baggage. He circumvents this by claiming that “tho mear Enthusiasm is but Madness, nothing can be more noble than that which is rightly regulated.”¹⁸ Dennis’s fear that enthusiasm would be equated with madness was warranted, and his use of the term did not go unnoticed by his detractors. As revenge for Dennis’s refutation of Swift’s mentor, William Temple, in The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry (1701), Swift, in his Tale of the Tub (1704) names Dennis as an insufferable pedant and critic and links enthusiasm with madness in the description of the Aeolians. Despite Dennis’s attempt to rehabilitate the term, well into the eighteenth century “enthusiasm” remained first and foremost a “derogatory label” that “most frequently referred to zealous sectarians.”¹⁹ Thus, Dennis’s definition of the sublime as dependent upon “enthusiastick” passions was risky, and his choice of Paradise Lost as the best example of the sublime’s operation complicated matters since Milton and his poem remained vulnerable to charges of political and religious enthusiasm. In responses such as Addison’s 1695 “Account” (discussed in Chapter 1) we have seen how readily a complex of derogatory associations clustering around “zeal,” “enthusiasm,” “fanaticism,” and “rebellion” was activated by Paradise Lost.²⁰

One of the contemplative philosophers entertaining enthusiasm as something other than pathology was Anthony Ashley Cooper, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury clarified the relationship between enthusiasm and inspiration in his 1708 A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, which claimed that “Inspiration is a real feeling of the Divine Presence, and Enthusiasm a false one. But the Passion they raise is much alike.”²¹ For Shaftesbury, enthusiasm is a debased impetus for passion compared to that which is genuinely divinely inspired. Even so, Shaftesbury works to moderate the prevalent impulse to suppress and expurgate “enthusiasms.” According to Shaftesbury, even if enthusiasm is a false divine presence, it remains valuable in that it raises passions similar to those arising from genuine inspiration. Cooper ascribes to enthusiasm a form of Aristotelean catharsis, admitting that there are “certain Humours in Mankind, which of necessity must have vent.”²² Accordingly, he warns that trying to simply suppress enthusiasms will have opposite the intended effect, warning that such attempts may “instead of making a Cure, bid fair perhaps to raise a Plague, and turn a Spring-Ague or an Autumn-Surfeit into an epidemical malignant Fever.”²³ Shaftesbury’s sustained use of vocabulary associated with pathology and madness (“humours,” “plague,” “ague,” “surfeit,” and “fever”) retains the negative connotations of “enthusiasms” even while suggesting it may be neither necessary nor advisable to eliminate enthusiasm from art and culture.

Shaftesbury also acknowledges the latent political connotations that were attached to enthusiasms as he extends an analogy for it that moves from a diseased individual to include the diseased “body-politick”:

They are certainly as ill Physicians in the Body-Politick, who wou’d needs be tampering with these mental Eruptions; and under the specious pretence of healing this Itch of Superstition, and saving Souls from the Contagion of Enthusiasm, shou’d set all Nature in an uproar, and turn a few innocent Carbuncles into an Inflamation and mortal Gangrene.²⁴

Arguing against the suppression of political-religious enthusiasms, Shaftesbury recalls the traditional cathartic understanding of tragedy. Even if enthusiasm is “false” inspiration, attempts to curb it are self-defeating since the passions raised by enthusiasm in the safe confines of art and the theater may usefully purge (or vent) such contagion from the body politic.

In contrast to Shaftesbury, Dennis portrays enthusiasms as good in themselves because they allow access to the sublime. Enthusiasms, for Dennis, are not passions based on false beliefs but are great passions more readily raised by religious subjects and genuine inspiration. Yet Dennis was clearly aware that even when “enthusiasm” was not equated with madness or unacceptable zeal it carried with it an innate potential for fustian, as in Shaftesbury’s definition of enthusiasm as inherently “false inspiration.” As we’ve seen in his preface to The Court of Death, Dennis signaled his own worry that the enthusiastic sublime might collapse into fustian when he asserted that a fit audience would be able to tell the difference between fustian and “true” sublimity, for “verses that seem warm to a man of sense can never contain any Fustian.”²⁵ Dennis thus attempts to shift the derogatory connotations of enthusiasm as false inspiration into the category of fustian, the false sublime, thus opening up space for enthusiasm to exist as genuine inspiration powering the actual sublime.

By redefining “enthusiasm” as a positive literary mode, Dennis sought to recover its productive use in Restoration literary discourse. As we will see in the responses of Addison and the wits, Dennis’s attempts to rehabilitate “enthusiasm” were largely unsuccessful. Not only was he cast as a madman and scurrilous breed of critic in Swift’s Tale of a Tub, but audiences in the know were apparently expected to recognize John Dennis in the character of “Sir Tremendous Longinus,” a pedantic foil in Gay’s 1717 play Three Hours after Marriage.²⁶ Even for those Restoration readers who might have been more sympathetic to Dennis and his assessment of Paradise Lost, his assertion that enthusiasm was absolutely necessary to sublime poetry (and thus to the reformation of English poetry in general) threatened to raise the specter of Milton’s political-religious reputation, a haunting presence that every other admirer of the poet except John Toland seemed committed to effacing. Yet Dennis doggedly made Milton’s epic central to his literary theorizing and boldly claimed that Paradise Lost was excellent for the very reasons the poem challenged many of his contemporaries.

“Milton in my Eye”: Dennis’s Theory of the Sublime

Although his critical engagement with Milton was spread over many years and multiple publications, Dennis’s fascination with Paradise Lost was well known among his contemporaries. This is attested to by The narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the strange and deplorable frenzy of Mr. John Denn--- an officer of the Custom-house: being an exact account of all that past betwixt the said patient and the doctor till this present day; and a full vindication of himself and his proceedings from the extravagant reports of the said Mr. John Denn--. This pamphlet is a scathing 1713 response to Dennis’s critical treatment of Addison’s Cato and a continuation of the wits’ prolonged characterization of Dennis as a pedant, madman, and dunce. Coming to examine the obviously mad “Dennis,” “Dr. Norris” surveys the critic’s disheveled room and remarks that the only neat spot in the entire place is a bookshelf containing books of which he had never heard (these are revealed to be Dennis’s own works, of course) and a copy of “Paradise Lost, interleav’d.”²⁷ Mean-spirited as it is, the satire deftly targets the core of Dennis’s critical career. Depicting Dennis’s theories as derived from (and causing) madness, the pamphlet reduces the critic’s long engagement with Paradise Lost to a pathological symptom. Dennis’s attempt to reform poetry on the model of Milton’s poem – embracing even enthusiasm as not an aberration but as a necessary component of great poetry – fueled mockery and suggestions that the critic had himself succumbed to the very enthusiasms central to his theory. The unique features of Dennis’s theory of the sublime, and his locating its exemplar in Paradise Lost, elicited reactions that were amplified by the concerns long raised by the poem’s political associations.

As early as 1692, Dennis declared in his Preface to the Passion of Byblis that Milton “is one of the most sublime of our English Poets. Nay, there is something so transcendently sublime in his first, second, and sixth Books, that were the Language as pure as the Images are vast and daring, I do not believe it could be equall’d, no, not in all Antiquity.”²⁸ Dennis’s concern about Milton’s impure language reflects a common anxiety about Paradise Lost, noted as early as Hobart’s 1667 letters (discussed in Chapter 1), and remaining a concern for Addison in 1712. However, in a way rarely seen in the Restoration, Dennis’s claim that Milton could have potentially surpassed the ancients enlists Milton as a combatant on the side of the moderns in the ongoing debate weighing the moderns versus ancients. His qualification about Milton’s language would drop away over time, allowing him to later assert ever more confidently that Milton had indeed surpassed the ancients. Classing Milton among the ancients was not unheard of even at this date, as suggested by Dryden’s epigram published under Milton’s sculpture in the 1688 Tonson folio. The epigraph preceding Hume’s 1695 Annotations in Tonson’s 1695 Works of Milton more provocatively suggests that the only benefit the ancients had was the merit of being first. Unlike these tributes, however, Dennis would eventually move beyond laudatory comparisons of Milton with the ancients and instead attempt to establish a theoretical foundation for Milton’s superiority to them and his usefulness as a model for modern poets. Central to that case was Dennis’s assertion that Milton was the modern who most effectively achieved the sublime – through Paradise Lost’s subject rather than (solely) through style.

In Dennis’s critical approach to Paradise Lost, and to poetry more broadly, the treatise “On the Sublime” attributed to “Longinus” looms large. Editions of “On the Sublime” with parallel Latin and Greek text were printed in Oxford prior to 1650, and an English translation (by John Hall) was printed in 1652. This was followed by later English versions in 1680 and 1698 that were translations of French editions (by Bolieau and Dacier respectively). The appearance of English translations after the upheavals of the English Civil Wars and the regicide seems unlikely to be coincidence. As James Porter has rightly pointed out, “aesthetics, politics, and rhetoric plainly make for an unstable mix in the treatise.”²⁹ This is most evident in the closing section of “On the Sublime,” as Longinus links sublimity with democracy:

Shall wee I beseech you believe that which hath been in many mens mouths that a Democracie is the best Nurse of high Spirits, and under it so many great Oratours have in a manner not only flourish’d, but even decay’d with it? For just liberty feeds and nourishes the thoughts with great notions, and draws them forward, and encreases their emulations and the strong desires they have to obtain the priority of honour, and that by the rewards proposed to them in such Republicks: […] But we of this age, said hee, seem to be taught from children to endure slavery, being swath’d as it were in these customes and persuasions even from our tenderest nails, so that we cannot possibly taste of that rich and full fountain of Eloquence, I mean, sayes he, Liberty. So that in the end we become at best but excellent flatterers, and from hence, sayes he, these kinds of habits follow us to our own homes; and ‘tis impossible for a servile man to be a true Oratour.”³⁰

Dennis – as we shall see – is never oblivious to the political ramifications of aesthetic and literary theory. However, Longinus’s treatise frustrates him because it does not explain quite precisely how the sublime is reached. Dennis complained in his Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry (1701) that “Longinus” didn’t “tell us what the Sublime is,” but only “set before us the Effects which it produces in the Minds of Men.”³¹ As Porter points out, this frustration is understandable because Longinus’s treatise is not concerned with explaining how authors might achieve the sublime:

For all of its pretenses to rhetorical instruction, On the Sublime is not a how-to book on sublime writing. We need not write like Herodotus in order to appreciate his “inimitable” sentences. On the contrary, the aim of the treatise is to cultivate a reader’s receptivity to sublimity. It is a pragmatic manual in identifying sublime literature, reading the signs of sublimity, and in reproducing the effects of sublimity in one’s responses to the great canonical works of the past.³²

Rather than an instruction manual, On the Sublime establishes aesthetic categories and attempts to shape taste through describing the sublime as a marker of greatness. As Porter puts it, in the treatise “Sublimity has a canonical function: it is what defines the very best literature, while cultivating an appreciation for the sublime is how the canon comes to be pleasurably reinforced.”³³ Longinus is not concerned with, nor perhaps can imagine contemporary or future productions of the sublime. The sublime, even in its earliest conception – in Longinus’s treatise itself – is found most readily in works that celebrate an idealized and seemingly irrecoverable past. Expanding upon the linkages between the sublime and ideals of freedom, Porter explains that “the sublime may be associated with ideals of heroism and freedom, but these are sublime only when they are imperiled, when they are imagined as potential, or simply when they are no more.”³⁴ The combination of canonical concern and a profound nostalgia for that which is lost ensures Longinus’s treatise is ultimately underwritten with anxiety about how sublimity can be possible in a contemporary, degraded, and ever-declining world. It is this anxiety, located in perceptions of not only aesthetic but also political belatedness and inferiority, that makes the sublime an ideal locus for the battle of the ancients versus the moderns, and thus makes recovering some means for moderns to not only recognize but produce sublimity a critical project for Dennis.

As we have seen in earlier responses to Milton’s epic, Dennis was certainly not the first to associate the sublime with Milton’s epic. It seemed to rapidly become essential vocabulary for those (like Hobart and even Dryden) faced with characterizing Milton’s accomplishment and the poem’s power. However, Dennis’s most important contribution to early vernacular criticism, conditioned by his esteem for Paradise Lost, was a thorough analysis of the source of sublimity and (correcting the fault he finds in Longinus) an attempt to explain how sublimity works and why he saw it as the key to poetry’s power as an agent of reformation.

Dennis’s theories about poetry formed largely in opposition to the reform movement that threatened the English stage in the late seventeenth century. By insisting that poetry (including drama) was an indispensable agent of reform, he attempted to redefine the very debate in terms that were de facto favorable to poetry and drama. Dennis first articulated the relationship between ethics and aesthetics in The Usefulness of the Stage, to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government, and to Religion, a 1698 response to Jeremy Collier and the Society for the Reformation of Manners’ assault upon the theater. In this work, Dennis agrees with Collier that the English stage is corrupt and needs to be reformed, while disagreeing with the conclusion that drama was intrinsically corrupting to people and should be abolished. Dennis claims that the “Vice” of the corrupted stage makes it “little and contemptible” because “nothing but Virtue can make any Thing awful and truly great, and nothing but what is awful and truly great, can be universally respected, and by that means in a Condition to influence the Minds of the People.”³⁵ Dennis suggests somewhat perversely that the very corruption and vice of the English stage that Collier complains of renders it an ineffectual agent of corruption because it fails aesthetically and has therefore no power to corrupt. In the language of the “awful and truly great,” we find even in this discussion an intimation of the role of the sublime in Dennis’s critical theory.

Foregrounding his defense of the English stage, Dennis claims that the end of life is happiness:

the chief End and Design of Man is to make himself happy …. In whatever he does, or he does not, he designs to improve or maintain his Happiness. And ’tis by this universal Principle, that God maintains the Harmony, and Order, and Quiet of the reasonable World.³⁶

Dennis thus sets out in The Usefulness of the Stage to show that an uncorrupted stage is necessary for the happiness of mankind and that it is “even more particularly instrumental to the Happiness of Englishmen” especially.³⁷ Dennis explains that happiness and pleasure are inseparable, but that pleasure is out of one’s own power since it is not the product of reason. In fact, Dennis proposes that “Reason … is an Impediment to our Pleasure, which is our Happiness.” Reason endeavors to maintain mankind in a state that Dennis terms “indifference” or the ordinary or resting orientation of the mind. It is only “passion” that can overcome reason’s indifference and induce pleasure: “nothing in this life can bring him out of it [the ordinary state of indifference preferred by reason], but Passion alone, which Reason pretends to combat.”³⁸ For Dennis, reason is an earthly encumbrance, an inconvenient requirement of fleshly existence that will fall away when one is in the afterlife, where “We shall then no more have Occasion from Premises to draw Conclusions, and a long Train of Consequences; for becoming Spirit, and all Knowledge, we shall see Things as they are.”³⁹ The life of the spirit will apparently no longer require reason or discursive thought, but instead usher in something that resembles the intuitive and perhaps pleasurable understanding Milton ascribed to his angels in Paradise Lost.

Further explicating the role of passion in producing pleasure, Dennis asserts, “Nothing but Passion, in effect, can please us, which every one may know by Experience: For when any Man is pleas’d, he may find by Reflection that at the same Time he is mov’d.”⁴⁰ Following this train of thought to its logical conclusion, Dennis suggests that greater happiness requires greater pleasure, which of course requires one be “very moved.” We approach the sublime here, and specifically the sublime in art, for Dennis also insists that the role of art (and especially poetry) is to raise and reconcile the passions with reason. Begrudgingly, after having imagined a heavenly existence unencumbered by “mortal Organs” and reason, Dennis admits that while happiness is a result of passion and not reason, mankind (at least flesh-bound mankind) cannot be happy without “or against” reason, for “Man is by Nature a reasonable Creature.”⁴¹ While raising the passions provides the means to pleasure and therefore happiness, Dennis warns “the Passions must be rais’d after such a manner, as to take Reason along with them.”⁴² If one is overcome with passion (and does not “take along” the reason), Dennis characterizes the resulting pleasure as “neither long, nor sincere, nor safe.”⁴³ Dennis stipulates that pleasure must not be contrary to reason, but reason requires reconciliation with the passions because it was estranged from them upon the Fall. According to Dennis, this artificial division between reason and the passions is the cause of mankind’s misery in the postlapsarian world, and this divide is the unique province of religion and poetry to correct. The ability of the arts to bridge the gap between reason and passion therefore makes the stage beneficial to mankind in happiness, government, and religion.

In response to Collier’s crusade against the stage, Dennis argues that poetry, including dramatic poetry, is essential for reforming culture because of its power to foster happiness by affecting the reconciliation between passions and reason. This formulation recalls Milton’s note prefacing Samson Agonistes, where he asserts that tragedy may regulate unruly passions, or at least can “temper and reduce them to just measure with a kind of delight, stirr’d up by reading or seeing those passions well imitated.”⁴⁴ Dennis’s stress on poetry and drama’s role in reforming manners through reconciling the passions with reason points (like Milton) to tragedy as the ideal way to raise passions in a beneficial way. This generic preference is echoed by the Restoration’s leading theorist of epic, René Le Bossu. Le Bossu acknowledged that tragedy best purged passions by raising them quickly and to a great height, while suggesting that epic poetry differently reforms manners by encouraging audiences to imitate good exemplars. As Le Bossu puts it, “the Epopéa’s business is with the Morals and Habitudes more than the Passions. These [the passions] rise on a sudden, and their Heat is soon over; but the Habitudes are more calm, and come on, and go off more leisurely.”⁴⁵ Le Bossu explicitly highlighted the political ramifications of these genre differences as he contrasted the catharsis of tragedy with the more didactic instruction of epic:

Sad Conclusions are proper for Tragedy …. Because in the Popular States of Greece, where Monarchy was Odious, nothing was heard with greater Pleasure and Ardency than the Misfortunes of Kings …. The Tragical Scene is the Throne of the Passions, where Terror and Compassion ought to rule over all the rest …. And the Spectators going from the Theater with their Minds full of the Misfortunes they were Eye witnesses of, do doubtlessly preserve their Tenderness a great deal longer …. But these Reasons will not serve for the Epopéa, since ’tis not so much for refining the Passions, as for making Men put off ill Habits, and put on good ones.⁴⁶

Le Bossu’s suggestion that the epic form is not as effective as tragedy at raising and purging great passions would seem to limit epic’s capacity for the sublime in Dennis’s evolving theoretical stance that makes the passions central to the sublime’s operation. However, the reforming function of poetry is more complicated for Dennis, where it is a reformation accomplished not through “curing” passions in a purgation of like-by-like but by raising the passions – so necessary for happiness – in a manner that reconciles them with reason.

Dennis’s theory of the sublime reflects a more nuanced understanding of poetry’s role in mediating between passions and reason than the understanding marked by construing catharsis as homeopathic purgation. Russ Leo has suggested that Milton moves beyond Aristotle in just this way in his 1671 publication of Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes. In Leo’s reading, “katharsis means so much more than purgation across the 1671 poems as Milton challenges readers to consider different genealogies of tragic katharsis in order to make sense of Aristotle’s Poetics.”⁴⁷ Leo concludes that Milton follows Heinsius in identifying catharsis as “not necessarily a homeopathic or purgative process … but rather a discipline and purification through exposure …. Katharsis in tragedy affords audiences an education in the passions. They are exposed to passions so that they might temper them and put them to use.”⁴⁸ Rather than serving to purge passions through their incitement and release, acclimation to high passions allows readers to learn to control them, thus – in Dennis’s terms – to reconcile them with reason.

Dennis’s sensitivity to Milton’s reorientation of how katharsis works and the usefulness of the passions allows him to formulate a theory of the sublime that is portable between genres. Like Le Bossu, Dennis also invokes the political use of poetry, and especially dramatic poetry, as in The Usefulness of the Stage he laments the decline in “Sciences, Philosophy, History, and Mathematicks” that ensued when the theaters were closed during the Civil War. Dennis sketches out a history that emphasizes how a vital stage, as in the Elizabethan period and at the Restoration, ushers in learning (and blames the corruption that came in upon the Restoration, not on the reopening of the theaters, but squarely on the foreign manners of Charles II). In his own explicit linking of poetics and politics, Dennis makes his case that dramatic poetry is particularly useful to the governance of a particularly splenetic English people who are made difficult to govern:

From the reigning Distemper of the Clime, which is inseparable from the Spleen, from that gloomy and sullen Temper, which is generally spread through the Nation; from that natural Discontentedness, which makes us so uneasy to one another, because we are so uneasy to ourselves; and lastly from our Jealousies and Suspicions, which make us so uneasy to ourselves, and to one another, and have so often made us dangerous to the Government, and, by consequence, to ourselves.⁴⁹

Moreover, because splenetic people regulate or suppress their passions to a greater degree than others, the English people “to be happy, have more need, than other People of something that will raise their Passions in such a manner, as shall be agreeable to their Reasons, and that, by consequence, they have more need of the Drama.”⁵⁰ In fact, Dennis argues that closing the theaters is a dangerous course of action for an English government.

Drama … is proper to restrain a People from Rebellion and Disobedience …. For this Reason the Drama may be said to be instrumental in a peculiar manner to the Welfare of the English Government; because there is no People on the Face of the Earth, so prone to Rebellion as the English, or so apt to quarrel among themselves.⁵¹

For Dennis, poetry more widely, and drama specifically, not only has the power to repair the ruins of the fall through reconciling passions and reason, but it also has a political agency specifically necessary to the English in the Restoration. Dennis suggests in response to the Collierites that – far from being an agent of corruption – poetry is a primary means to reform a particularly unruly people.

The Usefulness of the Stage establishes Dennis’s concern with poetry as an agent of reform and serves as the groundwork for Dennis’s future, broader critical theory of the religious sublime. Edging nearer a mature formulation of that theory, Dennis boasts, “let any Man shew me where Terror is mov’d to a Heighth, and I will shew him that that Place requires the Belief of a God, and a particular Providence.”⁵² According to Dennis, sublimity, derived from apt subject matter, provides the best means for poetry to be an agent of reform, and is key to how the moderns might surpass the ancients. It is this confidence in poetry’s ability to reform that suffuses Dennis’s treatments of Paradise Lost. Finding popular Restoration tragedy corrupt and therefore ineffective in raising passions his theory is most easily supported not by drama, but by Milton’s epic.

Dennis found in Paradise Lost a model for both the reforming power of sublime poetry and an example of how the moderns could (and had) surpassed the ancients. In The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry (1701), Dennis admits an ambitious aim: “the design [of the treatise] … is no less than to set the Moderns upon an equal Foot, with even admir’d Antiquity.”⁵³ He takes aim in this treatise not only at Collier but at Temple’s 1690 claims about the ancients’ superiority. The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry refutes Temple nearly point-by-point, determining that the ancients did not surpass the moderns by any internal superiority (divine or daemonic inspiration, higher virtue, superior faculties) nor by external means (climate, encouragement, support).⁵⁴ Instead, Dennis concludes that “the Ancient Poets deriv’d their Greatness from the Nature of their Subjects.”⁵⁵ Dennis suggests that sacred subject matter, even if sacred only to the author (as with pagan authors read by a Christian audience), elevates ancient poetry above the poetry of the moderns, whose poetry too often lacks the force imparted by a religious subject. Dennis finds that a unique Christian “truth” is not the source of the sublime, because ancient writings were sublime when they drew upon the power of the sacred within their culture (regardless of any supposed objective “truth” of those sacral subjects). In his estimation, until this point only Milton had succeeded in this endeavor among the moderns. His proposal for advancing English poetry includes a prescription to follow the example of the ancients (and Milton) by writing sublime poetry on religious subjects.

In a move expanding upon his earlier discourse against Collier, Dennis argues again that both poetry and religion have the happiness of mankind as their ultimate goal. Proposing that the aims of religion and poetry are nearly identical, Dennis says, “the very Thing that they both propose is to exalt the Reason, by exalting the Passions, and so make Happy the whole Man, by making Internal Discord cease.”⁵⁶ Later, in his proposal for The Grounds of Criticism (1704), Dennis would phrase this dynamic in terms echoing Milton’s claim in Of Education that knowledge can “repair the ruins of our first parents.”⁵⁷ In this later formulation, Dennis names the arts as a primary mechanism of such repair, claiming that “The great Design of Arts is to restore the Decays that happen’d to human Nature by the Fall, by restoring Order.”⁵⁸ Dennis’s clearest statement of this in The Grounds of Criticism opens the aperture of his earlier arguments against Collier which were focused on drama, and proposes in contrast to Le Bossu that – in order to instruct – the epic can be no less reliant on raising passions than tragedy. Dennis asserts that all effective instruction must depend upon passion because only passion is stronger than reason:

Poetry attains its final End, which is the reforming of the Minds of Men, by exciting of Passion. And here I dare be bold to affirm, that all Instruction whatever depends upon Passion … whereas Philosophy pretends to correct human Passions by human Reason, that is things that are strong and ungovernable, by something that is feeble and weak; Poetry by the force of the Passion, instructs and reforms the Reason: which is the Design of the True Religion.⁵⁹

In Dennis’s theory, progress toward the ends of religion itself is most effectively made through poetry raising passions, and poetry is most effective in raising passions when it treats religious subjects. Since Dennis recognizes that not all passions were created equal (being “very moved” is better than being moved, and things “awful and truly great” are most moving), he suggests that the highest passions – “enthusiastic” or sublime passions – are accessible only through religious subjects. Poets, then, must write about sacred subjects to achieve the highest levels of poetic art and accomplish a reformation of manners. The moderns could thus surpass the ancients if they wrote sublime poetry about Christian subjects. Given these foundations of Dennis’s critical thought, it is almost inevitable that Milton and Paradise Lost should have preoccupied him throughout his career and in his efforts to explain how the sublime works.

The task of the bulk of Dennis’s remaining critical work was the explication of how the passions (and especially sublime passions) operate in poetry. The presence of passion defines poetry for Dennis. So central is passion that Dennis suggests that even prose able to raise the passions should be considered a sort of poetical prose, or as he terms it, “Poetry without Numbers.”⁶⁰ But since Dennis claims all poetry is defined by passion, but not all poetry is of the higher (sublime) sort, Dennis endeavors to make some distinction among the passions to account for what he considers the “sublime.” To do so, he attempted to define sublimity and make up for what he saw as Longinus’s failure in only setting “before us the Effects which it produces in the Minds of Men.”⁶¹ Dennis, in formulating his own explanation for how the sublime operates, identifies “enthusiasm” as integral to achieving it. The sublime, he says, is “a great Thought, express’d with the Enthusiasm that belongs to it.” Dennis then divides the passions into two categories: ordinary (or “vulgar”) passions and “enthusiastick” passions. In The Advancement and Reformation of Poetry, Dennis explains that “ordinary passions” are those where the cause of the passion (joy, terror, admiration) is understood. But he claims, “the very same Passions [are] Enthusiasms, when their cause is not clearly comprehended by him who feels them.”⁶² This, then, is the psychological basis of Dennis’s sublime. The mind is exalted to feel a great passion but is unable to fully identify the cause of that passion. Coincident with the apprehension of this passion, the mind also reflexively experiences pride at its ability to entertain the thoughts (however unclearly and incompletely) that evoke such transport. As Porter points out, when one reads the sublime, “the line between reproduction and production is blurred to the point of indistinction” as we are filled with joy and pride and believe to have created what we have only heard or read.⁶³ While sacred subjects may engender “ordinary” passion as easily as profane subjects, Dennis believes sacred topics are “more susceptible of the Enthusiastick.”⁶⁴ Thus, those poets striving for sublimity in their verse must naturally use sacred subjects in order to tap into the power of these greater passions.⁶⁵ Faced with the need to explain the nature of “a great thought” and the hallmarks of the “enthusiasm” that should express it, Dennis would turn again and again to Milton’s epic.

“Something Like An Epick”: Dennis’s Critique of Paradise Lost

It is unfortunate that all we have of Dennis’s The Grounds of Criticism is the 1704 prospectus for this proposed work of English literary criticism. Dennis ambitiously planned the treatise as the “first work of English criticism to be published by subscription,” but it was never completed because (as Edward Hooker tactfully put it) “only seventy-seven gentlemen in England were willing to pay a guinea for a folio volume of critical remarks.”⁶⁶ However, even with only a fragment to assess, Hooker recognized that The Grounds of Criticism, containing Dennis’s most developed discussion of the sublime, “stands out as one of the most important and original critical treatises of its day.”⁶⁷ Had the subscription scheme succeeded and the treatise been completed, we would have a more complete understanding of Dennis’s critical theories in general and of his analysis of Paradise Lost in particular. However, even in its incomplete state, Dennis’s approach to the political anxieties raised by Milton’s epic represents a departure from the dominant currents of Restoration criticism. Dennis, in his attempt to embrace rather than excise or quarantine heterodox and controversial content, represents a potential (and ultimately unrealized) turning point in how the discipline would handle controversial works.

Dennis comments most upon Milton’s late poems, but he was aware of and admired Milton’s earlier works. As he introduces his theory of poetic genius, Dennis risks recalling Milton’s early career as prose polemicist by quoting at length from 1642’s The Reason of Church Government (reprinted by John Toland in 1697). Milton’s pamphlet is used to bolster Dennis’s claim in The Grounds of Criticism that “true Poetical Genius is a great and sacred thing.” The passage Dennis quotes places particular weight on the role of inspiration (and by relation enthusiasm) in engendering this genius. Milton claims poetical genius

is, wherever it is found, the inspir’d Gift of God, rarely bestow’d, but yet to some in ev’ry Nation, tho’ most abuse it: and is of power, beside the Office of a Pulpit, to imbreed and cherish in a great People the Seeds of Virtue and publick Civility, to allay the Perturbations of the Mind, and set the Affections in a right Tune …. Whatever in Religion is holy and sublime, in Virtue amiable or grave, whatever hath Passion or Admiration in all the changes of that which is call’d Fortune … all these things with a solid and treatable Smoothness to point out and describe.⁶⁸

Dennis quotes the passage at even greater length, to include Milton’s claims that such true poetry would be of great benefit to the “Youth and Gentry” who are tainted by the “Corruption and Bane which they suck in daily from the Writings and Interludes of libidinous and ignorant Poetasters.”⁶⁹ Dennis seeks to enlist Milton as a confederate to extoll the reforming virtues of proper poetry and defend against Collier’s root-and-branch campaign against the theaters. While Milton recognized, Dennis said, that “Poetry was in the main miserably sunk among us,” he also (like Dennis) was optimistic that “it might be restor’d to its Innocence, and its Greatness.”⁷⁰ Dennis uses Milton to support his claim that while inferior poetry may often be a “Sweet Pill” masking some corrupting influence, genuine poetical genius becomes a conduit to true religion.

Dennis’ eagerness to cast list Milton as a like-minded defender of the stage leads him into some associations that are brave even in 1704. In The Person of Quality’s Answer to Mr. Collier’s Letter, Being a Disswasive from the Play-House, Dennis’s tone is bitingly satirical. The supposed “Person of Quality” pretends to praise Collier while pillorying him. The irony of the satire makes it difficult to parse passages taken out of context; however, the gist of the extract below is that even Milton, the “famous Reformer,” saw no reason to reform the stage.

To King James succeeded King Charles the First, and then rose another famous Reformer, John Milton by Name, who not only left a Tragedy behind him, the Story of which he impiously borrow’d from the Bible, written, to leave him without excuse, in his mature, nay declining Years, but has left a fine Encomium on Shakespear; has shown an extraordinary Esteem for Johnson; and among all the Things he thought fit to reform, so far had Prejudice laid hold of his Understanding, it never so much as came into his Head that the Stage was one of them.⁷¹

The statement that Milton “impiously” took the plot of Samson Agonistes from the Bible needs be read as deeply ironic because, as we’ve seen in our review of the development of his critical theory, Dennis was adamant that the surest way to advance poetry was in fact to base it upon sacred subjects that provide a ready conduit to the enthusiastic sublime. However, mentioning “Charles the First,” “John Milton,” and “Tragedy” in the same breath, Dennis seems to court disaster while reminding readers of Milton’s political activities as a “famous Reformer.” Dennis’s pamphlet adroitly associates Collierite reform with rebellious (perhaps Jacobite) movements, while somehow simultaneously casting Milton as “reformer” while removing him from the milieu of the rebellious. For Dennis, the Milton who saw in poetry the power to reform civil manners may safely be invoked even at the risk of recalling Milton the political-religious reformer. And in fact, Milton must be so recalled because the very features that make Milton’s legacy a challenge for Dryden, Addison, and other early readers are central to Dennis’s critical theory hinging on the enthusiastic sublime.

Unafraid to recall Milton’s political actions in the civil wars and interregnum in order to enlist the poet as a defender of the stage, Dennis doesn’t shy away from the heterodoxies in Paradise Lost. In a section of The Grounds of Criticism (1704) entitled “What the Greater Poetry is, what Enthusiasm is,” Dennis provides copious examples from Paradise Lost to show how poetry may achieve great sublimity. Among examples of passages demonstrating the proper choice and use of a sublime subject, Dennis quotes Book III’s angelic hymn to the Son as “very Lofty and Elevated”:

Thee next they sang, of All Creation First

Begotten Son, Divine Similitude,

In Whose conspicuous Countenance, without Cloud

Made visible, the Almighty Father shines

Quite matter-of-factly, Dennis highlights the heterodoxy of these lines, explaining, “I have the rather mention’d these Verses, to show that Milton was a little tainted with Socinianism, for by the first Verse ‘tis evident, that he look’t upon the Son of God as a Created Being.”⁷² This contrasts with other early readers and critics who would seek to avoid or actively suppress Milton’s political and religious controversy. Unique among those attempting to explain Milton’s poetic achievement, Dennis mobilized Milton’s heterodoxies to account for the mechanisms by which Paradise Lost evoked the sublime.

In Dennis’s endeavor to “shew the mutual Dependance that the Greater Poetry has on Religion, and Religion on the Greater poetry,” Paradise Lost is the exemplar even as it refuses to conform to genre expectations and accepted “rules.”⁷³ Dennis asserts that in Paradise Lost, “Milton … made his Country a glorious present of the most lofty, but most irregular Poem, that has been produc’d by the Mind of Man.”⁷⁴ Furthermore, although Dennis cites Milton’s Of Education as proof that the poet knew the rules of Aristotle, he does so only to convince his readers that Milton consciously circumvented those rules. Dennis explains, “that great Man [Milton] had a desire to give the World something like an Epick Poem; but he resolv’d at the same time to break thro’ the Rules of Aristotle.”⁷⁵ Combined with his claim that “no Man knew” the rules “better, or esteemed them more” than Milton, Dennis’s use of the phrase “break thro’” indicates that Milton’s divergence from the rules was intentional and elevates rather than degrades the poem’s accomplishment. By “breaking thro’” the rules, Milton arrives at a place beyond Aristotle. He creates something truly new in its very irregularity. Dennis exclaims, “Milton was the first, who in the space of almost 4000 Years, resolved, for his Country’s Honour, and his own, to present the World with an Original Poem.”⁷⁶ It would be easy to mistake this as a more conventional claim that Milton produced an original epic by constructing his plot from the Christian story. But Dennis insists that Milton’s innovation went beyond even that:

’Tis true, the Epick Poets who have liv’d since Homer, have most of them been Originals in their Fables, which are the very Souls of their Poems; but in their manner of treating those Fables, they have too frequently been Copyists.⁷⁷

It is Milton’s original “manner” of treating his subject, suggests Dennis, rather than his innovative subject alone that makes Paradise Lost an original. Dennis’s defense of Milton as no “copyist” rebukes Dryden’s backhanded compliment to Milton in his dedication to the Translation of Juvenal (1693) that “no Man has so happily copy’d the Manner of Homer; or so copiously translated his Grecisms, and the Latin Elegancies of Virgil.”⁷⁸ While we’ve seen in the translator’s preface to Le Bossu’s treatise Dryden’s claim used as evidence that English poets fell far short of ancient examples, Dennis is certain that Milton has surpassed ancient examples.⁷⁹ Furthermore, where Thomas Rymer had promised to show Paradise Lost was not an epic, and Dryden had said Milton’s “Subject is not that of an Heroique Poem” because “the event is not prosperous,” Dennis suggests instead that the very “irregularity” of Milton’s epic makes it great.⁸⁰ Dennis redefines the terms of the debate to claim that Paradise Lost is “something like an Epick poem,” in that Milton has gone beyond the rules of Aristotle. Dennis thus presents as a triumph what had been deemed among Milton’s faults in the hands of Rymer and Dryden. For Dennis, the “irregular” Paradise Lost is not just an unusual epic, it is a reinvention of epic uniquely apt for the unruly English people and which serves as a model for using religious subject matter to mobilize the sublime in a manner to surpass the ancients.

Expounding on the epic’s irregularities, Dennis claims that in order to give the world an “original poem,” Milton “resolved to write a Poem, that, by vertue of its extraordinary Subject, cannot so properly be said to be against the Rules, as it may be affirmed to be above them all.”⁸¹ When Aristotle wrote his “rules,” Dennis says he had Homer in view, but in Homer “the Action lay chiefly between Man and Man,” while Milton “was resolved … that his Principals should be the Devil on one side and Man on the other.”⁸² Milton’s characters could not be “subjected to” the rules of Homer and Aristotle since “excepting two,” they were supernatural. Once again, Dennis turns a critique that Dryden had leveled against Milton (the lack of human characters and the number of divine “machines” in the epic) into a strength of the poem. Dennis emphasizes that “the choice of Milton’s Subject as it set him free from the Obligation which he lay under to the Poetical Laws, so it necessarily threw him upon new Thoughts, new Images, and an Original Spirit.” Not only are these thoughts and images “new” and “original,” but Dennis claims that, when finished, The Grounds of Criticism would show them to “have vastly the Advantage of those of Homer and Virgil.”⁸³ Milton, freed by his subject from the understood rules of genre, is also free to entertain the enthusiasms that others found perilous. As Dennis explains:

Since the final End of Poetry is to reform the Manners, nothing can be according to the Art of it, which is against Religion, or which runs counter to Moral Vertue, or to the true Politicks, and to the Liberty of Mankind: and every thing which is against the last, tends to the Corruption and Destruction of Mankind; and consequently every thing against the last, must be utterly inconsistent with the true Art of Poetry.⁸⁴

Dennis’s definition of “the true Politicks” remains forever obscure, even though his Whig leanings were well known. We may be inclined to remember the heady mix of politics and rhetoric that Dennis found in “On the Sublime”, which proposed that only democracy and liberty could produce true sublimity. What is clear from this passage is that poetry with the necessary freedom to be true to “Art” is not only free from the rules of Aristotle but must also embody a spirit of liberty that goes beyond mere rhetorical license. Dennis suggests it is improper to judge Milton’s unique accomplishment against the neoclassical critical pronouncements of the French critics, or Rymer, or Dryden. In doing so, he also subtly mobilizes once again Milton’s political identity as a reformer, nodding toward him as a champion of freedom of conscience and political liberty.

In the “Specimen” of criticism on Milton which serves as the centerpiece of the prospectus for The Grounds of Criticism, Dennis remains vague about exactly which of Aristotle’s rules Milton transgressed. He claims nonetheless that some of Milton’s “defects” as measured against Aristotle’s rules are “so great, that they would be Insupportable in any one who had not his extraordinary Distinguishing Qualities.”⁸⁵ If the entire treatise had been finished, it would have been enlightening to see Dennis discern between transgressions that demonstrate how Paradise Lost is “above” the rules and those which would be “insupportable” if not for Milton’s qualities. In what we have of The Grounds of Criticism, the only clear example Dennis gives of rule-breaking in Paradise Lost is Milton’s choice of a protagonist. Dennis follows Dryden in suggesting “the Devil is properly his [Milton’s] Hero, because he gets the better.”⁸⁶ However, Dennis would later revise this stance as he refined his concept of how Milton had reinvented the epic, and as he responded to what he saw as an improper neoclassical critique of Milton’s epic in Addison’s 1712 Spectator essays.

Dennis’s “Specimen,” subtitled “the Substance of what will be said in the Beginning of the Criticism upon Milton,” is followed by brief chapters exploring the nature of the sublime in general, crystallizing much of what Dennis had written in the Advancement of Poetry. Paradise Lost provides numerous examples of passages appropriately raising “enthusiastick” or sublime passion. Dennis revisits his distinction between vulgar and enthusiastic passions and reaffirms that greater poetry, including epic, raises greater passions and the greatest passions are enthusiastic. Dennis explains that while “vulgar” passions arise from common objects, enthusiastic passion may be raised by “ideas” of these same objects in contemplation or meditation. Dennis claims:

Ideas in Meditation are often very different from what Ideas of the same Objects are, in the course of common Conversation. As for example, the Sun mention’d in ordinary Conversation, gives the Idea of a round flat shining Body, of about two foot diameter. But the Sun occurring to us in Meditation, gives the Idea of a vast and glorious Body, and the top of all the visible Creation, and the brightest material Image of the Divinity.⁸⁷

Dennis’s explanation of the sublime thus emphasizes the psychological impact of feeling great admiration for a mental object of contemplation (evoking feelings similar to that admiration which would be felt if the object were really present) joined with the reflexive admiration of the mind’s own capacity to hold such great ideas. The largest portion of the Grounds of Criticism gives examples of the types of passages from Paradise Lost that raise such enthusiastic passions.

Dennis identifies several categories of ideas that incite enthusiastic admiration, providing examples from the ancients or from Paradise Lost. The examples from Paradise Lost are “ideas of God” (PL 1.1-26; 8.357-433; 3.383-96; 7.168-73), ideas of the glorious works of the creator and especially angels (PL 5.266-287), ideas of “great Phænomena of the Material World” such as the heavens, the immensity of creation, the motion of heavenly bodies, and some sublunary things (PL 3.571-84; 4.32-35; 7.94-103; 4.605-9; 8.100-6; 8.15-22), terror mixed with admiration, and ideas of “virtue” (Satan’s unyielding fortitude at 1.105-8). The unifying characteristic of all of the passages that Dennis identifies as fit for raising sublime passion is that they have their root in what Dennis terms “religious ideas.”⁸⁸ Dennis suggests that Longinus himself “by long Study and Habitude” could “know the Sublime when he saw it,” but had been unable to identify religious ideas as the most common factor in the sublime.⁸⁹ In fact, Dennis boldly asserts “it seems plain to me, that he [Longinus] had no clear and distinct idea of it; and consequently Religion might be the thing from which ‘tis chiefly to be deriv’d, and he but obscurely know it.”⁹⁰ Claiming at once that his definition of the sublime accords with Longinius’s doctrine while also identifying the source of the sublime as something Longinus himself failed to see, Dennis emphasizes that religious ideas such as those he identifies in Paradise Lost “create passion in such a manner as to turn and incline the Soul to its primitive Object,” and therefore reconcile reason and passion.⁹¹ This, then, is where the reforming power of the sublime (and Milton’s epic) resides.

Dennis’s examination of Adam and Eve’s prayer in Book 5 serves as a fitting example to show how Dennis proposes sublimity works in the poem and as a potential agent of societal reform. Dennis identifies the hymn as a paraphrase of Psalm 148 and is thus able to compare the scriptural version against Milton’s.⁹² Of the passage in Paradise Lost, Dennis exclaims:

what lofty, what glorious Ideas does a religious Mention of the Works of God afford to Man in his Primitive State, in that incomparable Hymn in the fifth Book of the same Paradise Lost? A Hymn, which tho it is intirely taken from Scripture … will always stand alone, the Phoenix of lofty Hymns; and nothing equal to it, no nor second to it, can ever be produc’d from the Grecian Writers of Hymns.⁹³

Dennis quotes the entire passage from Book 5, lines 153-208 and returns to it at the conclusion of The Grounds of Criticism, using it as an example of a trickle-down effect that poetry may have in reforming the manners of the nation. Dennis argues that poetry is the ideal vehicle for religious instruction because it appeals most to an upper class that will, by example, reform the other classes. Dennis proposes that since those “of extraordinary Parts” are already “delighted with Poetry,” if they were to find poetry upon religious subjects most delightful it would lead to their reform. As proof of this, Dennis provides anecdotal evidence of the effect of Adam and Eve’s prayer:

That this [reformation] is by no means a Chimera, Experience may serve to convince us: For I know several Gentlemen of very good Sense, who are extremely mov’d by Milton’s Hymn … and hardly at all stir’d with the Translation of the 148th Psalm, from whence that Hymn is taken. But if Men of very good Parts are more mov’d by the Hymn, it follows that they ought to be more mov’d by it; because Men of very good Sense are only mov’d to that degree by things by which they ought to be mov’d. So that we may conclude, that the Passion or Enthusiasm in that Hymn is exactly in Nature; that is, that the Enthusiasm, or Passion, or Spirit, call it what you will, flows from the Ideas, and bears a just Proportion to them.⁹⁴

Like Dennis’s earlier claim that men of “sense” could not mistake fustian for sublimity, the men of sense here are moved only by what ought to move them. Because they are moved by Milton’s hymn (and not by the psalm itself), Milton’s properly enthusiastic rendition must therefore have captured the original “nature” or spirit of the psalm even better than current biblical versions.

It follows, that since those Persons, who are so much mov’d by the Hymn, are not equally stir’d by the translated Psalm, the Passion or Spirit is less in the latter, and does not come up to the Ideas; and therefore we may conclude, that Milton, by his Genius and Harmony, has restor’d that Spirit in composing the Hymn, which had been lost by the Weakness of the Translation, and the Want of Poetical Numbers.⁹⁵

Where Milton succeeds at his most sublime, he surpasses vernacular scripture and demonstrates the power of poetry to access religious ideas and reform the realm from the top down.

In his attempt at honest and evenhanded criticism, Dennis also gives examples of places where Milton falls short of or mismanages the use of religion in poetry. Most of the examples of mismanagement come from Paradise Regained; however, Dennis does identify a few moments where Paradise Lost fails in its attempts to be sublime. In a particularly enlightening passage, he joins Dryden in criticizing the final books of the poem while disagreeing with him about the reason for their failure. Dennis explains, “The late Mr. Dryden, with a great deal of Injustice, us’d to attribute the Flatness of Milton in this [Book 10] and some other Passages, to his getting into a Track of Scripture.” However, Dennis, committed as he is to encourage the use of religious subjects to activate the sublime, attributes the “flatness” not to Milton’s adherence to scripture but instead to “the Poorness and Lowness of the Ideas” in these passages.⁹⁶ Dennis’s discussion of these failings illuminates further the workings of the enthusiastic sublime.

Milton has done the most unartful thing that perhaps ever was done, in the two or three last Books of the greatest Poem that ever was written by Man. For whereas in the first eight Books, he had by the Mouth of God or Angels, or of Man the Companion of Angels, divinely entertain’d us with the wondrous Works of God; in the latter end of his Poem, and more particularly, in the last Book, he makes an Angel entertain us with the Works of corrupted Man.⁹⁷

Not only are the works of fallen Man unfit to raise enthusiastic passion, but they are particularly unsuited to raise that passion in the speakers who relate them in these books. For, in retelling the “works of corrupted Man,” “the Angel could draw no sort of Enthusiasm, and least of all that of Admiration and Terror, which give the principal Greatness and Elevation to Poetry.”⁹⁸ Likewise, Dennis notes that wherever God speaks of anything other than himself, the poetry must fall flat, for “nothing is more impossible than that God should either fear or admire his own Creatures.”⁹⁹ Examining the one moment in which he senses “Admiration” or “Terror” in the words of God, in the passages where the Father directs the Son to take the royal chariot out to crush the rebels, Dennis excuses this as a “Mistake” of Milton who “while he was rapt with Admiration, and moved with Terrour by the Ideas which he had conceiv’d, shifts Persons insensibly, and forgetting who speaks, expresses himself with those Passions which are indeed proper enough in the Poet, but never can be so in the Deity.”¹⁰⁰ These examples expand Dennis’s concept of enthusiastic sublimity to require not only that the reader be moved by the poet’s description of great ideas, but that the poet and even the poetic character/speaker must be moved by the height of the concepts related by the verse. Everyone – character, author, and reader – partakes of the transmission of proper enthusiastic passion. The suggestion that poetic characters themselves should “feel” the enthusiasm of their speech hints at an interior psychology for fictional characters that is as ahead of its time as Dennis’s attempt to identify the psychological mechanism of the sublime in readers. It also opens the door to the genuine inspiration or enthusiasm that Dennis hinted at in his preface to The Court of Death.

As his critical writing progressed, Dennis became more insistent that Milton surpassed the ancients through his creation of an original and irregular poem that harnessed the power of the enthusiastic sublime. His earlier qualifications about Milton’s language fell away as Milton became central to his developing critical theory. Dennis’s natural irascibility is perhaps in part to blame for the continued obscurity of his critical work. Even though Leslie Moore recently hailed Dennis as “by far the most important – and overlooked – of the early eighteenth-century Miltonists,” John Shawcross’s 1972 observation that Dennis was largely unknown even among Milton scholars remains quite accurate.¹⁰¹ In his time, Dennis ranged himself squarely against the reigning arbiters of taste when he wrote against the fashion for Italian opera, associating it with “slavery” and arguing that it was an “effeminate Musick” that worked contrary to liberty.¹⁰² Picking fights with Addison, Steele, and Pope, Dennis was consigned (along with Richard Bentley) to the categories of “pedant” and “dunce” by the wits. His reputation has never recovered. He ruefully noted his status as a party outsider as he reflected that neither The Court of Death nor his ode on William’s death had garnered any reward from the Whigs. Afterward, he could not resist bitterly reflecting, “He who after this could be induc’d to expect any thing from those whom they call the Whigs, must be of a more sanguine Temper than I am.”¹⁰³ When one of those wits wrote a critique on Milton that far surpassed his own in popularity and renown – despite its obvious debt to Dennis’s work – it galled him to the quick. He clearly viewed the critique of Milton offered by Joseph Addison’s fictional and supposedly neutral “Mr. Spectator” as a slap in the face. As we shall later see, Dennis’s writing about Milton after The Grounds of Criticism would be prompted by his indignation at Addison’s performance and its popularity.

Notes

John Dennis, “Preface,” in Remarks on a Book Entituled Prince Arthur, an Heroic Poem (London: Printed for S. Heyrick and R. Sare, 1696), Sig. B6v.

Anon, The Mourning Poets: Or, An Account of the Poems on the Death of the Queen. In a Letter to a Friend (London: Printed for J. Whitlock, 1695), 11.

Ibid., 6–7. Emphasis in the original.

For more on the young Addison’s turning away from Milton, see Chapter 1.

Mr. Dennis, “The Court of Death: A Pindaric POEM Dedicated to the MEMORY of Her Most Sacred Majesty, Queen Mary” (London, 1695). Italics reversed in quotes from the preface. The preface alone is reprinted in The Critical Works 1.42.

“Preface,” Sig. A2r. Rapin’s French, which Dennis includes and translates as “sublimeness of Spirit,” reads “Esprit qu’elle est grande.”

Ibid., Sig. A2v.

Ibid., Sig. a1r.

Ibid., Sig. a1v-a2r.

Ibid., Sig. a2r.

Dennis, The Court of Death, II.9-13. Emphasis in original.

“Postscript” Sig. a2v.

Ibid., Sig a2r.

The Mourning Poets, 7.

Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism, The Critical Works of John Dennis, Vol. 1, edited by Edward Niles Hooker (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1939), 333. Further references to Dennis’s critical writings will cite Hooker’s two volumes as Critical Works.

Dennis, Critical Works, 2.169. See also pp. 63–5 above.

Michael Heyd, “Be Sober and Reasonable”: The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (New York: E.J. Brill, 1995), 2–3.

Dennis, Preface to Miscellanies in Verse and Prose (1693). Critical Works, 1. 6.

Heyd, 4.

See also Chapter 4’s discussion of Hume’s annotation at 2.481-6.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. “A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm,” in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, edited by Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999), 27. I have restored the emphasis from the original, available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Ibid., 9.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Dennis, Preface to The Court of Death in Critical Works, 1. 43.

Hooker suggested the identification of Dennis as “Sir Tremendous Longinus,” in Critical Works, 1.508.

The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris (London, 1713), 11. All references refer to the copy maintained by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas (shelfmark Wk P810 713n WRE). The satire has been variously attributed to Steele and Pope, with most scholars now ascribing it to Pope.

Preface to the Passion of Byblis in Critical Works, 1, 3–4.

James I. Porter, “Ideals and Ruins: Pausanias, Longinus, and the Second Sophistic,” in Pausanias: Travel and Memory in Roman Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 63–92, 90.

Dionysius Longinus, Of the Height of Eloquence. Rendered out of the original by J.H. (John Hall) Esq. (London: Roger Daniel, 1652), s.39 G7v-G8r. It is worth noting that even “Longinus” included the argument about liberty and eloquence only as reported speech.

Dennis, The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry, Critical Works, 1.223.

Porter, 78.

Ibid.

Ibid., 82.

The Usefulness of the Stage in Critical Works, 1.146.

Ibid., 148.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., 150.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Milton, Samson Agonistes, 549.

René Le Bossu, Monsieur Bossu’s Treatise of the Epick Poem: Containing Many Curious Reflexions, very useful and necessary for the Right Understanding and Judging of the Excellencies of HOMER and VIRGIL. Done into English from the French, with a new Original Preface upon the same Subject, by W.J. W. J. trans. (London: Printed for Tho. Bennet, 1695), 5. This English translation of Traité du poème épique was later published in a two-volume second edition in 1719.

Ibid., 105.

Russ Leo, Tragedy as Philosophy in the Reformation World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 228.

Ibid., 234.

Dennis, The Usefulness of the Stage in Critical Works, 1.151.

Ibid.

Ibid., 167. Emphasis in the original.

Ibid., 183.

Dennis, The Advancement in Critical Works, 1.200.

Ibid., 207.

Ibid., 214.

Ibid., 265.

Milton, Of Education, 631.

Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism in Critical Works, 1.336.

Ibid., 337.

See Dennis, The Advancement in Critical Works, 1.215.

Ibid., 223.

Ibid., 216.

Porter, 79.

Dennis, The Advancement in Critical Works, 1.216.

Since sacred subjects can evoke ordinary passion, Dennis obviously cannot claim that a sacred subject alone is sufficient to incite sublimity. The burden of writing about the sacred cannot be borne by all poets, but only by those with enough strength. For example, see Dennis’s “Epistle Dedicatory” to The Advancement in Critical Works, 1. 201.

Critical Works, 1.507.

Ibid.

Milton, The Reason of Church-Government, as quoted in Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism in Critical Works, 1.330.

Ibid.

Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism, vol. 1, 330.

Dennis, The Person of Quality’s Answer to Mr. Collier’s Letter, Being a Disswasive from the Play-House (1704), Critical Works, 1.302.

Dennis, 345. He makes this observation upon quoting the Angelic hymn to the Son in Book 3.

Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism, in Critical Works, 1.331.

Ibid., 1.333.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Dryden, “Dedication” John Dryden, “Dedication” in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis translated into English Verse (London: Jacob Tonson, 1693), viii. Available from Early English Books Online.

For the quotation in the translator’s preface to Le Bossu, see M. J., Preface to Bossu’s Treatise of the Epick Poem (1695).

Dryden makes the claim about genre (and refers to Rymer’s unfulfilled threat) in the same ambivalent passage quoted above.

Ibid., 333.

Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism in Critical Works, 1.334. Anticipating objections, Dennis holds that in the poetry of the ancients, the Gods were “but Seconds” to the human protagonists.

Ibid.

Ibid., 336–367.

Ibid., 334.

Ibid.

Ibid., 339. I am reminded of William Blake’s exclamation in the Vision of the Last Judgment, “When the Sun rises do you not see a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea O no no I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty.” See The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake, edited by David V. Erdman (New York: Anchor, 1988), 565–566.

Ibid., 358.

Ibid., 359.

Ibid., 359–360.

Ibid., 360.

Hume identified this as well, terming it a “Noble Paraphrase” and “highly Poetical.” Dennis’s extended treatment of this passage as sublime contradicts Leslie Moore’s concern that episodes involving Eve are given as examples of “beauty” while Book VI and VII are “sublime.”

Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism in Critical Works, 1.351.

Ibid., 372.

Ibid.

Ibid., 351.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid., 353.

Ibid.

Leslie Moore, Beautiful Sublime: The Making of Paradise Lost, 1701–1734 (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990), 14. John T. Shawcross, Milton, 1628–1731: The Critical Heritage, Vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1972), 99.

Dennis, An Essay on the Opera’s After the Italian Manner (1706), Critical Works, 1.389-90.

Dennis, Preface to Liberty Asserted (1704), in Critical Works 1.322.

4 “The Merit of Being the First”Jacob Tonson’s 1695 Paradise Lost and Hume’s Annotations

DOI: 10.4324/9781003276395-5

P.H. or Patrick Hume, as he was the first, so is the most copious annotator. He laid the foundation, but he laid it among infinite heaps of rubbish.

– Thomas Newton, “Preface” to Paradise Lost, 1749.

The 1694 volume of poetry that includes Joseph Addison’s “Account of the Greatest English Poets,” which we encountered in Chapter 1, provides a vivid snapshot of the London literary scene in the middle of the century’s last decade. Tonson’s fourth Annual Miscellany opens with a plate showing a seated Muse spilling fruits from a cornucopia held beneath her naked breasts. Lest there be any doubt as to what the cornucopia represents, it is conveniently labeled “The Annual Miscellany.” The title page promises that this fourth installment of the series contains a “Great Variety of New Translations and Original Copies, by the Most Eminent Hands.”¹ And who were deemed “the most eminent hands” to grace this collection in 1694? Thomas Yalden contributed the greatest number of poems to the volume, a total of seven relatively short pieces. Addison tied for second place with four poems, his entries comprising some of the longest selections in the volume. According to Peter Smithers, the entries in this volume represent young Addison’s “serious bid for fame in English verse … [his] part in this volume was so considerable that it could not fail to make his name known immediately in literary and fashionable society.”² However, it is John Dryden whose presence seems to saturate the volume despite his contributing only two poems. The first (and at fifty-four pages, by far the longest) poem in the collection is Dryden’s “Third Book of Virgil’s Georgicks, English’d by Mr. Dryden.” His second poem is a short tribute to the portrait painter Sir Godfrey Kneller. But Dryden is himself addressed in no less than three of the remaining poems, including John Dennis’s ode “To Mr. Dryden upon his Translation of the Third Book of Virgil’s Georgicks” and Addison’s “Account.” It is tempting to consider the other poets in the Miscellany a court of sorts, deferentially nodding to the elder poet in their contributions.

Curiously, Addison’s “Account” closes Tonson’s miscellany volume with Addison’s declaration that he will now leave poetry behind:

I leave the Arts of Poetry and Verse

To them that practise ’em with more success,

Of greater Truths I’ll now prepare to tell,

And so at once, Dear Friend and Muse, Farewell.³

Smithers calls these final lines “the strangest feature of the poem,” pointing out that some scholars have since interpreted them as signaling Addison’s intent to quit poetry for a career in the Church.⁴ As Smithers admits, this seems an unlikely explanation. A promising young poet who had by this time come to the notice of Dryden and Tonson, Addison – in stark contrast to John Dennis – implies that poetry cannot bear the weight of “greater Truths.” While Smithers suggests the lines gesture toward Addison’s commitment to a Roman ideal of active citizenship and service to the state, it may be that Addison instead meant to signal merely his shift in modes from verse to prose.

Alongside the translations and imitations of the classics found in Tonson’s miscellany, several poems provide evidence of the growing culture war between “wits” and “dunces” as they take on Grubstreet critics and scribblers. In “An Epistle to Mr. B –,” Francis Knapp complains facetiously:

I hear that you, of late, are grown

One of those squeamish Criticks of the Town,

That think they have a License to abuse

Each honest Author, that pretends to Muse.

…

What is’t to you? Why shou’d you take’t amiss

If Grubstreet’s stock’d with Tenants, if the Press

Is hugely ply’d, and labours to produce

Some mighty Folio, for the Chandler’s use?

Let Grubstreet scribble on, nor need you care

Tho’ ev’ry Garret held a Poet there.⁵

Knapp’s “Epistle” runs its course to lampoon Wesley, Higden, Settle, D’Urfey, Rymer, Crowne, and Edgar. Later in the Miscellany, three anonymous poems skewer Edward Howard for his poem “The British Princes”:

Thou damn’d Antipodes to Common Sense,

Thou foil to Fleckno, prithee tell from whence

Does all this mighty Stock of dullness spring?

…

…Curst be he that gives thee Pen and Ink.

Such dangerous Weapons shou’d be kept from Fools,

As Nurses from their Children keep edge-Tools.⁶

While battle lines were being drawn and sides were being picked in the war between the “wits” and the “dunces,” the battle of the ancients versus the moderns was simmering as well and would often intersect in the more general culture war. Sir William Temple had initiated the conflict in England when he published Of Ancient and Modern Learning in 1690 to champion ancient superiority over modern culture. William Wotton’s reply on behalf of the moderns, Reflections on Ancient and Modern Learning, would make its first appearance in 1694, the same year as this Annual Miscellany. And the battle would break out in earnest with Richard Bentley’s contribution of his Dissertation on Phalaris to Wotton’s second edition of 1697.

Given this background, it is notable how far Tonson’s 1694 Annual Miscellany lives up to its name by presenting a truly miscellaneous collection of authors. As tempting as it may be to envision it as that ordered literary court presided over by the aged Dryden, closer inspection reveals that any apparent uniformity in the volume is challenged by difference, the very variety signaled by the symbolic cornucopia of the opening sculpture. Authors who will be arrayed on different sides of the battle of the books – critics and poets, hacks and dunces, Whigs and Tories – are all gathered together in the Miscellany. Dryden rubs shoulders with Dennis, Addison, and others who will come to represent and promote a new “Whiggish” aesthetic.

Yet, even if the discordia concors of the contributions tempers Dryden’s domination of the Annual Miscellany, it must still be said that one presence haunts the volume, unifying it in very real ways:

With leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair;

With two left legs, and Judas-coloured hair,

And frowzy pores, that taint the ambient air.⁷

So Dryden described Jacob Tonson the elder, his own long-time publisher, and the publisher of the Annual Miscellany. Tonson was the undisputed king of the English literary scene not only in the 1690s but for decades. Having made his name by publishing Dryden’s works, by 1690 Tonson was also the sole owner of Milton’s poetry and had produced the handsome Milton folios of 1688 and 1691. Tonson’s influence upon the Miscellany goes beyond simply being the printer/publisher but is better viewed as an extension of his larger project to shape the taste of England. The 1694 Miscellany contains contributions from at least five prominent Kit-Cats, a club presided over by Tonson and coalescing at this time.⁸ Perhaps originally a shrewd business move that served Tonson as a particularly clever way to bring together a ready pool of authors along with potential patrons, the Kit-Cat Club may with little exaggeration be described as an attempt to reengineer England’s culture over the next three decades. Ophelia Field asserts as much in her popular history of the club:

For over twenty years – from the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution in 1688, through two long and expensive wars against Catholic France, into the reign of George I after 1714 – nearly all roads in British politics and culture led through the Kit-Cat Club, or took their direction in opposition to it.⁹

While there is much remarkable about the club and its considerable influence on English culture, one of the most unusual aspects is the role of Tonson. The printer from lowly origins sat weekly with the most influential Lords of the Realm, feeding them Christopher (“Kit”) Catling’s meat pies and introducing them to the promising young authors under his wing. Edward Ward summed up Tonson’s unique position with a tinge of jealousy in 1709, writing that Tonson, “Tho’ he look’d but like a Bookseller seated among Lords, yet vice versa, he behav’d himself like a Lord when he came among Booksellers.”¹⁰ Sir Richard Blackmore, no friend to the Kit Kats, alluded to Tonson’s central role as founder and secretary in his poem, The Kit-Cats.

One Night in Seven at this convenient Seat,

Indulgent BOCAJ did the Muses treat,

Their Drink was gen’rous Wine,

And Kit-Cat’s pyes their Meat.

Here he assembled his Poetic Tribe,

Past Labours to Reward, and new ones to prescribe.¹¹

By the time he published the 1694 Annual Miscellany containing Addison’s conflicted treatment of Milton, Tonson’s presses were likely at work on the sixth edition of Milton, the 1695 folio of Milton’s Poetical Works. Tonson’s publication of successive Milton editions was to prove the most lucrative of his ventures. Accordingly, the Kit-Cat portrait that Kneller painted for Tonson shows him cradling a volume of Paradise Lost.

As R.G. Moyles points out, Tonson’s 1695 Paradise Lost differs from the previous folios he had produced in two key respects. The first is that the text of the poem provides evidence that some care was taken to improve it by consulting not only the 1688 Tonson folio edition (used as the copy-text) but also the 1674 second edition. The second difference is that the 1695 edition was distinguished by the announcement on the title page that the poem was published “Together with Explanatory NOTES on each book, and a TABLE to the POEM, never before Printed.”¹² These notes are often bound after the poem with their own title page naming them Annotations on Milton’s Paradise Lost and attributing them only to “P.H.” According to Moyles, the consultation of the 1674 edition “supports the view that Jacob Tonson, though not over-zealous in this regard, was concerned to remain as faithful as possible to Milton’s original intentions,” while the addition of the Annotations “testifies to the scholarly interest which Paradise Lost was beginning to arouse.”¹³ The term “scholarly interest” seems an anachronism. Instead, this chapter will show that the inclusion of the Annotations ought to be considered as having been motivated primarily by Tonson’s business concerns and secondarily by cultural and political interests aligned with those of the Kit-Cat Club. The volume attempts to increase the poem’s cultural standing and popular appeal, while also shaping its reception as politically acceptable and even useful in the face of Milton’s heterodoxies and difficult Restoration reputation.

My first encounter with the 321 tightly packed folio pages of text following Tonson’s Paradise Lost was in many ways the genesis of this book. Why did Paradise Lost demand such attention and annotation when nothing of the sort existed for other vernacular English authors (such as Shakespeare)? How did the Annotations come to be, and what might it tell us about the reception and rehabilitation of Milton’s epic in the Restoration? And of course, who was “P.H.”? Surely one of the founders of vernacular literary scholarship, “P.H.’s” continued anonymity (traditionally named “Patrick Hume” despite a lack of evidence for this) demanded more investigation. Due in some part to the author’s anonymity, the Annotations seemed to have been, if not overlooked, certainly undervalued in their contributions not only to Milton scholarship and the reception of Paradise Lost but also in their import for the development of the field of English literary criticism.

My previous identification of “P.H.” as Peter Hume, a non-conformist servant in the royal household from 1668 to his death in 1707, may allow us to better understand some of the moves Hume makes in engaging with Paradise Lost.¹⁴ In my 2019 journal article identifying Hume, I presented evidence from Peter Hume’s career, as well as from his elegy to Queen Mary, to make a case that he is indeed the author of the Annotations. I won’t restate that case here, which has been well received by the wider community of Milton scholars. Instead, this chapter will focus on the implications of Hume’s biography and identity on our understanding of his methodologies in the Annotations.

According to the baptismal records of St. Margaret’s parish, Westminster, Peter Hume was baptized on November 6, 1640, in the presence of his parents Thomas and Margerie Hume.¹⁵ In 1656, Peter Hume was on the school lists at Westminster School, where he would have studied under Dr. Richard Busby.¹⁶ Hume was elected as a pensioner to Trinity College Cambridge in 1659.¹⁷ It isn’t yet known what his father, Thomas, was doing during the Interregnum; however, at the Restoration in 1660 he successfully petitioned to regain his place as Page in the Removing Wardrobe “to which he was sworn at York, May 5, 1642.” The petition states that Thomas “has waited at court 30 years, kinsman of Peter Newton, daily usher to the late King.”¹⁸ Thomas regained his position after Peter Newton petitioned on behalf of his nephew because there was an “endeavor to make void the said grant.”¹⁹ Safely restored to his position in the wardrobe, Thomas was able to provide for his son, Peter, who may not have graduated from Cambridge.²⁰ In 1668, Peter was “admitted and sworne youngest page of his Majesties Removing Wardrobe in the place of Thomas Hume his father who hath furnished up his place,” beginning a career of service to the royal household that would last thirty-nine years.²¹ Peter Hume was admitted to the Inner Temple as a “gentleman” on March 11, 1670.²² According to records in the Lord Steward and Lord Chamberlain papers, Hume was the Eldest Page of the Removing Wardrobe in 1674, the Youngest Groom of the Removing Wardrobe in 1681, the Eldest Groom in 1682, and also the Keeper of the Standing Wardrobe at St. James in 1689. In 1693, he was named Yeoman of the Wardrobe, a position (along with the Keeper of the Standing Wardrobe at St. James) that he kept until his death in 1707.²³

In establishing Hume’s authorship of the Annotations, I traced his career in the royal household to demonstrate his wide-ranging skills and to provide evidence of his connections with the book trade and literary circles (including connections with Thomas Rymer and John Flamsteed).²⁴ Recognizing his varied contributions and the breadth of his service to the crown, Hume is described in even the dry Calendar of Treasury Books as “a very skilful and trusty person.”²⁵ His intellectual life is further attested by the scant remaining record of his library. In March of 1708, starting on the 15th, his books were advertised in the Daily Courant as being for sale at Edmund Curll’s bookstall:

This morning at 9 Exactly, will begin the Sale (the price being set to each Book) of the Library of Peter Hume Esq, (late of the Wardrobe) being a curious Collection of Books in Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, English, &c. in most Arts and Sciences, but more particularly Classical, Historical, and Mathematical, of the best Editions, and for the generality neatly bound and gilt. The Sale will continue all this Week, from 9 in the Morning to 8 in the Evening, at Edmund Curll’s at the Peacock without Temple Bar.²⁶

Because the volumes were sold at retail, no inventory of the library survives, but the ads that ran until 26 March indicate a sizeable and learned collection. On successive dates, the advertisements in the Daily Courant describe the collection as either “curious” or “extraordinary” and as containing “the most valuable authors in all Arts and Sciences.” To match the erudition found in the Annotations they could be nothing else.

Of Hume’s spiritual life, the best evidence remains in the records of his marriage and death which identify both Peter and his wife as non-conformists. Hume married Rachel Baggelly in 1681.²⁷ When he made his will on October 16, 1707, he named his wife as executrix assisted by his friends.²⁸ The burial records for Westminster record that Peter Hume, Esq. was buried as a non-conformist on December 7, 1707.²⁹ He was survived by his wife, Rachel, and his daughters, Penelope and Rachel.³⁰ Upon her death and burial in 1716, Rachel was also recorded as a non-conformist.³¹ Necessarily circumspect about his own non-conformity – having entered royal service prior to the Toleration Act of 1689 – Hume’s commentary on Paradise Lost intersects with Milton’s coyness and ambiguity as he included heterodox religious and political content in Paradise Lost itself.

Along with the author’s longstanding anonymity, the dismissive characterizations of the Annotations provided by Thomas Newton in his 1749 edition of Paradise Lost have done them a great disservice ever since.

P.H. or Patrick Hume, as he was the first, so is the most copious annotator. He laid the foundation, but he laid it among infinite heaps of rubbish. The greater part of his work is a dull dictionary of the most common words, a tedious fardel of the most trivial observations, explaining what requires no explanation: but take away what is superfluous, and there will still remain a great deal that is useful; there is gold among his dross, and I have been careful to separate the one from the other.³²

In light of this, it is ironic that Newton downplayed his own reliance on the Annotations, particularly as he explicated Milton’s scriptural references. In 1964 Ants Oras barely softened Newton’s judgment and has since been relied upon as the definitive word on the Annotations.³³ R.G. Moyles thus dismisses Hume by quoting Oras quoting Newton:

Hume’s … “Annotations on Milton’s Paradise Lost,” though they were important in their context and laid the groundwork for such later commentators as Newton and Todd, are on the whole superficial and simplistic, the bulk consisting of straightforward explication and “explanation of obsolete words.” Their nature and significance have been adequately explored by Ants Oras.³⁴

Exacerbated by our lack of knowledge about the author, the reputation of the Annotations has seldom overcome Thomas Newton’s lackluster review in his variorum. Oras, while admitting that Newton’s “grudging acknowledgement” obscures his reliance on the Annotations for biblical scholarship, was himself similarly ambivalent toward the work.

Much of it is superfluous. It lacks discipline. But some of its critical judgements are stimulating and unconventional despite the annotator’s moralistic and classicist bias. Notwithstanding its accumulation of unnecessary information, acute observation will sometimes be found combined with solid erudition.³⁵

Oras even apologizes for spending so many pages (a mere twenty-seven) on the Annotations, declaring that the treatment is “at greater length than would have been advisable if Hume had not been the first commentator of Milton, and the first person who tried to deal with a great English poet in the thorough manner of classical philology.”³⁶ With the notable exceptions of Howard Erskine-Hill and John Leonard, most modern critics appear to share Oras’s quixotic view of the Annotations.³⁷ And yet, Oras’s acknowledgment that Hume was the first to treat an English poet in the same manner as classical texts is an observation that merits emphasis. Not only does Hume’s work signal the initiation of serious English literary studies, but it does so using the controversial epic of Milton. This is no coincidence if we consider Hume’s Annotations an intervention in the reception of Paradise Lost orchestrated in response to Tonson’s business as well as political interests.

Among his other judgments upon the Annotations, Oras concluded that Hume did not edit the edition. Moyles supports this, claiming that it “seems certain” that Tonson either purchased the Annotations or contracted to have them written for the 1695 edition, “but he did not employ Hume … as editor or even corrector of the Folio text.”³⁸ It is, however, clear that Tonson deliberately planned the 1695 edition to include the Annotations. And it is also clear that Hume was writing with Tonson’s folio in mind. This is borne out by two comments he makes on the illustrations of the folio. At 1.591-94, Hume scolds the “Designer of Lucifer’s Picture, prefix’d to this first Book,” for providing a grotesque satanic figure with horns and asses ears instead of a fallen angel retaining angelic features and traces of his former nobility. Similarly, he comments at 12.637 that the “Designer of the Copper Plate” depicting the expulsion has not “well expressed” the manner in which Milton’s angel led Adam and Eve out of paradise by the hand, instead “representing him, shoving them out, as we say, by Head and Shoulders.” Hume’s wording in his complaint (“this first Book”) suggests his commentary was written or revised specifically for inclusion in the Tonson folio that contained these images. In addition to Hume’s references to the folio illustrations, the 1695 edition was the first edition of Paradise Lost since the first ten-book edition to be printed with line numbers in the margins of the poem. This, a necessary feature for keying the annotations to the text, suggests that Tonson viewed the Annotations as integral to the text and planned for their inclusion as the text of the poem was cast off.

Despite this evidence that the edition was carefully planned to include the Annotations, evidence that Hume was not an editor of the 1695 text is amply provided where his textual references and corrections diverge from the text as it was printed. His spelling and punctuation seem to most closely follow the 1674 edition. Had he edited the 1695 text, these incidentals would likely have been more closely reflected in the final text of the poem. Moyles suggests that P.H. used the 1691 as copy-text for his notes while referring to a 1674 edition.

Hume, when preparing his annotations, relied not merely on an easily accessible 1691 edition but on the authoritative 1674. An examination of his notes, each preceded by a quoted word, partial line, or whole line from the poem, supports that view: each quotation, in terms of its substantives, spelling, and punctuation, accords with the 1674 text. That Hume did not use a 1667 text or think it necessary to collate is made clear by the perpetuation of 1674 errors and the adoption of every 1674 variant without comment.³⁹

Unfortunately, this isn’t quite supported by a close examination of Hume’s text. Moyles claims that in the entire 321 pages of commentary, there are “only three textual notes.”⁴⁰ However, there are at least seven textual comments, one of which at least suggests the possibility that Hume referred to a 1667 text, while another indicates he was using the 1688, not the 1691 edition, as his copy text.

The first of these telltale emendations (noted neither by Oras nor Moyles) is at 9.922, where Hume’s annotation reads, “Who thus hath dar’d; Misprinted for, Hast dared.” The line is printed “Who thus hast dar’d” in the 1667 edition, but in all editions following (to include the 1695) the line reads “hath dar’d.” Hume’s correction may be a sign that he collated with the 1667, or it may simply be a serendipitous correction. Modern editions seem to prefer “hath” (see Merritt Hughes’s edition and the 2007 Modern Library) with the notable exception of Fowler, who prints “hast.” The choice has been discussed in print more than once.⁴¹

The next emendation that seems to indicate both a break with the 1674 edition and suggests that P.H.’s copy text was the 1688 edition is found at 9.1092-3. Hume’s annotation reads, “May from the present; Misprinted, for the present.” This is a confusing moment. Using the previously discussed emendation as an example of Hume’s methodology, I read this as “Misprinted for, for the present.”⁴² The missing “for” that clarifies the correction may well be the result of an inattentive or even well-meaning compositor. Even as early as 1695, these lines had had a rather complex textual history which may best be summarized through a line-by-line comparison of the editions.

What best may for the present serve to hide

The Parts of each from other

(1667, 1691-5)

What best may from the present serve to hide

The Parts of each for other

(1674)

What best may from the present serve to hide

The Parts of each from other

(1678, 1688)

If he was using a 1691 edition as his copy text, Hume’s comment would only make sense if, reading the text “for the present,” he was advocating a return to the faulty 1678–88 version, which read inelegantly, “from the present/each from other.” Instead, it seems certain that Hume is responding to the faulty 1688 version and restoring it to the correct 1667 version (“for the present”), a correction made both in 1691 and 1695. Hume’s apparent use of the 1688 edition as copy-text raises a question about when he was working on the Annotations. While we can’t be certain when his work started, we can determine that he was still working on them after 1690 since he responded to and criticized Hog’s Latin translation of the epic, which appeared in that year.⁴³

Another emendation proposed by Hume corrects a misprint introduced in 1688 at 9.925, where the Tree of Knowledge is described as having been “Under bane to touch.” The annotation corrects it to “Bann,” restoring the reading in the 1667–1678 editions that had printed it “Banne.” The erroneous “Bane” is, however, printed in the 1695 edition. In fact, the only emendation proposed by Hume and adopted uniquely in the 1695 edition (and ever since) is the correction of the metrically defective misprint at 10.989-90:

Childless thou art, Childless remain;

So Death shall be deceived his glut, and with us two

(1667-1691)

In his note on this verse, Hume undertakes a sensitive exploration of the possible intentional meanings of such a short line, even though he ultimately determines it an unintentional misprint.

Childless thou art, Childless remain; A mistake of the Printer has made our Author seem ambitious to have imitated Virgil in some of incomplete Verses; or that he had a mind to shew Eve’s vehement desire to stop and prevent the miserable Being of Mankind, by breaking of his Verse abruptly; but the next Verse being too long by what this falls short, plainly shews that [So Death] is to be added to this. Childless thou art, Childless remain; So Death.

Hume’s suggestion that an incomplete line may have been construed as a conscious imitation of Virgil, and his exploration of the emotional or psychological meanings of such truncation appears a remarkably modern exposition of critical acumen. Based on this evidence, it is likely that Hume consulted a first edition of the poem while preparing his Annotations using a 1688 folio as copy text. Given the evidence of the other emendations and incidental differences not incorporated into the 1695 text, Moyles seems correct in theorizing that someone involved in producing the edition noted the Annotations emendation at 10.989-90 and corrected the lines, or (having shown evidence of metrical sensitivity at other places) came upon the correction independently of the text of the Annotations.⁴⁴

The final two textually focused emendations are Hume’s original contributions, proposing alternatives to readings that had been consistent since 1667 (and were not adopted in 1695, either). The first is at 11.433, where confronted with the vision of Abel’s altar as “Rustic, of Grassy Sord,” Hume wrestles valiantly with the word “sord,” suggesting reasonably that it may have been “misprinted for Sod” before attempting an etymology to justify the ways of Milton to readers who would retain “Sord”:

Sord, perhaps misprinted for Sod, Turf, of the Belg Sode, Ital. Terra Soda, of Solidum or Solum, Lat. But if there be any such word as Sord, for dried Earth, it must be a derivative of Swart, Belg. Black, from its colour, when fit for Fuel; whence our Sword, the Rind of Bacon, of its blackness.

Modern commentators, including Miner, Moeck, and Jablonski, look to the OED definition of “sward” to explain the word in a manner recalling Hume’s desperate recourse to the Belgian “swart.” Bentley spells it “swerd,” and the modern editions (Fowler, Hughes, and The Modern Library) print “sward.” Hume’s treatment, however, demonstrates a philosophy of textual criticism that tries to maintain fidelity to the “authorial” text in the absence of other evidence.

The next (and final) of Hume’s original textual emendations may in fact be tongue-in-cheek, for the annotator sometimes displays a capacity for dry (and somewhat acerbic) humor in his notes.⁴⁵ At 11.820 he suggests emending the description of the flood to replace “rack” with “wrack”:

Devote to Universal Rack; The World design’d for universal Deluge, destin’d universally to be drown’d. Rack, should have been printed, Wrack, implying the general punishment by the Flood, wherein the whole World at once suffered shipwrack.⁴⁶

Bentley’s 1732 edition prints “wrack” at this point, without comment. Whether Hume’s suggestion is meant to be humorous or not, modern editors also seem to split on the issue. Hughes prints “rack,” The Modern Library “wrack,” and Alastair Fowler “wreck.” Not even Fowler acknowledges Hume’s comment about “shipwrack.”

The final category of textual issues in the Annotations concerns two points at which Hume engages with the meaning and sense of Milton’s words. The first of these is at 3.48, where he suggests emending (perhaps needlessly, however brilliantly) Milton’s description of blindness as a “universal blanc.” I quote it at length, for it provides a good example of Hume’s ingenuity.

Presented with a Universal Blanc; I cannot perswade my self but it should have been a Universal Blot, and that it is a mistake of the Printer. Blanc is Fr. for White, and the Phrase, Donner la carte Blanche á, to send one a Blanc, is to submit absolutely to what Conditions the Conquerour shall set down: Now Blindness (as well described by Clouds and continual Darkness) does so fully import an entire Ignorance and Privation of Colour, that a Person born blind has doubtless no notion of any such thing; but for a Man that had for many years enjoyed his Eyes, to say, his Blindness had cut him off from the chearful ways of Men, and, instead of Nature’s fair Book of Knowledge, had presented him with a Universal Blanc, like a piece of white Paper, unspotted and unstained with any Impression, his Memory retaining still the Idea’s of all Things formerly seen, thô now as to his Eye-sight blotted out, seems absurd. The next Verse, Of Natures Works to me expung’d and ras’d, confirms, that it ought to be an Universal Blot; for Expung’d is of Expungere, Lat. to blot out a written Word, by covering it with little Pricks or Blots, and Ras’d, is of Radere, Lat. to shave; the Romans, (who writ on Waxed Tablets with Iron Styles) when they struck out a Word, did Tabulam radere, rase it out.

Oras dismisses this annotation with some venom as “Bentleian,” claiming that Hume “does not understand Milton’s emotional, slightly hyperbolical manner of speaking and requires pedantic accuracy …. Even Bentley’s application of logic and philology was hardly more regardless of the style of poetry.”⁴⁷ Moyles notes the suggested emendation, but remains mute on his estimation of its value. Bentley himself took issue not with the word “blanc,” but instead with the phrase “blank of Nature’s works.” He suggests it may be better to terminate the sentence at “blank” and to emend the next sentence so that it reads “All Natures Map to me expung’d and ras’d.” Modern editors have accepted the original text, although often including a gloss.

The final textual concern that Hume raises is one that Bentley would later seize upon and make his own by suggesting a correction (one of the few of Bentley’s emendations that is considered probable to this day). Hume describes the crux in the account of creation at 7.451:

Let the Earth bring forth Fowl living. ’Tis unaccountable how our Author, who has hitherto kept so close to the sacred Text, should deviate from it here, and make mention of Fowl, when there is no such in Gen 1.24 where the Works of the Sixth Day are enumerated, having treated of ’em but just before; unless he would insinuate (according to Gen 2.19 above cited) that Fowl, or at least some kinds of ’em, were nearer of kin, in their Original, to Earth, than Water, which their Agility seems to contrary, thô the Elements are no where so pure, at least these two inferior, but each has more or less some mixture of the other.

As with his attempt to explain the truncated line at 10.989-90, Hume’s ingenuity is evident as he proposes reasons why Milton may have diverged from “sacred text.” Bentley, by contrast, would not work so hard to justify Milton, and instead proposed confidently that Milton had dictated “soul” instead of “fowl” to his amanuensis.⁴⁸ As with “sord,” Hume is reluctant to suggest a change to the text if there is no obvious misprint. And here we are confronted with one of the key differences between Hume and Bentley, missed by previous critics such as Oras who dismissed them together as being of a similar nature. While Bentley parades his own interpretation of Milton’s biography in his text, relying on it to characterize difficult or “faulty” passages as the fault of an amanuensis, Hume cannot or will not do so. In fact, the absence of “Milton” in the Annotations is a feature of the text that helps explain its very existence.

Death of the Author: Expelling Milton from His Paradise Lost

The absence of Milton’s biography in Hume’s Annotations was highlighted as another of its faults by Ants Oras. In his opinion, rooted in early twentieth-century critical methodology, the lack of a biographical perspective was a near-fatal flaw in the Annotations as criticism:

What is too often absent in Hume is a direct interest in the poet himself. He gives no biographical information about Milton, but confines himself to a study of the work considered quite apart from the writer’s personality. Milton is already a classic, and “Paradise Lost” an engine of edification.⁴⁹

In contrast, Howard Erskine-Hill proposed that this aspect of Hume’s technique is a conscious strategy employed in response to Milton’s politics. Erskine-Hill notes that Hume’s definition of poetry demonstrates that “to Hume the concept of the author was alive and significant … [He] identifies learnedly and passionately with Milton’s attitude to rhyme.”⁵⁰ In the Annotations, we find Hume shows his familiarity (and agreement) with Milton’s defense of blank verse, as well as with Marvell’s commendatory poem “On Milton’s Paradise Lost,” as he defines poetry in a way that dismisses any reliance upon rhyme.

Poetry (of which Rhime is a Modern part) is tied up to certain Measures and Quantities, which, among the Greek and Latin poets, (till the times of Monkish Ignorance) consisted in an Harmonious Modulation of Numbers, that implied nothing less than the inconvenient gingle and chime at the ends of Verses, which we falsly call Rhime; so deservedly disdained by our Author, for the shackles it puts upon Sense; no Comparison better suiting such Poetasters than that of Tagging of Points in a Garret.⁵¹

The passage is remarkable in that (aside from the barb at Dryden “tagging points in a garret”) it largely omits the political valence of the rhyme argument. Hume, in the Annotations and his earlier elegy upon Queen Mary, acknowledges the “shackles” and fetters of rhyme as purely poetic restraints, declining to explicitly relate rhymed verse to any politically charged “ancient bondage.”⁵² After examining this and other points at which Hume had opportunity to comment on Milton’s politics and chose not to, Erskine-Hill declares:

Hume’s strategy now seems clear. He is not unconcerned with Milton’s life. He is very much concerned with political and historical matters, but not to the extent of featuring Milton’s record or views on them …. Generally his aim is to detach “our Author” and his poem from the historical events of the century’s middle decades …. Hume’s “Annotations” is, perhaps, the first attempt to accommodate Milton to later times, and take the political sting out of his metaphysical epic.⁵³

Quite presciently, and lacking knowledge of Hume’s non-conformity, Erskine-Hill recognizes Hume’s effacement of Milton’s biography from his Annotations as a deliberate critical strategy of “accommodation” meant to negate the political controversies of Paradise Lost. Instead of accommodating things divine to things earthly as Milton’s Raphael must do in explaining the way of heaven to Adam, Hume’s Annotations is a means of suiting Milton’s heavenly epic to the hostile political and cultural atmosphere of the Restoration. Given that much of the literary commentary and criticism of the seventeenth century was author-centric, in the form of progresses of poets or brief lives, the omission of such context from Hume’s commentary is unusual and certainly intentional. Where only a year prior Addison’s “Account” had posited that readers couldn’t enjoy Paradise Lost because of Milton’s past and reputation, Hume silently and deliberately removes these obstacles and treats the poem as some sort of orphan text, untainted by the politics and reputation of its (dead) author.

Hume’s general approach to effacing Milton’s presence from his epic is best demonstrated by his notes upon the invocation of Book 7. This, more than any other point in Paradise Lost, was a location read by later seventeenth- and eighteenth-century commentators as a moment of Miltonic self-representation. Every early biographical sketch of Milton, including Bentley’s preface and the Richardsons’s notes, construes these passages as Milton’s description of himself heroically continuing as voice of truth, defiant despite being disenfranchised by the Restoration.

More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchang’d

To hoarse or mute, though fall’n on evil days,

On evil days though fall’n, and evil tongues;

In darkness, and with dangers compass’d round

(7.24-7)

While we’ve seen that these lines can garner admiration (such as from the Richardsons) or disdain (from Samuel Johnson), Hume’s commentary on these personal lines is remarkably restrained. It almost seems to take an effort on Hume’s part to avoid the biographical reading so readily available in these verses. That the biographical interpretation was obvious to this sensitive reader is clear as he explains a rather more obscure biographical allusion to blindness just before, at line 18. There, he indicates that Milton’s reference to Bellerophon alludes to the poet’s blindness once again:

Bellerophon …. Attempting vain-gloriously to mount up to Heaven on his Winged Steed, Jupiter made his unruly unrein’d Horse so ungovernable, that he threw his Rider on the Alean Plain, where being struck blind, he wandred, finding no Relief, till he died with Hunger.

Given that so many of Milton’s critics claimed his blindness was a judgment upon him for his treatment of Charles I and his defense of regicide in the Second Defense, the story of Bellerophon has great possibility for biographical resonance that passes nonetheless unremarked upon by Hume. Instead, in the note immediately following this, where we expect to find traditional comment on Milton’s situation after the Restoration described as “with dangers compassed round,” we find no biographical allusion at all. As with his treatment of Milton’s apology for blank verse, Hume focuses strictly on poetry itself as he paraphrases Milton’s lines. As ventriloquist for Milton, Hume has him say here, “Half my work is still unfinish’d … but … firm standing on the Earth, not snatch’d above the Stars with daring flight, more safe, I sing with manly voice, not changed by straining it to hoarsness, or into dumbness wearied, &c.” (7.22). Hume has shown himself too learned and shrewd a commentator to be oblivious to the biographical and political implications of Milton’s self-referential moment. Indeed, the lightness of Hume’s biographical touch is such that as he annotates Milton’s invocation to light opening Book 3, he makes no mention of Milton’s own blindness for almost three complete folio pages, until his circumspect note on line 33: “Equal’d with me in fate; as unlucky as my self in the loss of my sight; attended with the same misfortune by losing their eyes.”⁵⁴ The omission of such commentary where others would be quick to note autobiography suggests it is intentional, an effacement of Milton’s personal history from the poem in order to make it more palatable for the public.

Hume seems to consciously avoid bringing Milton into the text as anything more than that vague figure, “our Author.” Milton the man and statesman, the famous “John Milton, Englishman,” is not welcome in the text of his own poem and has to be carefully elided and sometimes even revised to avoid the poem’s association with what Addison had termed the “bottom odious to the sight.”⁵⁵ As Addison had put it in 1694, as long as Milton continued to recall the zeal of the regicides, even his most powerful language “can’t support the cause.” The Annotations thus separates the poetry from the politics and expunges Milton’s biography from the poem. Having picked up on Hume’s elisions, Erskine-Hill apparently worried that Hume would be accused of “sanitizing” Milton, and offered the justification that Milton himself was cagey about politics (and religion) within the epic.

Hume should not be utterly condemned as sanitizing Paradise Lost from its political taint. The poem itself makes a move, not to evade but to touch with delicacy the roots of recent, tragic, political argument. Milton himself had in his poem obvious opportunities to express what were, or had been, his openly expressed political views.⁵⁶

Even in the face of Hume’s anonymity, Erskine-Hill sensitively noted a conjunction of sympathy between Milton and Hume’s circumspect treatment of heterodoxies in Paradise Lost. A non-conformist working in the royal household, Hume would be acutely aware of the need for discretion and studied ambiguity around political and religious heterodoxy. It is no coincidence that – even more conspicuous than the absence of Milton in the Annotations is the absence of Hume himself. It is only possible to recover mere glimpses of Hume’s worldview and personality from his more unguarded notes upon Paradise Lost and his earlier elegy on Mary. In the elegy, Hume displayed a mistrust of “absolute” or “arbitrary” power, taking care to praise Mary’s sharing of and voluntary relinquishing of her power when William would return from his campaigns.⁵⁷ The fear of absolute power is so great that Hume compulsively repeats it in multiple lines:

In thee alone dispensing Pow’r appear’d

Such as our jealous Isle could ne’er have fear’d:

You could alone our slavish Fears confute,

Who only ore your self were absolute.

(5.24-6)

The “absolute” or “arbitrary” power that the “jealous Isle” fears is particularly associated with the threatened resurgence of Catholicism under Mary’s father, James II:

Now Clouds of Superstition ‘gan lowr,

And overcast the British Hemisphere;

And Thunder-claps of Arbitrary Pow’r

Foreshew’d the Tyrant Tempst near

(7.23-6)

But at Mary’s approach, the fears of new “enslavement” were dispelled along with the “Hydra” of arbitrary power:

Now Armies rais’d t’enslave their native Land,

Amaz’d with their own guilty Fears disband;

The monstrous Hydra of Arbitrary sway,

Dismay’d, had scarce the pow’r to run away

(7.39-42)

The Annotations displays a similar, albeit muted, concern about arbitrary or absolute power, combined with the anti-Catholicism on display above.⁵⁸ One such moment revealing a decidedly “Whiggish” desire for limited monarchy is at 1.246, where Hume glosses Milton’s line, “Who now is Sovereign can dispose and bid,” with a warning that this describes “Arbitrary Power, harmless in no Hand, but His, who is as Just as He is Powerful and Almighty.” The only absolute monarchy Hume will allow is God’s. Later, in his notes to Book 2, Hume defines “arbitrary punishment” as “according to the will of our angry conqueror,” and explains that “arbitrary” is derived from “arbitrarius, Lat. Voluntary, left to the Will of another” (2.335). The conquered thus are made complicit in their acceptance of arbitrary power, a sentiment familiar to any who read Milton’s political prose. Annotating his Paradise Lost while a servant in the royal household, Hume is a vigorous advocate of limited monarchy and suspicious of any mention of arbitrary or unchecked power.

Other glimpses of the annotator’s personal views are more restrained. He appears to argue against ambition in monarchs at 4.390, where he glosses “Honour and Empire” by linking it with “Revenge” and “Glory” and stating that “such like Reasons of State, are Arguments better becoming this Grand Destroyer [Satan], the Arch-Enemy of all Mankind, than any Earthly vain-glorious Monarch.” In the same book, he comments on Restoration court culture when he asserts that “Mix’d Dance, or Wanton Mask, etc.” are comparable to “court-addresses” and “balls at midnight,” all “worthy of disdain” (4.768). Never one to approve of “faction” in any form, Hume scorns the Solemn League and Covenant as an act of impious rebellion at 1.87, comparing it to the Holy League in France. He distrusts zeal, glossing “fanatick” as “a mad frantic votary, [derived] from … to shine. A misguided Zelot, led out of the right way by the Light within him” (1.480). And in what surely was a controversial subject to broach in 1695, soon after the death of the childless Mary, he comments unnecessarily on problems caused by hereditary succession while explicating the “adopted clusters” brought by the vine as dowry for the elm:

5.218 Adopted, of adoptare, Lat. to take into ones care as a Son: Adoptati, were such, who for their Courage, Virtuous Education, and promising Parts, were by the Childless Romans chosen out of other Families, to heir the Estates of those who did adopt ’em, and past into their Power as absolutely, as if begotten by ’em; better pleased, that Nature left them the choice of a Successor, than if she had imposed and entailed one on them, unworthy perhaps of their Famous Ancestors.

Perhaps Hume was led to this digression by the associations evoked in the preceding “fruitless embraces” of the Edenic orchard. The passage appears, however, to comment on the succession woes facing England, and while extolling the opportunity to choose a fit successor, the lines barely suppress worries about the problems caused by hereditary succession (the near miss of James?) and the possibility of an “imposed or entailed” (Jacobite?) successor who might once again attempt to claim the crown upon William’s death.

In a similarly prolix note, the annotator’s explication of the ant’s creation at 7.485-90 emphasizes the analogy to a commonwealth beyond what even Milton dared, finding that the ants in their community are “Thereby excelling the industrious Bee, who have their Leaders, and their Kings.” And finally, despite his distrust of zealots and disdain for faction, Hume glosses “Truth bestruck with Slandrous Darts” in a manner fitting for one who admired Milton’s spirit at least, if not his zeal: “Truth shall be hardly to be found on Earth, loaded with Lies and foul Aspersions, disgraced with the Reproaches of Heretic and Schismatic, Puritane, &c.” (12.536). It is difficult not to read this as a comment on Milton’s popular reputation at the time Hume was preparing the Annotations for publication, especially since throughout the early reception of Paradise Lost, “zeal” is a characteristic that we find often attached to Milton himself, most often with a decidedly negative connotation. It is also, of course, easy to suspect this might be an autobiographical note from a non-conformist annotator.

Such rare overt eruptions of political concern contribute to a picture of Hume as politically engaged, coyly non-conformist, sympathetic, and sensitive to the political and religious heterodoxies in Paradise Lost. Unlike other readings inflected by political anxiety, Hume’s is predetermined by sympathy and a desire to help the poem overcome the anxiety it raised in others. This is most clear at the one point where Hume comes close to commenting on Milton’s historical association with the regicides. It is a moment most remarkable for the manner in which the annotator avoids implicating Milton. The verse in Paradise Lost that occasions this is in Book II, where the fallen angels express their esteem for Satan:

Nor fail’d they to express how much they prais’d,

That for the general safety he despis’d

His own: for neither do the Spirits damn’d

Lose all their virtue: last bad Men should boast

Their specious deeds on Earth; which Glory excites,

Or close Ambition varnish’d o’er with Zeal.

(2.481-6)

This seems to be the very verse that likely inspired Addison’s charge that Milton “profan’d his pen, / To vernish o’er the guilt of faithless men.”⁵⁹ Hume’s annotation here demonstrates once again the dense associations that “zeal” brought with it, and his sensitivity to how associations of religious enthusiasm and political radicalism often attached to Milton himself.

Or close Ambition varnish’d o’re, &c. A noble Verse, and highly expressive of those zealous Hypocrites our Author’s Contemporaries, an Age so impiously Godly, and so zealously Wicked, that Prayer was the Prologue to the Murder of a Monarch at his own Gate: Varnish’d o’re, of the Fr. Vernice, a Composition of Gum of Juniper Trees and Lineseed Oyl, setting a Lustre on what it is laid, admirably applied to Zeal, which so glares in the Eyes of the Weak Populace, that they are not able to discover the dark Designs that it too often hides: Zeal, of the Gr[eek] …. to be hot, as it is too often.

A most perceptive reader of Hume, Erskine-Hill remarked on this annotation that it seems “extraordinary that Hume should thus slide over the part played by ‘our Author’ in historical events which need not, perhaps have been mentioned.”⁶⁰ As demonstrated by Addison’s response to this verse, appropriating its language to deny Milton his place in the progress of poets, the anxiety activated in these lines was readily available to late seventeenth-century readers; it seemed to demand mention. What is most remarkable about Hume’s annotation, however, isn’t that Milton’s notorious approval and vindication of the regicides is “slid” over, as Erskine-Hill suggests. Instead, Hume completely removes Milton from among the ranks of the regicides and has “our Author” express them as hypocrites. The annotation quietly and craftily puts Milton in the unlikely position of denouncing what he was famous for defending and congratulates him for it. Hume suggests Milton performs an admirable public service by exposing the dangers of zeal that may otherwise “glare in the eyes of the weak populace,” while castigating the hypocrisy of his mere “contemporaries,” the regicides. It is a critical sleight-of-hand that goes far beyond avoiding Milton’s politics or detaching him from the controversies of his time and his prose; it revises him.

Hume’s careful treatment of Milton’s authorship and his attempt to expunge or mitigate the political contamination was a significant intervention that seems oriented toward making the poem more acceptable to a wider readership by detaching it from Milton’s radical reputation. However, this exorcism of Milton as political entity was only part of Hume’s strategy. He is also carefully positioning Paradise Lost as a work worthy of the same treatment accorded to classical and scriptural texts.

Making a Classic: Exegesis, Classical Scholarship, and the Annotations

Thomas Newton’s complaint that Hume’s Annotations was largely “a dull dictionary of the most common words, a tedious fardel of the most trivial observations, explaining what requires no explanation” neglects much of value in them. True, the notes resemble the most verbose of modern editorial apparatuses as Hume explores obscure etymologies or explicates numerous classical sources for each Miltonic allusion. While modern readers are used to such copious scholarly annotation relegating the text to a line or two at the top of a page of crowded commentary, as the first of its kind the Annotations must have seemed monstrous to many early readers. It was the sort of thing to spawn Dunciads. However, read with an eye toward discovering Hume’s method in countering the political anxiety raised by Paradise Lost, the Annotations reveal a learned and sensitive reader.

Hume’s most useful notes demonstrate a keen ability to put his finger on the major cruxes of the poem. He signals the approach of one such moment in Book 3. In a comment uniquely set off from the surrounding text, he announces to his reader, “Here begins the excellent Discourse of Free-will, the Reasons of which are plainly and very convincingly laid down.”⁶¹ The next eight folio pages contain the least etymological of Hume’s notes and a concentration of those notes most heavily concerned with scriptural sources. At the conclusion of the section, at 3.342 where the Son offers himself to redeem mankind, the annotator explains his fascination with these particular verses:

Our Author has been entertaining us for 264 Lines, with a Discourse of the highest Nature, as the Mysteries of God’s Mercy and Justice to Mankind; of Free-will, of the inconceivable Incarnation of his Son, and all the nicest Points of Faith: and has acquitted himself of this great Undertaking as well as is possible for Human Understanding to do, in things so much exceeding the compass of our Capacities. He has kept close to the Revelations of Holy Writ, as appears by the Quotations vouching each Verse.

In focusing on the debate over free will and Milton’s attempt to extricate his God from blame for sin, Hume deftly identifies a central concern of Milton’s poem for his readers. He becomes, in essence, the first of the long line of critics who continue to engage Milton’s theodicy.⁶² Throughout his commentary on these passages, Hume is particularly vigilant to fulfill the title page’s promise that his Annotations would be a supplement to Milton’s poem “wherein the texts of sacred writ, relating to the poem are quoted.” This exegetical endeavor is accompanied by his commitment to reveal and compare the “parallel places and imitations” of Homer and Virgil. Hume’s explanations of Milton’s scriptural sources became the foundation of future efforts in the same vein, and are the portion of his text most often used by later editors (and, as with Newton, frequently without acknowledgment).

As in his etymological explanations, Hume’s scriptural sources reveal an annotator well-read and knowledgeable about a great variety of sources. Oras points out that in one note alone (on 1.17) Hume refers to St. Augustine, the Cabbala, the Talmud, Moses Barcephas, John Malala, St. Jerome, St. Basil, Thodoret, Athanasius, Tertullian, St. Chrysostom, Hermogenes, Cajetan, Zoroaster, Heraclitus, Orpheus, the Platonists and Pythagoreans, and Virgil.⁶³ In a later note at 3.334, explicating the statement that “The world shall burn,” Hume refers seamlessly to 2 Peter, Lucretius, Ovid, Lucan, the Psalms, and Revelations. Marcus Walsh has ably demonstrated that Hume drew upon a tradition of biblical exegesis in preparing such learned commentary. Despite the Annotations being the first of its kind to explicate a vernacular work of literature, Walsh recognized that the work contains “clear generic characteristics, of some significance both for the critical history of Paradise Lost, and for the theoretical history of literary annotation.”⁶⁴ Oras and others have puzzled over Hume’s use of paraphrase, renderings of Milton’s verse that remain close to the original and appeared to Oras to be “meant for readers of very inconsiderable learning.”⁶⁵ He posited that “Hume no doubt was partly carried away by his enthusiasm, and could not resist the temptation to reshape Milton after his own fashion.”⁶⁶ As Walsh points out, an exegetical “two-fold structure” of paraphrase and explication was one of the only models available for an ambitious work such as the Annotations. As such, Hume’s paraphrase “is generally more concerned with interpretation rather than criticism, with meaning rather than with significance.”⁶⁷ The paraphrases are not simply clarifications of Milton’s text, or poetic exercises on the part of Hume, but are themselves modes of interpretation meant to shape readings and reception, as we’ve seen in his careful rephrasing of Milton’s “dangers compassed round” lines discussed above.

This seems a valuable reassessment of Hume’s paraphrases, one that puts them squarely within the development of textual and literary criticism and that highlights the manner in which they adapted methodologies used for biblical and classical tests to vernacular English literature. Yet not enough attention has been given to what such a treatment signals about the text at hand. By applying techniques of classical and biblical exegesis to the epic, Hume was positioning Milton’s controversial poem to allow it to be political yet beyond controversy, much as scriptural and classical texts were often treated as beyond current political controversy. Walsh notes the move without fully recognizing its motivations when he claims that “Hume, using the same method [as biblical commentators] takes Milton’s poem as a national scripture to be similarly made available.”⁶⁸ The use of biblical texts to comment on the political controversies of the time was still a widespread practice. Prominent examples include Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, or earlier comparisons of Charles II with David returning from banishment. However, Walsh overshoots the mark when he summarizes the meaning of Tonson’s printing of the Annotations with the epic.

By 1695 Paradise Lost was a classic, its status marked especially by the great folio fourth edition of 1688, and Dryden’s famous epigram, printed in its frontispiece …. To Hume, Paradise Lost was, more than a classic, a scripture. It was, as Protestants thought the Bible, a work both requiring, and capable of, explication.⁶⁹

Precisely because Paradise Lost was a politically controversial work in a politically turbulent time, Hume’s treatment of it in a manner commensurate with scripture was not a predictable response, but instead an intervention. This is one strategy in countering readings of the poem dominated by political anxiety. His exegesis is remarkable at times for its tendency to be more conservative than even some scriptural sources, thus toning down Milton’s political subtext. For example, at Milton’s mention of Nimrod, a potentially politically charged moment, the annotations are remarkably neutral:

12.27. Will arrogate Dominion; Will take upon himself undeserv’d Power. Not deserv’d by him as more Worthy, Wise, or Virtuous, than his Brethren, over whom he shall usurp this unjust Authority.

12.30 Hunting and Men not Beasts; This proud, ambitious Man, is by Holy Scripture stiled, A mighty hunter, Gen.10.9. Hunting being a Preparatory Exercise, both as to the Fatigue, and Fury of the War, a Preliminary to the slaughter of Mankind, by that of Wild Beasts: As Xenophon…

12.34. Before the Lord, Gen.10.9. So famous for his Power that he became Proverbial. Most Interpreters take the words, Before the Lord, in the worst sense, as our Author does, In despite of Heaven; others expound ’em, Under Heaven, from Heaven claiming second Sovereignty, taking upon himself all Authority next under God. Nimrod, says St. Hierom, arripuit insuetam primus in populos tyranidem….

From the first note to the last commenting on Nimrod, the question of proper authority and usurpation remains present but oddly muted. Even in the gloss on these verses in the Geneva Bible, Nimrod’s status as the first tyrant and “cruel oppressor” is more pronounced. The issue of just patriarchy (a feature of the “Law of Nature” according to Hume) versus the unlawful dominion of brethren over brethren remains present throughout Hume’s notes, but it is curiously drained of obvious and dangerous political application.

Erskine-Hill asserts that Hume “dehistoricises the poem, even using it as an occasion for expressing his own un-Miltonic views.”⁷⁰ In particular he highlights the passages in the Annotations that give a “patriarchal hypothesis on the origin of government,” clashing with Milton’s politics.⁷¹ But, although Hume seems to welcome limited monarchy (and we should remember his role as keeper of the wardrobe here) his emphasis on the dangers of absolute power (further attested to by “To the Immortal Memory,” as discussed above) indicates that Hume’s political and religious views were not inimical to Milton’s. Hume’s muted treatment of these lines is a strategy of accommodation to assist the poem in its reception, not an indication of disapproval. As Erskine-Hill concluded, “the general absence of historical allusions in Hume’s commentary comes … less from his not seeing any in the poem than from his resolve not to mention any he saw.”⁷² Hume recognizes and attempts to “quarantine” controversial content by treating Paradise Lost as vernacular scripture. This tactic is reinforced and amplified by the annotator’s technique as he explores Milton’s classical sources.

“Towring Fancy”: Hume’s Deployment of the Sublime

Following the explication of sacred writ, Hume advertises on his title page that readers will also find in the Annotations “the parallel places and imitations of the most Excellent Homer and Virgil, cited and compared.” However, as with the explication of biblical sources, Hume does much more than he promises in his use of classical sources. Beyond the promised Homer and Virgil, he refers to Aristotle, Aeschylus, Cicero, Hesiod, Horace, Juvenal, Livy, Lucan, Lucretius, Martial, Ovid, Plato, and Plutarch. Among more recent sources, including those in English, we find Tasso (always described as falling far short of Milton), Jean-Louis Balzac, Chaucer, and Spenser (usually qualified as “famous in his own time”).⁷³

Confronted with this, Ants Oras commented derisively that the annotator “seems to take it for granted that in a general way nearly everything in the classics was excellent,” and that it seemed Hume’s method to defend any “questionable” point in the epic by finding its parallel in a classic, or as many classics as possible.⁷⁴ Yet, as suggested in the introduction to this chapter, it is relevant that the Annotations was published as the battle of the “ancients versus the moderns” was heating up in England. The version of this seemingly timeless and endless battle that was raging at the end of the seventeenth and into the first decades of the eighteenth century was ignited in France with debates about translating Homer. A great concern of the French quarelle was the probability of depicting the scenes described on Achilles’ shield on a physical shield, a debate engagingly related in Joseph Levine’s Battle of the Books (1994). With the quarelle as background, Hume’s comments about Satan’s shield at 1.286 provide a frame for his treatment of Milton’s classical models.

They who will please themselves in reading Homer’s Description of Achilles’s Shield and that of Aeneas in Virg. … will find that Vulcan, who made ‘em both, gave neither of ‘em such a turn as our Poet has, to this of Satan; yet the first was large enough to be engraven with the Sun, Moon, and all the Stars, two Cities, Fields and Vineyards, Combats, Musick and Weddings, and so many things as employ 138 Verses, whom though Virgil imitates by Embossment of his Hero’s Shield in 107 lines, yet he exceeds him by adorning it with all the Prowess and Praises of his Posterity, down to the famous Victory over Anthony and Cleopatra, and puts it on his Back with an admirable Grace …. Tasso has follow’d both these, in Rinaldo’s Shield …. Consisting of 128 Verses.

Hume highlights the manner in which Milton’s description of Satan’s shield, although given in few lines, surpasses the shields of the ancients and their imitators. The annotator’s method is even more evident in his comment on Satan’s spear at 1.294: “Now if Hector, or Polyphemus himself, compared to their Superior Satan, were but a Pigmy, who can wonder at the Circumference of his Shield, or the Size of his Spear?” Where Oras may construe such a moment as using classic parallels to “defend” a “questionable” moment in Milton, it is instead a consistent part of Hume’s strategy to demonstrate Milton’s superiority to his predecessors.⁷⁵ According to Hume, Milton excels the ancients in several respects in this particular example. First, his descriptions are much more concise and compact, as evidenced by the line-counts of the classic sources. Secondly, Satan and his arms dwarf the ancient heroes. And thirdly, implicit in all this is that Milton’s characters and descriptions are more lofty and “sublime” because his subject is “true,” in that it is based on Christian scripture. The annotator’s desire to place Milton among the classics, and even to assert that the poet is himself a modern who surpasses his examples, is telegraphed in the Latin epigraph upon the Annotations’ title page: “Milton is only surpassed by Homer in that Homer preceded him by a thousand years.” In a manner recalling Dennis’s attempts to enlist Milton as a model of how moderns could surpass ancients, Hume suggests that Milton surpasses his ancient models through the quality of the verse that Hume terms “sublime.”

Hume’s deployment of the “sublime” as a poetic concept is not well-illuminated by his own dry definition of the term at 1.235 as “high, lofty.” However, we may piece together a sense of what he means by “sublime” from his use of the term as he compares Milton’s epic to classic parallels. He first employs it in a lengthy note on Milton’s invocation of the Muse at 1.6.

As our Author has attempted a greater Undertaking than that of either of those two Master Poets [Homer, Virgil], so he had need to Invoke this Heavenly Muse, who a little after he explains by God’s Holy Spirit, to inspire and assist him: And well he might …. This Argument might need a Divine Instructress, preferable to any of their Invoked Assistants, though styled … the Daughters of Jove. The Christian Poet, the famous Torquato Tasso, the Darling of discerning Italy, begins his Exordium [with a similar invocation, quoted here by Hume]. These are the choicest Lines that adorn his [Tasso’s] Invocation; in which, though he calls to his Assistance the same Heavenly Spirit, yet we shall find him fall short of our Poet, both as to the sublimity of his Thoughts and Argument, as much as Helicon is inferior to Horeb, and that he had but too just occasion to ask Pardon (as he does in the end of this Stanza) for mixing and intangling Truth with vain Fiction.

According to the author of the Annotations, Milton’s superiority rests securely on his choice of subject. He surpasses Homer and Virgil by his need (and ability) to call on the “Holy Spirit” for assistance in tackling a plot that is a “greater undertaking” than their national epics. Milton surpasses even the Christian Tasso because he does not “intangle” his “Truth with vain Fiction.” It is not only Milton’s verse that contains in itself something “sublime,” but the subject is a sublime one. If less developed, Hume’s concept of the sublime has some sympathy with that of John Dennis, encountered in the previous chapter. Even if Horace (and others) had claimed to produce “things unattempted yet,” Hume assures us that only in Milton’s case it is true, because of his subject:

so Hora. Non usitata nec tenui ferar penna; but not on so sublime a Subject as this, not undertaken as yet by any Poet: As in the beginning of the Ninth Book, he says of himself, he was not sedulous by Nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only Argument, Heroic deem’d – trita vatibus orbita. So Virg. On a Subject much inferiour makes his Brags.

(1.16)

In Hume’s assessment, Milton’s sublimity arises in particular from the religious truth of his poem. At 1.25, Hume thus asserts that Adam is a superior hero to either Achilles, Ulysses, or Aeneas because they “must be allowed much inferior to the Protoplast, who, as the first, and finish’d by the great Creator, must needs be the most accomplish’d of his kind.” Further, the battles in heaven, described by Milton in Book 6, are far superior to the battles described in the classics, because they are waged by “Immortal Spirits.” Once again, it is the spiritual “truth” of Milton’s account that enables him to surpass all previous epics:

It must be acknowledged, a much harder Task, to form a right Idea of that Eternal Being, which made the Universe; and to observe with all due Veneration, and Awful Respect, the great Decorum requisite in speaking of the True God; and to offend in nothing against the Revelations he has been pleased to make of himself; and yet to manage all this under the Heats and Heights of Towring Fancy; than either Homer or Virgil undertook, a Task, by none, but himself, attempted, (as he may justly boast) and impossible to be, by any Undertaker, better performed.

(1.25)

The “heats and heights of towring fancy” described here sound suspiciously like what could, by a critic less friendly to Milton, be termed “enthusiasm.” The claim to divine inspiration that accompanies such “heats” surely opens the epic to such charges. Recall that Hume himself defined “zeal” negatively and with a caveat that it is often too “hot” (see his note on 2.481 and above). But here, Hume instead presents these characteristics as markers of a “sublime” associated with the “truth” of Christian narrative, opposed to the pure “fancy” of his classic sources. So superior is the “truth” of Milton’s narrative that even Michael’s review of human history, which Dryden had identified as the driest section of the poem, is said to surpass the “tedious stories” and “vain-glorious boastings” of Homer and Virgil’s heroes. Because it is “taken out of Sacred Story,” Milton’s relation “must excel any particular or Humane History.”⁷⁶ Hume seems to articulate a theory of the sublime which is yoked to subject over style, and which draws particular power from Christian topics.

While never explicitly articulated, this implicit concept of the literary sublime as a consequence of Milton’s scriptural subject distances the sublime from its traditional associations with political radicalism. We have earlier seen that in John Hall’s 1652 translation of “Longinus,” the sublime had been closely linked to political liberty.

Shall wee I beseech you believe that which hath been in many mens mouths, that a Democracie is the best Nurse of high Spirits, and under it so many great Oratours have in a manner not only flourish’d, but even decay’d with it? For just liberty feeds and nourishes the thoughts with great notions …. and that by the rewards propos’d to them in such Republicks: the faculties of their minds and all their skills are whetted, and in a manner kindled into a flame, which commonly shines freely and brightly as the things they deal with. But we … seem to be taught from children to endure slavery … so that we cannot possibly taste of that rich and full fountain of Eloquence, I mean … Liberty.⁷⁷

Paradise Lost was called “sublime” early in its reception history, in sources as varied as Hobart’s letter, Marvell’s dedicatory poem to the 1674 edition, Dryden’s “Apology” to The State of Innocence, and Addison’s ambivalent treatment of the epic in his “Account.” All of these sources also contain concern about Milton’s political reputation and its potential contamination of the poem, with Dryden going so far as to rewrite it in a manner more suitable to Restoration court culture. Hume’s deployment of the term differs from these in that he continually relates the sublime to the poem’s Christian topic and identifies it as Milton’s manner of surpassing the ancients. This association of the sublime with spiritual truth thus depoliticizes the aesthetic term (and the poem) while excusing and legitimating what may otherwise be termed religious enthusiasm.

Recent scholarship on the rhetoric of enthusiasm, by Sharon Achinstein, Clement Hawes, and others, suggests that one factor at play in the late seventeenth century was the need to somehow accommodate and render “safe” otherwise suspect expressions of enthusiasm. As Achinstein claims, “By cordoning off a sphere of legitimate enthusiasm into the private or the aesthetic, early Whigs also did the political work of liberalism in cordoning off religion as an area outside the interest of the state.”⁷⁸ Hume’s linkage of sublimity to Christian truth in Milton’s epic seems just such a move, one that would appeal to both the business and political concerns of that savvy Kit-Cat, Jacob Tonson.

If Hume’s Annotations is examined as more than a “dull dictionary” to be mined for biblical allusions and etymologies, we see its author follows a multi-pronged approach to secure Paradise Lost’s acceptance in the face of continued hostility or ambivalence fueled by Milton’s political reputation. Although likely composed over a long period between 1688 and 1694, the Annotations counters ways of reading and reacting to the poem dominated by political anxiety and attempts to make a proper place for the poem despite its controversial content. The annotator separates Paradise Lost from its controversial author by excising Milton’s biography from the poem, even in those moments in which the author might be most intrusively or poignantly present. By treating the epic as worthy of exegesis and study hitherto reserved for sacred texts and classics, he elevates it to the level of these texts and isolates it from political controversy. And, finally, his careful quarantining of political-religious enthusiasm into a “safe” version of a subjectival sublime defuses the most controversial aspects of the poem that troubled early readers. These approaches would be developed and amplified by the commentators on Milton who followed Hume. We’ve seen how Dennis used Paradise Lost to develop a similar concept of the sublime that found its power in the sacred. Joseph Addison, returning to Milton after the turn of the century to produce the most influential critique of the poem for eighteenth century readers, would employ many of the same techniques as those used by Hume as he attempted to explain Paradise Lost’s power and secure its acceptability.

Notes

The Annual Miscellany: For the Year 1694 (London: Printed by R.E. for Jacob Tonson, 1694).

Peter Smithers, The Life of Joseph Addison, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 22.

The Annual Miscellany 1694, 327.

Smithers, 27–28.

The Annual Miscellany 1694, 266.

Ibid., 301–302. The three anonymous poems on Howard seem to consist of verses taken from “To a Person of Honour Upon his Incomparable, Incomprehensible Poem Called ‘The British Princes,’” which has been attributed to the Earl of Dorset.

John Dryden, “Fragment on the Character of Jacob Tonson,” later published as the character of “Bibliopolo” in Faction Displayed 1704/5.

The Miscellany contributors who were later Kit-Cats are Tonson, Addison, Congreve, Matthew Prior, and the Earl of Dorset. We should note that Sir Godfrey Kneller, praised by Dryden’s poem in the volume, was the portrait painter for the Kit-Cats.

Ophelia Field, The Kit-Cat Club: Friends Who Imagined a Nation (London: Harper Press, 2008), xv.

Edward Ward, The Secret History of Clubs: Particularly the Kit-Cat, Beef-Stake, Uertuosos, Quacks, Knights of the Golden-Fleece, Florists, Beaus, &c. (London: Printed, and Sold by the Booksellers, 1709), 370. Available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Richard Blackmore, The Kit-Cats, A Poem (London: Printed for E. Sanger and E. Curll, 1708), 5. Available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

Title page. John Milton, Paradise Lost: A Poem in Twelve Books, The AUTHOUR JOHN MILTON. The Sixth Edition, with Sculptures. To which is added, Explanatory NOTES upon each Book, and a Table to the POEM, never before Printed. (London: Printed by Tho. Hodgkin, for Jacob Tonson, 1695).

R. G. Moyles, The Text of Paradise Lost: A Study in Editorial Procedure (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 40.

David A. Harper, “The First Annotator of Paradise Lost and the Makings of English Literary Criticism,” Studies in English Literature 59.3 (Summer 2019), 507–530.

“Peter Hume.” Baptismal Record, City of Westminster Archives Center. 6 November 1640.

“Peter Humes.” The Record of Old Westminsters. 2 vols, edited by Alan Herbert Stenning and G.F. Russell Barker (London: Chiswick Press, 1928).

“Peter Humes.” Alumni Cantabrigienses, edited by John Venn. Web. 1 January 2017. http://venn.lib.cam.ac.uk/Documents/acad/2016/search-2016.html.

Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Charles II, vol. 2, 17–34. Item 96. Edited by Mary Anne Everett Green (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1860). British History Online. Web. 2 January 2017. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/domestic/chas2/1660-1/. Further references to the Calendar of State Papers Domestic Charles II will be abbreviated COSPD.

COSPD Vol. 6, 83-107, Item 200.

The only surviving record I’ve found of Hume’s time in Cambridge states: “Humes [sic] Peter. Admitted pensioner at Trinity, May 10, 1659. Of Kent. Scholar from Westminster. Matriculated 1659. Perhaps admitted at the Inner Temple, Nov. 3, 1670; of Westminster, gent. (Alumni Cantabrigienses).

Lord Chamberlain Papers: The National Archives of the UK (TNA): 5/12, 107. Further references to the Lord Chamberlain Papers will be abbreviated LC. The Lord Steward Papers will be abbreviated LS.

“Peter Hume” Inner Temple Admissions Database. Web. 28 December 2016. http://www.innertemplearchives.org.uk/.

(Eldest Page) LS 13/197, 21. (Youngest Groom) LS 13/197, 75. (Eldest Groom) LC 3/56. (Yeoman & Keeper of the Wardrobe at St. James) LC 3/31, 42. Although there is no record connecting them, a younger Richard Bentley was famously Keeper of the Royal Library at St. James after 1694.

For a more exhaustive account of the surviving records of Hume’s career and connections, see Harper, SEL 2019.

TC “Warrants, etc.,” Vol 12, June 4, 1697.

The Daily Courant, 1708. March 15.

The National Archives of the U.K. (TNA) RG/8/110 “England and Wales Non-conformist Marriages.” The marriage entry notes that on “Dec. 20th, 1681 were married in the chapel at Whitehall Mr. Peter Humes [sic] of the wardrobe and Mrs. Rachel Baggelly by Dr. Holden, subdean” (Humes, Marriage). Hume’s surname is sometimes spelled “Humes,” as in his marriage record.

“Peter Hume,” “Will of Peter Hume of Saint Margaret Westminster, Middlesex,” TNA: PROB 11/498/429.

“Peter Hume.” Burial Record. City of Westminster Archives Center, December 7, 1707.

In 1710, Rachell petitioned for a pension “in consideration of her late husband’s long and faithful service.” In 1713, Queen Anne granted annual allowances of £100, £80, and £70 per annum to Hume’s surviving wife and children (LS 13/258, 93). In 1726, Penelope successfully petitioned King George to get her sister’s £80 added to her £70 following Rachel’s death (LS 13/260). Both daughters may have died spinsters, as attested to in court cases where they are named as such.

Hume’s wife, Rachell, was buried as a non-conformist on June 9, 1716. City of Westminster Archives Center, June 9, 1716.

Thomas Newton, “Preface” to Paradise Lost. A New Edition with Notes from Various Authors in Two Volumes. Vol. 1 (London: Tonson and Draper, 1749).

Ants Oras, Milton’s Editors and Commentators from Patrick Hume to Henry John Todd (1695–1801) (New York: Haskell House, 1964).

Moyles, 40.

Oras, 8.

Ibid., 24.

For Howard Erskine-Hill’s even-handed treatment of Hume’s Annotations, see especially “On Historical Commentary: The Example of Milton and Dryden,” in Presenting Poetry: Composition, Publication, Reception, edited by Howard Erskine-Hill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). For John Leonard’s treatment see his invaluable Faithful Labourers: A Reception History of Paradise Lost, 1667-1970. 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

Moyles, 41.

Ibid., 40–41.

Ibid., 40. In this, again, Moyles may be following Oras, who says Hume makes only “a very few remarks” on the text. Oras identifies four, 9.923, 7.451, 10.989, and 3.48, but 7.451 is a concern over Milton’s meaning where Hume does not suggest a correction to the text, so may have been discounted by Moyles (but not by Bentley in 1732). See Oras, 47–48.

See B. A. Wright, “A Note on Milton’s Punctuation,” Review of English Studies 5 (1954), 170 and Robert M. Adams, Ikon: John Milton and the Modern Critics (Ithaca: Cornell, 1955), 92.

It seems reasonable that a compositor may have omitted the “for” after “Misprinted” through eye-skip or by incorrectly assuming it was a mistaken repetition of the word.

See Hume’s annotation at 2.906.

For evidence that someone (not Hume) corrected the text with an ear toward meter, see Moyle’s discussion of 10.550 and 11.427. Moyles, 41–42.

For an example of Hume’s wit (and his fervent anti-Catholic bias) see 11.679 where, after giving an earnest etymology of “Massacher” using French and Italian origins, he adds: “But I rather think, of Missa Sacra, the Holy Mass; for propagating of which, the most abominable Massacres of Mankind have been made.”

In “To Her Immortal Majesty,” Hume describes the Dutch upon losing Mary as “Though parting with a Princess for a Queen, / Shipwrack’d between two mighty Tydes of Woe” (7.16-17).

Oras, 48.

Bentley, Paradise Lost, 1732. 7.451.

Oras, 24.

Howard Erskine-Hill, “On Historical Commentary: The Example of Milton and Dryden,” in Presenting Poetry: Composition, Publication, Reception, edited by Howard Erskine-Hill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 65.

Annotations,Annotations, 1.16. At 4.151, Hume laments that as Spenser wrote about the Bower of Bliss, “Rhyme fetter’d his Fancy.” Incidentally, Hume associates “fierce” with “lunatic” in his note to 4.805, where he describes “the fierce, sparkling and wild disorders that manifestly discover themselves in the looks of Lunatics.”

For an extended examination of Hume’s elegy upon Queen Mary see Harper, SEL, Summer 2019.

Erskine-Hill, 67.

Annotations,Annotations, 3.33.

See chapter 1 for an examination of Addison’s “Account.”

Erskine-Hill, 67.

Mr. Hume. A Poem Dedicated to the Immortal Memory of Her Late Majesty The Most Incomparable Q. Mary (London: Printed for Jacob Tonson, 1695).

See footnote 43, above. Another instance is at 5.438, where Hume glosses, “Transubstantiate and Transubstantiation, Barbarous Lat. Words that have much disturbed the World.”

See the discussion of Addison’s “Account” in Chapter 1.

Erskine-Hill, 67.

Annotations,Annotations, following the note on 3.99.

As discussed in Chapter 2, Dryden makes the free will vs. predestination debate a central concern of his The State of Innocence, but this is not quite the same as appreciating and explicating its role in Milton’s poem.

Oras, 24–25.

Marcus Walsh, “Literary Annotation and Biblical Commentary: The Case of Patrick Hume’s Annotations on Paradise Lost,” Milton Quarterly 22 (1988), 109. Walsh also recognizes that the Annotations were also “to initiate and give shape to a new genre, the secular literary commentary on English works,” 113.

Oras, 23.

Ibid., but it should be noted that Oras uses “enthusiasm” here in our modern sense.

Walsh, 111.

Ibid.

Ibid., 113.

Erskine-Hill, 68.

Ibid., 73.

Ibid.

This is by no means a complete list of even the literary classics employed by Hume. He also refers to a wide variety of scientific writings to include Gessendi, Kepler, and Galileo. I find no reference to Shakespeare, even where one might expect it in a section explicating Venus and Adonis. Dryden is referred to by name only once at 11.404, as the author who dramatized the moor Almansor.

Oras, 30.

In another annotation, Hume exhibits a “modernist” attitude, terming the ancients “unexperienced.” See 7.374: “The Pleiades, so named of…to Sail, because they rise about the Vernal Equinox, (thence called Vergiliae,) the usual time of venturing to Sea among the unexperienced Ancients.”

Annotations,Annotations, 11.433. This section was surely one of the “flats” identified by Dryden, and was later singled out by Dennis as being incapable of sublimity because a divine figure told of human actions. For discussion, see Chapter 3.

“Dionysius Longinus,” Of the Height of Eloquence. J.H. Esq. (London, 1652), 78–79. Available on Early English Books Online.

Sharon Achinstein, Literature and Dissent in Milton’s England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 255.

5 The Great ExplainerAddison’s Return to Paradise Lost

DOI: 10.4324/9781003276395-6

Joseph Addison’s earliest engagement with Paradise Lost, in “An Account of the Greatest English Poets” from Tonson’s 1694 Annual Miscellany, has served throughout this book as an emblematic turning away from the heterodoxies and controversies that attended Milton and his epic. Inviting his readers into Milton’s Eden with verses imitating Paradise Lost, Addison suddenly ejects them with a forceful reminder of Milton’s contaminating presence.

Oh had the Poet ne’er profan’d his pen,

To vernish o’er the guilt of faithless men;

His other works might have deserv’d applause!

But now the language can’t support the cause;

While the clean current, tho’ serene and bright,

Betrays a bottom odious to the sight.¹

Throughout “An Account” Addison imitates and admires Milton even while turning away. In the most powerful example of this, Addison claims Milton’s pen was employed “To vernish o’er the guilt of faithless men,” an allusion to Paradise Lost that aligns Milton with Satanic rebellion and hypocrisy by recalling lines from Book 2.

for neither do the Spirits damn’d

Lose all their virtue: lest bad Men should boast

Their specious deeds on Earth; which Glory excites,

Or close Ambition varnish’d o’er with Zeal.

(2.481-6)

Milton scholars have long characterized Addison’s “Account” as either an attempt to separate Milton’s political prose from his late poetry or as an early indication of Addison’s esteem for Paradise Lost. Even so sensitive a scholar as the late John Shawcross characterized “An Account” as Addison’s “earliest [published] tribute to Milton’s greatness” and claimed that the poem “forecasts his [Addison’s] frequent quotation, imitation, and analysis of Milton and his works.”² How surprising, then, to find on closer inspection that Addison cannot overcome the way in which Milton’s Restoration reputation contaminates even his greatest work. Perversely, it is the very clarity of the poetry (a “clean current,” “serene and bright”) that allows vigilant readers such as Addison to see through to the “bottom odious” of Milton’s politics.

Addison’s progress of poets in “An Account” has been examined by Abigail Williams as an exercise in taste-making and canon formation meant to highlight Charles Montagu as the telos of English poetry, a choice that Williams recognizes was motivated by politics as well as aesthetics.

The praise of the literary merits of the poem [Montagu’s Epistle to Dorset] displays Addison’s own commitment to the Williamite regime. Aesthetic and evaluative judgements cannot be separated here from political concerns, since the appraisal of Montagu’s Epistle conflates literary form and political content.³

The conflation of politics and literary judgment that Williams identifies in Addison’s treatment of Montagu is, of course, overtly present in his treatment of Milton even though it results in a very different conclusion. Closing the 1694 Annual Miscellany, Addison ends his “Account” with his own vague farewell to poetry and verse and a promise that “of greater Truths I’ll now prepare to tell.”⁴ Addison’s farewell turns out to be overstated at best, or even false. In 1704, Addison published 1300 lines of Ovid’s Metamorphoses translated into heroic couplets, and he received a valuable sinecure as Commissionership of Appeals for his praise of Marlborough in The Campaign. In a clear acknowledgment of its political power and potential efficacy as propaganda, The Campaign was deliberately published the day Marlborough landed at Greenwich and was received by Queen Anne at St. James’s.⁵ In an analysis of The Campaign that interrogates the traditional interpretations of it and John Philips’s Blenheim as Whig and Tory propaganda, respectively, John D. Baird pointed out that Addison’s poem “asserts that true heroic poetry is historical poetry.”⁶

[Addison’s] hyperbole simultaneously exalts Marlborough above all ancient epic heroes and abolishes panegyric as traditionally understood. Addison replaces the grand style of traditional epic with the plain style specified earlier for prose by Sprat and Locke.⁷

Having despaired of poetry’s ability to tell of “greater truths” in 1694, Addison was later rewarded handsomely for using verse to tell a particular version of truth in The Campaign.

A decade after turning away from Milton in “An Account,” and almost a decade before he would find in his Spectator essays the perfect prose vehicle for shaping the nation’s taste and politics, Addison turned back to Milton and Paradise Lost. Addison’s “Milton’s Stile Imitated, in a Translation of a Story out of the Third Aeneid” was published in Tonson’s 1704 Poetical Miscellanies … the Fifth Part and has until recently been largely ignored by Milton scholars. However, Paul Davis’s recent exposition of the poem has deftly explored how Addison wrote his translation of Virgil’s Achaemenides episode with both Paradise Lost and Hume’s Annotations at hand or in mind.⁸ As Davis annotates “Milton’s Stile Imitated,” Addison’s debt to Hume becomes obvious.

There has been considerable debate about how much Addison’s Spectator essays owe to Hume’s work (see Daly), but “Milton’s Stile Imitated” puts it beyond doubt that Addison had already studied the Annotations closely almost a decade earlier. As my annotations show, twenty-six of the most overt Miltonic locutions in Addison’s translation had been singled out for comment by Hume—moreover, in several cases, Addison not only imported the word or phrase but was demonstrably influenced by Hume’s surrounding commentary.⁹

In addition to providing evidence for Addison’s familiarity with Hume’s Annotations, Davis also proposes that Addison’s “Milton’s Stile Imitated” may serve as a touchstone for understanding Addison’s evolving relationship with Milton. Read with such intent, Addison’s allusions to Paradise Lost in his translation are a result of a “consistent focus” on his relationship with Milton.

Translating the Achaemenides episode inevitably promoted self-consciousness in Addison about that relationship. The original episode in Virgil was already virtually a parable about literary inheritance—the story of a character who is literally left over from the world of a previous epic, Homer’s Odyssey …. Addison’s decision to translate the episode in the manner of Milton redoubled its power of reflexive suggestion, because the main non-human character in the story—Polyphemus—had of course been identified with Milton by a number of royalist poets and polemicists …. Addison’s own awareness of the connection is suggested by a lexical overlap between his description of the Cyclops in “Milton’s Stile Imitated” and his earlier description of Milton in the “Account of the Greatest English Poets”: Milton “with high and haughty stalks, / Unfetter’d in majestick numbers walks” (56-57), and the Cyclops are a “Gigantick brotherhood, that stalk along / With horrid strides o’er the high mountain tops”.¹⁰

(99-100)

I have earlier suggested that Milton’s approach in Addison’s “Account” with “high and haughty stalks” connects him with Satan who strides to battle “with vast and haughty strides” (6.109). The further constellation of references pointed out by Davis in the 1704 poem, including Milton’s identification with the monstrous and blind cyclops, suggests once again how readily Paradise Lost and Milton continued to evoke anxiety in Addison. Such anxiety certainly includes the expected anxiety of influence, but in addition the political anxiety that was strong enough to force a retreat in “An Account” resurfaces ten years later in “Milton’s Stile Imitated.” Davis is, I think, unpacking this political anxiety when he describes how Milton haunts Addison’s translation of Virgil as a dual avatar represented both by the monstrous cyclops and by the castaway he terrorizes:

Polyphemus is not the only Miltonic avatar in the episode; there is also more than a suggestion of Milton about Achaemenides. His situation as a Greek spared by his former enemies the Trojans parallels Milton’s circumstances at the time Paradise Lost was published, as a notorious supporter of the regicide saved from execution at the last minute, and now living on sufferance under the restored monarchy. To read the Achaemenides episode as a story about Milton, then, is to see him being simultaneously rejected and rescued, abandoned and assimilated.¹¹

This aptly summarizes the halting process by which Milton and Paradise Lost were received in the Restoration, and more particularly Addison’s negotiation with Milton over the course of his long engagement with the poet and his great epic. If Addison’s “Account” shows him rejecting even the imitable beauties of Paradise Lost on account of Milton’s Restoration reputation, and “Milton’s Stile Imitated” demonstrates a continued struggle (aided by Hume) to assimilate Milton into the canon, then the Spectator essays are Addison’s final and best attempt to rescue Paradise Lost from Milton’s problematic presence.

The series of advances and retreats we glimpse in Addison’s early attempts to reconcile with Milton make his achievement in the Spectator essays all the more remarkable. Following their publication in 1712 and their subsequent reprinting separately and with editions of the Spectator from 1713 on, Addison’s eighteen essays on Paradise Lost remained the most influential criticism of Milton well into the eighteenth century. By the time Thomas Newton produced the first variorum edition of Paradise Lost in 1749, he found he had no choice but to include the entire text of Addison’s Spectator essays. Newton explains:

It was recommended to me indeed to print entire Mr. Addison’s Spectators upon the Paradise Lost, as ingenious essays which had contributed greatly to the reputation of the poem.¹²

Further evidence of the influence and esteem for Addison’s critiques is a biting rebuke to Richard Bentley’s infamous 1732 edition of Paradise Lost. The anonymous author of Milton Restor’d and Bentley Depos’d sharply contrasted Bentley, master of Trinity College Cambridge and the preeminent classicist of his day, to Addison, the epitome of the gentleman scholar. The author castigates Bentley by inviting the reader to consider the differences between the two men, claiming that by such a comparison of their commentaries on the poem:

Mankind may reasonably decide between the candid Critick and the petulant Carper, and thereby do justice to Dr. Bentley and Mr. Addison.¹³

Addison’s Spectator essays are here the very exemplar of criticism that also provides a clear demarcation between the wits (Mr. Addison) and the pedants (Dr. Bentley). Paradise Lost’s continued use as a site of contest in the ongoing culture war between these two parties, and between the moderns and ancients, is here starkly evident as a means to judge between the Milton criticisms of Addison and Bentley.

Some of the popularity, afterlife, and impact of Addison’s essays may certainly be laid to the unprecedented popularity and reach of the Spectator itself. Conservative estimates put the paper’s average daily print run between three and four thousand copies, and Mr. Spectator himself boasted by “modest Computation” that each of these was read twenty times.¹⁴ John Dennis, in one of several rather angry and bitter letters he wrote to the Spectator, decried its popularity and lamented that the author(s) “have got more Reputation in three Years time than Milton has done in fifty Years, or than Shakespear has in an hundred.”¹⁵ The Spectator was a remarkably successful experiment in publishing and in shaping the culture and taste of a nation. And it is within that context of deliberate taste-making that Addison’s renewed approach to Milton should be situated.

Despite “Mr. Spectator’s” assertion in Spectator No. 1 that he “never espoused any Party with Violence, and [was] resolved to observe an exact Neutrality between the Whigs and Tories,” the Spectator was a remarkable vehicle for disseminating Addison and Steele’s (and thus the Whig/Kit-Cat) values to the nation at large.¹⁶ Addison’s handling of Milton and his epic in his essays critiquing Paradise Lost represents a sharp shift from the seemingly uncontrollable eruptions of political anxiety that marked his earlier attempts to deal with the poet and poem. No longer does Addison declare flatly that Milton’s “language can’t support the cause.”¹⁷ For the mature “Mr. Spectator,” Milton’s Restoration reputation had become an obstacle that was surmountable in order to champion the poem as fit reading for polite society. In attempting to overcome his own resistance, and the resistance of an age, Addison would adapt techniques pioneered by Hume and Dennis to render the poem acceptable and separate it from the political opprobrium of its author.

Revisiting Hume’s Influence on Addison’s Spectator Essays

Davis, collating and annotating “Milton’s Stile Imitated” line-by-line, provides striking evidence of Addison’s early (1704) appreciation and use of Hume’s 1694 Annotations for specific textual resonances and understandings. Similarly, Patrick Daly showed in 1994 that Addison was influenced by Hume’s Annotations while preparing his Spectator essays.

Addison's debt reaches far beyond the initial pages and takes in the whole of Hume’s commentary in a pervasive material and structural appropriation, one which enabled him to discuss many passages of the poem in different ways.¹⁸

Daly provides a range of compelling examples to show that Addison likely used the table printed with the Annotations as a guide to noteworthy passages in Paradise Lost, and that he used Hume’s annotations themselves in his explication of these passages. I would like to suggest that the most important influence Hume had on Addison is not in the selection and specific treatment of passages but in modelling critical approaches that would negate the political anxiety the poem had so readily incited in a younger Addison.

Appearing on eighteen consecutive Saturdays from January 5 until May 3, 1712, Addison’s Spectator essays on Paradise Lost have a two-part structure. The first six essays comprise a general introduction to and criticism of the poem, while the final twelve essays treat each book individually. As Daly points out, Addison seems to have originally only intended to print the first six essays, proclaiming at the close of the fifth essay that the sixth would be the last.

I shall in next Saturday’s paper give an account of the many particular Beauties in Milton, which would have been too long to insert under those general Heads I have already treated of, with which I intend to conclude this Piece of Criticism.¹⁹

Daly reasonably suggests that “sometime during the week, it must have dawned on Addison the journalist that he could get much more mileage out of Milton’s epic.”²⁰ The Spectator’s unique demands on its publishers required constant copy, and providing reflections upon each book of Paradise Lost would provide ready fodder for twelve more weeks. This decision meant the critique of Paradise Lost would become the most extended of those printed in the Spectator and explains the two-part structure of the series. It suggests we might read the first six essays (on the fable, characters, sentiments, language, critique, and faults) as comprising a complete criticism on Milton that would have been capped by Addison’s promised seventh essay on the “beauties” of the poem.²¹ As published, the final twelve essays, each treating an individual book of the poem, are both an extended treatment of the “many particular beauties of Milton” and an extension and revision of the ideas found in the first six.

Addison’s primary strategy to make Paradise Lost more approachable – and acceptable – is to position it squarely in the tradition of ancient, classical texts. This recalls Hume’s similar treatment of the text, meant to put it beyond reproach and afford it the same degree of atemporal political benignity afforded the classics. Addison’s first six Spectator essays critique the poem through an explicitly Aristotelian lens, as acknowledged in his introduction to the series where he announces, “I shall therefore examine it [Paradise Lost] by the Rules of Epic Poetry, and see whether it falls short of the Iliad or Aeneid in the Beauties which are essential to that kind of Writing” (no. 267). He again makes this plain in the preamble to the third of the essays, where he gives a general plan of the (evolving) series:

WE have already taken a general Survey of the Fable and Characters in Milton's Paradise Lost: The Parts which remain to be consider’d, according to Aristotle’s Method, are the Sentiments and the Language. Before I enter upon the first of these, I must advertise my Reader, that it is my Design as soon as I have finished my general Reflections on these four several Heads, to give particular Instances out of the Poem now before us of Beauties and Imperfections which may be observed under each of them, as also of such other Particulars as may not properly fall under any of them.

(no. 279)

Addison is aware that his proposal to examine Milton’s poem against the standard of Homer and Virgil might invite objections from those cognizant of debates about the poem’s genre and status. He thus begins his general criticism by abruptly dismissing the problems of genre that had occupied Dryden, Rymer, and Dennis, claiming to have no interest in revisiting “the discussion of that point which was started some Years since, Whether Milton’s Paradise Lost may be called an Heroic Poem” (no. 267). In answer to this question – one that combines status with genre and the politics of genre – Addison sidesteps it to propose that “Those who will not give it that Title, may call it (if they please) a Divine Poem” (no. 267). Although most immediately a direct response to Rymer and Dryden’s famous pronouncements casting doubt upon the poem’s status as epic, Addison’s disclaimer and his suggested compromise recalls Dennis’s contention that Paradise Lost was so “original” that it was only “something like an Epick.”²² In true form, Mr. Spectator bows out of a fractious and political debate to substitute a purely aesthetic judgment (to call the poem “divine” is unlikely to serve as a generic identification).

Addison’s evasion of the genre debate is dissembling at best, as throughout the essays he is determined to treat Milton’s poem as descending from the lineage of the ancient epics, adhering to and extending Aristotle’s “rules” for the genre and embodying the form’s best qualities. In his sixth essay on Paradise Lost (treating the “defects” of the poem) Addison brings up the issue of genre again only to again dismiss the question with what may be a gesture toward Dennis’s more overt claim that Milton had gone beyond his classical models.

Paganism could not furnish out a real Action for a Fable greater than that of the Iliad or Æneid, and therefore an Heathen could not form a higher Notion of a Poem than one of that kind which they call an Heroic. Whether Milton’s is not of a Sublimer nature I will not presume to determine: It is sufficient, that I shew there is in the Paradise Lost all the Greatness of Plan, Regularity of Design, and masterly Beauties which we discover in Homer and Virgil.

(No. 297)

Addison suggests that the ancients, limited by their pagan imagination, could only aspire as high as the traditional “heroic” or epic poem. In having a “real action” inspired by Christian scripture, Addison suggests (or rather declines to determine) that Milton has gone beyond classical precedents for epic to (possibly) invent a new one of “sublimer nature.” However, despite having some reservations (suggested or foregrounded by Dennis’s criticisms), it is clear Addison is determined to show Paradise Lost as conforming to Aristotle’s rules and the precedents set by Homer and Virgil. While Addison’s neoclassical approach runs the risk of reducing Milton to a “copyist” of the ancients (a claim we’ve seen made by Dryden), Addison is not willing to go quite so far as Dennis in declaring that Milton was so original as to be beyond the classical rules.

Unsurprisingly, given his intention to judge Milton’s poem against the classics, Addison’s first six, general critical essays discover Milton to have conformed to Aristotle’s rules in almost every circumstance. In the first essay, Addison sets out to demonstrate that Milton’s “fable” or plot in Paradise Lost has unity of action. Addison is clearly following René Le Bossu’s widely known Aristotelan dictates on epic. Le Bossu (whose Traité du poème épique had been translated into English in 1695) further specified four qualities of appropriate epic action: unity, integrity, importance, and duration. By conflating “importance” and “duration” into one category (“greatness”) Addison’s evaluation of the plot of Paradise Lost against standards of being “one action,” that is “entire” and “great,” measures Milton’s fable against each component of Le Bossu’s definition. In each case, he finds Milton surpasses Homer and Virgil. After commenting that “Aristotle himself allows, that Homer has nothing to boast of as to the Unity of his Fable,” and that some have suggested the Aeneid also “labours in this particular”:

On the contrary, the Poem which we have now under our Consideration [Paradise Lost], hath no other Episodes than such as naturally arise from the Subject, and yet is filled with such a multitude of astonishing Incidents, that it gives us at the same time a Pleasure of the greatest Variety, and of the greatest Simplicity; uniform in its Nature, tho’ diversified in the Execution.

(no. 267)

Addison finds that Paradise Lost has unity of action and furthermore claims the poem excels the ancients in that one action’s being complete and “great.” In a move reminiscent of Hume’s discussion of Milton’s sublimity, Addison hints that Milton’s action is “greater” than Virgil or Homer and indeed “greater than could have been formed upon any Pagan System” because it does not tell about the unraveling or founding of empires, but as Christian truth necessarily involves everyone – “a whole Species” – in its outcome (no. 267). Like Hume (and Dennis) before him, Addison thus is able to proclaim the greatness of Milton’s poem on the twin foundations of its adherence to classic models and its Christian subject.

Asserting in the general criticism – contrary to Dryden, Rymer, and others – that Paradise Lost is an epic that holds its place against those of Homer and Virgil, Addison is faced with a particular challenge in his second paper (no. 273). Arguing for the variety and greatness of Milton’s characters, he confronts one of Dryden’s strongest and clearest criticisms of the poem.

his Subject is not that of an Heroique Poem; properly so call’d: His Design is the Losing of our Happiness; his Event is not prosperous, like that of all other Epique Works: His Heavenly Machines are many, and his Humane Persons are but two.²³

Addison’s response to this is clever and less evasive than his treatment of the poem’s status as epic. Milton’s poem, Addison points out, has four human characters, not two. Furthermore, Addison suggests that Milton’s portrayal of prelapsarian humanity surpasses Virgil, Homer, and nature itself in invention.

If we look into the Characters of Milton, we shall find that he has introduced all the Variety his Fable was capable of receiving. The whole Species of Mankind was in two Persons at the time to which the Subject of his Poem is confined. We have, however, four distinct Characters in these two Persons. We see Man and Woman in the highest Innocence and Perfection, and in the most abject State of Guilt and Infirmity. The two last Characters are, indeed, very common and obvious, but the two first are not only more magnificent, but more new than any Characters either in Virgil or Homer, or indeed in the whole Circle of Nature (no. 273).

As clever as this is, Addison seems to worry that it isn’t sufficient to show that Milton conforms to Aristotle’s dictates on characters. In this case, he finds it necessary to suggest that perhaps Aristotle, rather than Milton, is deficient. Milton, claims Addison, did all he could do (and more) with the characters he had to work with in the plot of his epic, an epic that Aristotle could not have anticipated.

In this, and some other very few Instances, Aristotle’s Rules for Epic Poetry (which he had drawn from his Reflections upon Homer) cannot be supposed to square exactly with the heroic Poems which have been made since his Time; since it is evident to every impartial Judge his Rules would still have been more perfect, could he have perused the Æneid which was made some hundred Years after his Death.

(no. 273)

Addison isn’t quite ready to conclude (with Dennis) that Milton had gone beyond or bettered Aristotle’s rules and classical precedent. He is willing, however, to suggest Aristotle would have revised his rules had he lived to read the Aeneid. Throughout his essays, he constantly approaches Aristotle’s inadequacy to judge Milton and yet ultimately backs off each time so that he may continue using the classic precedents to justify the poem. In Addison, divergence from the rules is often explained away by a vague deference to the poem’s aesthetic excellence – most often by retreating into an appreciation of the sublime, an area of his critique more influenced by Dennis than by Hume.

Locating, as had previous commentators from Hobart on, Milton’s greatness in his sublimity Addison claims, “It is impossible for the imagination of man to distend itself with greater ideas, than this which he [Milton] has laid together in his first, second, and sixth books” (No. 279). However, Addison admits also that Milton was guilty of “affected and unnatural thoughts,” but suggests this is to be excused because “all the poets of the age in which he writ, were infected with this wrong way of thinking” (no. 279). In calling forth “all the poets of the age,” and at the same time introducing the “wrong way of thinking,” Addison performs a maneuver again similar to Hume in quietly amending Milton’s time and associations.

Milton, it must be confest, has sometimes erred in this respect … tho’ considering all the Poets of the Age in which he writ, were infected with this wrong way of Thinking, he is rather to be admired that he did not give More into it, than that he did Sometimes comply with the vicious Taste which still prevails so much among modern Writers.

(No. 279)

Overtly aligning Milton with Homer just before (whom Addison also excuses for some foibles common to his age) this passage aligns Milton and his “wrong way of thinking” squarely with the “vicious Taste” of the time in which he wrote (ostensibly the Restoration), which, Addison claims, isn’t so different from the age in which Addison himself is writing. Addison’s Milton isn’t an outsider castigated by and critiquing Restoration court culture in his late works. Instead, Addison quietly paints Milton as among the Restoration poets, indistinguishable from (and as objectionable or unobjectionable as) all the other “Poets of the Age.” By making Milton unexceptional in the age in which he wrote, and party to their common faults and patterns of thought, Addison also implies that there is nothing particularly objectionable in Milton’s poetry. Milton is far from being cast as the “famous Reformer” Dennis referred to when enlisting him in a common cause against the Collierites.²⁴ Like Hume, Addison desires to change Milton’s relationship to his own time to distance him from controversy and eliminate his biography as a source of the political anxiety that had seemed so insurmountable in his “Account.”

Even more so than in Hume’s Annotations, Addison’s essays are thus notable for the absence of biographical detail of Milton. As Addison lists defects in his sixth essay, he suggests that Milton the poet speaks too often within Paradise Lost, and thus breaks a stricture of Aristotle “that the Author of an Heroic Poem should seldom speak himself, but throw as much of his Work as he can into the Mouths of those who are his Principal Actors” (no. 297). In giving examples of epic authors who let their narrative “sleep” while they declaim, Addison highlights such moments in Virgil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Pharsalia:

Lucan, who was an Injudicious Poet, lets drop his Story very frequently for the sake of unnecessary Digressions or his Diverticula, as Scaliger calls them. If he gives us an Account of the Prodigies which preceded the Civil War, he declaims upon the Occasion, and shews how much happier it would be for Man, if he did not feel his Evil Fortune before it comes to pass, and suffer not only by its real Weight, but by the Apprehension of it. Milton’s Complaint of his Blindness, his Panegyriek on Marriage, his Reflections on Adam and Eve’s going naked, of the Angels eating, and several other Passages in his Poem, are liable to the same Exception, tho’ I must confess there is so great a Beauty in these very Digressions, that I would not wish them out of his Poem.

(no. 297)

This, Addison’s only comment in the Spectator essays on Milton’s blindness, so closely follows an intrusive mention of ancient civil war that one would be excused for conflating Addison’s comment on Lucan’s complaint about the “evil fortune” that follows civil war with Milton’s own reflections in Paradise Lost. Bringing Milton’s blindness into his critique just this once, Addison was acutely aware of the political uses that had been made of this, as Davis deftly shows in his examination of “Milton’s Stile Imitated.”²⁵ Indeed, monstrous, blind Polyphemus had been on Addison’s mind in the weeks before embarking on his critique of Paradise Lost, in the Spectator essay of Saturday, November 11, 1711. One needn’t see Milton in his employment here of Polyphemus as emblematic of misused talents – but one could be forgiven for doing so. Addison writes, “A Man with great Talents, but void of Discretion, is like Polyphemus in the Fable, Strong and Blind, endued with an Irresistible Force which for want of Sight is of no use to him” (no. 225).

In Addison’s extended reflections on Book 3 in Spectator 315, where one might expect more comment on Milton’s “complaint” of his blindness there is none. Addison merely nods to the passage as one that had earned great praise, concluding his reflections on the book by saying he must not conclude without mentioning the passage, but at the same time deferring to offer any analysis of it.

I must not conclude my Reflections upon this Third Book of Paradise Lost, without taking notice of that celebrated Complaint of Milton with which it opens, and which certainly deserves all the Praises that have been given it; tho’ as I have before hinted, it may rather be looked upon as an Excrescence, than as an essential Part of the Poem. The same Observation might be applied to that beautiful Digression upon Hypocrisie, in the same Book.

(no. 315)

Neither does Addison mention the invocation to book seven in which Milton complains of “evil dayes and evil tongues” (7, 25-6). Milton’s invocation to book nine is similarly absent from Addison’s notice, even as he contradicts his earlier charge that Milton spoke too often in Paradise Lost, saying instead, “The Poet, who, as we have before taken notice, speaks as little as possible in his own Person” (no. 351). With the authority of Aristotle behind him, Addison silently casts Milton’s personal presence in his epic aside, deeming even Milton’s moving account of his blindness a “beautiful digression” and an “excrescence.” By skipping over the invocations, Addison can pretend Milton more precisely hews to Aristotelian dictates, even as he revises Milton’s personal presence and the political anxiety it produces out of Paradise Lost.

Addison’s attempt to securely situate Milton amongst ancient predecessors might best be understood as part of a strategy to separate the political Milton from his poem. As in Hume’s Annotations, Addison’s critical maneuvers anticipate the “death of the author.” Milton – the most carefully crafted and curated authorial persona of the seventeenth century – is barely present in Addison’s critique. His sparse references to Milton’s time and contemporaries quietly write Milton into the very Restoration culture he rejected. Effacing Milton the author and suggesting that his work should be evaluated in the same manner as those of the ancients, Addison renders safe much of the political and religious energy that powers and endangers Paradise Lost.

John Dennis’s Influence on Addison’s Spectator Essays

If Addison used Hume’s commentary to single out noteworthy moments in Paradise Lost, as Daly demonstrates, his more important borrowing from Hume is his dual strategy of casting the poem as a classic and distancing it from Milton. Addison’s relationship to his other influences, John Dryden and John Dennis, is more complicated. Addison systematically rebuts Dryden’s main critiques of Milton, only sidestepping the question of whether the poem is in fact “an Heroique” one.²⁶ John Dennis’s treatment of Milton – in particular his embrace of Milton’s political-religious enthusiasms as a source of his sublimity – would not be directly answered in Addison’s critiques, but repressed and replaced. It is this relationship with Dennis that most situates Addison in the dynamic noted by Davis:

All literary inheritances involve some form of that double movement; but it particularly fits the case of Milton’s reception over the early decades of the eighteenth century, a period in which Paradise Lost achieved canonical acceptance through a process of selective re-presentation. The process involved a complex amalgam of losses and gains, and Addison has been alternately praised and blamed for the leading role he played in it.²⁷

The earliest blame cast upon Addison for the Spectator essays, a stark outlier in their early reception, was predictably articulated by John Dennis. Taking the first opportunity to correct Addison, Dennis placed his most immediate and comprehensive response to Addison’s Spectator essays in an ill-advised (but often correct) critique of Addison’s incredibly popular 1713 tragedy, Cato.

Addison’s primary accomplishment in Cato highlights the qualities of Addison’s political writings that must inform any assessment of his Spectator essays and his approach to Paradise Lost. That accomplishment was to write a play that appealed equally to both Whigs and Tories during a particularly factious moment in England’s political history. Alexander Pope, who had provided the prologue to the performance, described the play’s bipartisan appeal in a letter to a friend, writing:

’tho all the foolish industry possible had been used to make it a party play, yet … ‘factions strive, who shall applaud him most.’ The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side the theater were echoed back by the Tories on the other.²⁸

In the Drury Lane Theater in April 1713, according to Pope at least, both parties saw the best of themselves in the character of Cato. Accordingly, Pope reports that after the performance, the actor who played Cato was presented with a purse of fifty guineas by the Tories for “defending the cause of Liberty.”²⁹ The Whigs, not to be outdone, presented a purse of their own for much the same reason.

Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that John Dennis was pretty much the sole dissenting voice amid the general acclaim for Cato, an acclaim so great that Pope (no slouch himself when it comes to jealousy, anger, and bitterness) reported with some envy that the “orange wenches and fruit women in the Park offer the books at the side of the coaches.”³⁰ Dennis tells his readers that he deliberated about whether to make his remarks on Cato public. However, urged on by “friends” eager for controversy, Dennis forged ahead fully aware he would augment the already impressive number of enemies he had accrued through his prior criticism. His first order of business was to expose Cato for what it certainly was: a “party play.” Dismissing the play’s public popularity with the quip that “audiences may be pack’d as well as Juries,” Dennis ridicules the partisan reviewers of Cato who, he says, “appear to have been retain’d” like lawyers paid to promote the play. Dennis simply didn’t buy into the hype surrounding the play and was offended by what he (not inaccurately) saw as cynical marketing ploys to fill seats in the Drury Lane. More importantly, as one of the era’s most vocal advocates on behalf of the reforming qualities of theatre, Dennis considered Cato and the audiences garnered by Steele and the Whigs as a dangerous threat to true art. He explicitly took issue with the way Cato used political controversy to sell tickets when (in Dennis’s assessment) the play was not of sufficient quality itself to justify attention and popularity.

When an Author writes a Tragedy, who knows he has neither Genius nor Judgment, he has Recourse to making a Party, and endeavors to make up in Industry what is wanting in Talent …. Party, and Passion, and Prepossession are clamorous and tumultuous things … they domineer and tyrannize over the Imaginations of People who want Judgment, and sometimes too of those who have it

(Critical Works, 2.42)

Behind Dennis’s ire at Cato and his annoyance at Addison, Steele, and the Kit Kats was genuine disappointment with that other famous Whig persona, Addison’s “Mr. Spectator.” While Cato Examined, an anonymous panegyric on Cato, is a primary target throughout Dennis’s review of Addison’s tragedy, it is clear he also has Mr. Spectator in his sights. He heaps scorn upon the Guardian’s review of Cato, carefully exposing the “family tree” of the Guardian’s fictional reviewer, “Nestor Ironside” to suggest (again, not inaccurately) that a review authored by Steele and/or Addison himself was far from impartial. Furthermore, Dennis took the opportunity to point out with some glee that these editorial personae were “most unfortunate in their talents for criticism.” To make his case, Dennis informs his readers that Mr. Ironside’s “Father,” Mr. Spectator had been “so merrily in the wrong” to have published “a certain Criticism upon Milton, in which the Reverse of almost everything that he has affirm’d is true.” This aside about the Spectator essays isn’t simply a digression, but instead suggests that the entire treatise upon Cato serves as Dennis’s first published response to Addison’s critique of Paradise Lost.

Mr. Spectator … publish’d a certain Criticism upon Milton, in which the Reverse of almost everything that he has affirm’d is true; That he has had the Assurance to say in it, That The Paradise Lost of Milton has an Unity of Action, whereas in that Poem there are most apparently two Actions, the War of the Angels being an Action by it self, and having a just Beginning, a Middle and an End.

(Critical Works, 2.42)

Dennis’s claim that the “Reverse of almost everything” that Mr. Spectator affirmed about Milton is true is more than mere contrariety on Dennis’s part. His linkage of Cato’s partisan reviewers with the author of the Spectator essays signals that Dennis viewed his treatment of Cato as an opportunity to critique not only Addison’s play but Addison’s critical methodology as applied to Paradise Lost. He does so by mustering Addison’s own critical arsenal of neoclassical precedents and rules as criticisms to level against Cato.

In Cato, where Addison breaks Aristotle’s rules, Dennis finds he does so without requisite judgment and that he therefore makes his play meaningless and absurd. Conversely, where Addison keeps the rules, he keeps them too well, confining himself to absurdity yet again. Dennis unrelentingly applies Aristotle to Cato in what becomes a prolonged parody of Addison’s Spectator essays, claiming at the outset that the tragedy lacks a “fable” because the story is “historical and particular” rather than “general and poetical.” Similarly, he finds the play’s unity of action compromised by the rather improbable courtship intrigues of Cato’s children on such an important day for Rome and Cato’s family. Finally, he demonstrates in great detail how the characters are not proper for tragedy, having manners “ill-mark’d, inconvenient, inconsistent, and unequal” (Critical Works, 2.50-3).

Dennis, who lauded Milton most for “breaking thro’” the rules of Aristotle and for creating something generically original, is not content to demonstrate how Addison broke the rules he had used to evaluate Paradise Lost. After showing Addison’s Cato deficient due to its “lack of a general fable,” and additionally its dearth of probability and consistent characters, Dennis explains how over-adherence to the rules also crippled Addison’s play:

We have hitherto shewn the Faults that this Author has committed for want of observing the Rules. We shall now shew the Absurdities with which he abounds thro’ a too nice observing some of them without any manner of Judgment or Discretion.

(Critical Works, 2.68)

Addison can’t win. When he breaks the rules he is being hypocritical as evaluated against his own prior critical performances, and when he does adhere to the rules Dennis chastises him for doing so without judgment. Dennis sets out to hold Addison to Dennis’s gold standard for poetics: the Milton he claimed who had a fine understanding of Aristotle’s rules but was able to break them justly and judiciously. The absurdities Dennis found in Addison’s Cato thus reflect the absurdities he found in Addison’s application of the rules to Milton.

Approaching Dennis’s response to Cato without recognizing that it is in fact a response to the Spectator essays, it would be easy to mistake Dennis himself for a rigid neoclassicist, when in fact this is precisely the fault he is satirizing in Addison. Recall that in his direct statement about the Spectator Essays in the preamble to his remarks on Cato, Dennis exclaimed with some exasperation that in the essays on Paradise Lost Mr. Spectator had:

the Assurance to say … that The Paradise Lost of Milton has an Unity of Action, whereas in that Poem there are most apparently two Actions, the War of the Angels being an Action by itself.

(Critical Works, 42).

Penning a critique of Cato gave Dennis leave to address not only Addison’s “over-nice” application of Aristotle’s rules but the propriety of the rules themselves. He calls the unities of time and place “mechanick rules,” suggesting that they are normally below the notice of a serious critic. He notes that while these rules may improve the probability of a dramatic action if correctly applied, he cautions that “if they are practis’d without Discretion, [these unities] render the Action more improbable, and the Representation more absurd” (Critical Works, 2.68).

Dennis’s scathing assessment of probability in Cato, the most mocking passages in his review of the play, should be read in light of Addison’s charges that the actions and actors in Milton’s poem were not probable enough for an epic poem. Illustrating Addison’s lack of “discretion” in adhering to the unities in Cato and the resulting “absurdity” caused by such a lack of probability, Dennis excoriates Addison for having the villainous Sempronius plot in Cato’s great hall:

Well! But for what does Sempronius come to meet old Syphax? Why to conspire, to plot! Against whom? Against the Governor and the Senate. Where? In the Governour’s Hall. When? Just before the meeting of the Senate, because then there were sure to be People there. I appeal to the Reader now if these are not close politick Persons.

(Critical Works, 2.70)

Dennis’s tone, delivered here with what can only be a snort of derision, suggests why he was such a convenient target for the scorn and gibes of the wits. However, the implication for Addison’s critique of Paradise Lost is clear: his often-strained effort to conform Milton’s poem to neoclassical dictates was as absurd as having the plotters against Cato scheme in Cato’s own foyer.

For Dennis, it seems bad enough that Addison’s misunderstanding of the rules in his tragedy was an affront to taste and a dangerous precedent for the theater. However, more serious is Dennis’s charge that Addison’s same lack of nuance in his essays on Paradise Lost led him to misinterpret the greatness of Milton and his poem. In Dennis’s estimation, Milton’s “irregularity” was essential to his greatness, and any attempt to make Milton “regular” was a catastrophic misreading of the poem. His critique of Cato is thus more than an assault on Addison’s play or even upon his taste; it is a sharp rebuttal of Addison’s attempt to isolate Milton’s poem from the energies that animate it, to bleach it of the same characteristics that had caused the younger Addison to view the poem as “profan’d” by Milton’s prose. Dennis was convinced that Milton’s irregular poem could be an agent of reform. After spending the better part of a decade explaining and pointing out its beauties, how it would have angered Dennis to see Lady Mary Wortley Montagu claim that Addison’s explanation of Milton (not Milton himself) would reform the age.

And Addison that Milton shall explain,

Point out the Beauties of each living Page,

Reform the taste of a degenerate Age.³¹

Most galling, one suspects, is that Addison’s apparent centrist approach, and his neoclassical conservatism, was more successful than Dennis’s attempt to make the political and religious content of Milton’s poem palatable to all.

Revisiting Addison’s Spectator essays a decade later, Dennis asserted that Addison had read, used, and misused Dennis’s earlier critiques and explications of Paradise Lost. Perhaps prompted by the reprinting of Addison’s Spectator essays in Tonson’s 1720 edition of Paradise Lost (edited by Addison’s literary protégé and executor, Thomas Tickell), Dennis struck out at the late Addison in his 1721/22 Letters on Milton and Wycherley: From the Proposals For Printing By Subscription. This work is an invaluable representation of Dennis at his most reflective, looking back over his decades of Milton criticism and reformulating some of its most salient points in direct response to Addison. He bitterly notes that he remains unacknowledged as a pioneer in the evaluation of Milton even though he had devoted much of his career as a critic, “these last Thirty Years” to promoting the poet as “having carried away the Prize of Sublimity” from the best of the Moderns and Ancients. With seemingly great irritation, Dennis notes Addison’s use of his work on Milton, a hostility only exacerbated by the reputation Addison’s essays had gained.

Some Persons, who long since the Publication of the foremention’d Treatises [The Advancement of Poetry and The Grounds of Criticism] began to write Notes on the Paradise Lost, have made particular mention of the same Beauties which I had mark’d out before, without making any mention of me.

(Critical Works, 2.221)

Using the title “Notes,” and referring to the page numbers in “the small Edition” Dennis is clearly using a new edition of the Spectator essays that must have been galling evidence of their continued popularity (see Critical Works 2.223). Alleging certain knowledge that Addison was familiar with his work, Dennis claimed to remain unconcerned with personal credit and only desirous of correcting those instances where Addison has failed to do justice to Milton (of course, by failing to understand Dennis).

Tho’ … I can bring unquestionable Proof that those Persons had read the foremention’d Treatises, and read them with Applause; but I should not be in the least concern’d at the treating me so unfairly and ungenerously, if they had done Justice to Milton, thro’ the Course of their Criticisms, of which they have grossly fail’d in the following Respects.

(Critical Works, 2.222).

Renewing his confrontation with Addison’s critique of Milton, Dennis here crystallizes the most consequential points of his own Milton criticism and summarizes them for readers of his Proposals. Although we must make do with only a specimen attached to a proposal for a longer work he never completed, Dennis’s corrections of Addison highlight their differing theories about the source of and use of the sublime.

Looking back, Dennis claims the Spectator critique of Paradise Lost fails in several respects. Dennis critiques Addison for failing to recognize that Milton surpassed ancients in “sublimity of thoughts” and because “In their [the Spectator essay’s] Observations which they have made on the Paradise Lost, they have insisted too much upon things in which Milton has Equals, instead of dwelling intirely on that Sublimity which is his distinguishing and Characteristick Quality, and which sets him above Mankind” (Critical Works 2.222). Where Addison does cite sublime passages – for example, his claim in no. 279 that sublimity is Milton’s “distinguishing excellence” – Dennis complains that Mr. Spectator fails to set this sublimity “in its true Light and shewing it to all its Advantage” and doesn’t observe that these passages rest on “thoughts and images [that are] original, and the genuine offspring of Milton’s transcendent genius” (2.222). This is Dennis’s continued assertion that Milton is no “copyist” of the ancients, and that he had indeed invented a new kind of epic and a genuinely new, modern, and effective employment of the sublime. Addison’s slavish devotion to showing Milton’s conforming to ancient models clearly continued to irritate Dennis. Finally, Dennis declares Addison’s Spectator papers are flawed because he doesn’t give Milton credit for surpassing “all other Poets,” because “where he has excell’d all poets in what he has exprest, he has left ten times more to be understood than what he exprest, which is the surest and noblest Mark, and the most transporting Effect of Sublimity” (2.223). Dennis here gestures toward his theory about the psychological workings of the sublime, its source in the sacred, and the pleasure of reflection upon one’s own ability to hold (or at least partially conceive of) such lofty thoughts.

In the Spectator essays, Addison had singled out the first, second, sixth, and (less so) seventh books of Paradise Lost as particularly sublime or “great.” The identification of “sublimity” with a greatness of “sentiment” is one of Addison’s divergences from Dennis’s critical theory. Where Dennis had defined sublimity as essentially synonymous with passion and arising from the subject or “fable” of the work, specifically advocating “enthusiastick passion” evoked by ideas of religious things or concepts, Addison treats sublimity as a vague “greatness” of sentiment and expression. Exploring the evolution of Addison’s concept of the sublime in the Spectator by comparing The Pleasures of the Imagination essays (nos. 411-421) and the Paradise Lost essays, Lee Andrew Elioseff suggests that Addison intentionally avoided Dennis’s formulation of the sublime to evade the political and religious connotations it carried with it.

Addison, in order to avoid the more emotive overtones which the sublime had taken on in Dennis’s The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704), may have selected “greatness” as a more appropriate term to convey the impression of sublimity in both nature and art.³²

Dennis’s linkage of the sublime with “enthusiasm” and the range of negative religious and political connotations of that word in the Restoration would be reason enough for a prudent Whig like Addison (or the supposedly neutral Mr. Spectator) to avoid its use. Locating Milton’s sublimity in “enthusiastic passion” threatened to associate Milton with the fanatics once again and return the poet to the odious state in which Addison had found him in 1694, so beyond the pale of reformed taste that even the lofty style of Paradise Lost couldn’t “support the cause.”³³

Attempting to ferret out Addison’s concept of the sublime from his first essays on Paradise Lost, readers are confronted with two pairs of competing sentiments: the “Natural” and “Sublime,” and their opposites, the “Affected and Unnatural” and “Mean and Vulgar” sentiments (no. 279). Aspiring poets are advised to pursue two kinds of sentiments, the “natural” and the “sublime,” and exhorted to avoid the other two kinds: the “affected and unnatural” and the “mean and vulgar.” While he reserves his examples of “affected and unnatural” language for later papers, Addison moves on to the second category of sentiment to be avoided, carefully clarifying that even “low and groveling” thoughts might justly belong to the category of the “natural,” so that the category to be shunned is really the “mean and vulgar” whether affected or unaffected. Just as Addison claimed that Milton only reflected his contemporaries’ weaknesses for “wrong thinking” (no. 279), Homer was guilty of “mean and vulgar” language because of the “simplicity of the age in which he lived” and “of that which he described.” According to Addison, “sentiments which raise Laughter” are examples of low and vulgar thoughts and are inappropriate in epic poetry. Addison’s example from Paradise Lost is the “String of Punns, and those too very indifferent,” which occurs when Satan’s newly invented artillery successfully volleys against the Angels (no. 279). If readers of the Spectator were left with only a vague idea of what constitutes the “greatness” that lends sublimity to Milton’s thoughts, there was no doubt that these puns were the exact opposite.

Addison returns to the sublime when he examines Milton’s language, a topic that he finds “the learned World is very much divided upon” (no. 285). Differing from Dennis, who located the source of the sublime entirely in the subject, Addison identifies a quality of style that is “sublime” and largely a function of the poet’s language alone as he claims, “it is requisite that the Language of an Heroic Poem should be both Perspicuous and Sublime” (no. 285). As with his discussion of sublime sentiment, Addison’s definition of sublime language lacks the depth of Dennis’s more complex theoretical explanation of the mechanisms that raise sublime passions in readers. Addison seems certain only that sublime language or style should differ from everyday speech. A poet should show his genius by “shunning the common Roads of Expression, without falling into such ways of Speech as may seem stiff and unnatural; he must not swell into a false Sublime” (No. 285). Addison then enumerates the techniques Aristotle prescribes to accomplish this: use of metaphor, use of foreign words, lengthening and contracting words, coining new words, and using obsolete words. Addison claims that Milton, by employing all these methods “has carried our Language to a greater height than any of the English Poets have ever done before or after him, and made the Sublimity of his Stile equal to that of his Sentiments” (no. 285). Addison discovers that Milton is “most singular” in his “stile,” a statement that maintains focus on stylistic features rather than the subjectival and psychological underpinnings of the sublime. However, Addison later points out as a fault that Milton overused some of these techniques, an assertion that would seem to suggest that Milton crossed the line from the sublime into the fustian. Addison’s willingness to, at least in part, disassociate the sublime from subject and sentiment and treat it as a feature of style differs markedly from Dennis. Addison’s sublime, only tentatively if at all derived from the passions, is far less liable to be contaminated by the lingering political-religious enthusiasms associated with Milton.

Addison’s excision of Milton’s invocations in a ploy to distance the author’s person from his poem again puts him in conflict with Dennis’s theory of the sublime. Where Addison asserts in no. 297 that the “author of an Heroic Poem should seldom speak himself,” Dennis, on the other hand, had suggested in The Advancement of Poetry that “the Passages of the ancient Poets that were most Religious, were their Invocations, Apostrophes, or the like.”³⁴ And because Dennis’s theory held that the most religious passages were also the most sublime, in The Grounds of Criticism he asserts that in “those parts of Epick Poetry, where the Poet speaks himself, or the eldest of the Muses for him, the Enthusiastick Passions are to prevail.”³⁵ The passages deemed by Addison “digressions” (however beautiful he may admit them) were some of the most sublime moments identified by Dennis.

In the remainder of Dennis’s answer to Addison in his proposal for the Letters, Dennis relentlessly draws attention to Addison’s failure to properly identify and explain Milton’s most sublime passages. Dennis complains that Addison stops short “within the very touch of one of the vastest and sublimest Beauties that ever was inspir’d by the God of Verse, or by Milton’s Godlike Genius.” The description of the combat between Satan and Michael in heaven, which Addison fails to highlight, is able to “lift up the Reader’s Imagination to a thousand times a greater Heighth than either the Shout of Armies, or the Rattling of Brazen Chariots” (Critical Works, 2.224). Dennis’s mention of the “Rattling of Brazen Chariots” may be meant to uncharitably recall a particularly flat passage in Addison’s 1694 “Account,” which was both a brazen imitation and a rejection of Milton’s politics:

How are you struck with terror and delight,

When angel with arch-angel copes in fight!

When great Messiah’s out-spread banner shines,

How does the chariot rattle in his lines!³⁶

If he is recalling this, Dennis rebuts the Spectator essays with Addison’s own youthful rejection of Milton. The young Addison had noted how “bold, and sublime” and “above the critick’s nicer laws” the battle between Michael and Satan was, even if in that same poem he was forced to turn aside, finally unable to recommend Milton because of his politics. In the Spectator, Addison evolved in his view of Milton, but again stopped short of appreciating the extent to which Paradise Lost (in Dennis’s words) “broke thro’” Aristotle’s rules. Dennis spends the next three pages closely examining the battle between Satan and Michael, lingering particularly over the verse he deems most sublime:

                All Heav’n

Resounded, and had Earth been then, all Earth

Had to her Center shook: What Wonder? when

Millions of fierce encountering Angels fought

On either side, the least of whom could wield

These Elements, and arm him with the force

Of all their Regions.

(6.217-23)

Dennis seems transported himself as he explains his reaction to this passage, highlighting especially a reader’s inability to fully conceive of the greatness of Milton’s thought in this passage.

Sir, if Millions of fierce encountering Angels fought on either Side, and the very least, the very weakest of so many Millions had Power to rend this Globe of Earth and Ocean from its Axle, and whirl it with its dependent Atmosphere thro’ the Aethereal Regions, what must be the unutterable, the inconceivable Effect of so many Millions furiously contending against each other, and each of them exerting all his might for Victory? (Critical Works, 2.225)

As he moves on to describe the meeting between Satan and Michael, he calculates using the power of these “millions” of angels as a baseline. If the reader has been following Dennis, they will find “computing by just Proportion” that Michael and Satan are able to “confound and destroy in a Moment the whole Dominion of the Sun, to crush all the Planetary Worlds … to scatter and disperse them in empty infinite Space.” But the reader’s ability to compute such power is meant to be stymied. Dennis’s arithmetic traces Milton to the point where he compares the arch-angelic combat to a battle between two planets, but even this magnitude, says Dennis, isn’t enough, because Milton is attempting “to set forth Great things by Small.” Finally, Dennis reveals that “what accounts for all this” (that is, for the psychological impact of Milton’s lofty sublime) is the passage describing Satan and Michael preparing their first blows:

Together both with next to Almighty Arm

Uplifted, imminent, one Stroke they aim’d

That might determine, and not need repeat

As not of Power at once.

(Critical Works 2.227, emphasis Dennis’s)

According to Dennis, Milton’s description of the combatants preparing to strike “with next to Almighty Arm” exceeds the mental capacity of any reader. The passage, he exults, “includes more than the Thoughts of the greatest Reader can ever comprehend” (Critical Works, 2.227). Dennis’s sublime is about proportion, as is Addison’s, but it is not the proportion of style, not the proportion of the language to the thoughts conveyed. Instead, Dennis’s sublime relies upon the ability of the poet to exceed all potential proportions of human thought, to present a religious idea so laden with passion that the reader is unable to clearly identify the source of the awe or terror it inspires yet is justly proud of his or her ability to even briefly entertain such a thought. Such sublimity is generated only by proper subjects well-handled by poetic genius.

Dennis’s assessment of Addison’s Spectator essays in his Letters evinces less bitterness toward Addison than disappointment. Dennis is disappointed that Addison himself could not break free of the Aristotelian mode of criticism and that Addison rejected or repressed a theory of the sublime that located its power in Milton’s “enthusiastic passion.”

Of all the commentators on the Paradise Lost, Mr. Addison was certainly the most ingenious, if he was not the most learned, but he has not given Milton his full Due, either thro’ want of Discernment, or want of Impartiality.

(Critical Works, 2.223)

The lack of “impartiality” that Dennis finds in Addison may refer to any number of biases: bias against Dennis himself, a well-known party bias, or bias in favor of the ancients. Dennis condemns Addison’s hesitation to name Milton more sublime than Homer, pointing out “at least two” seeming contradictions on this point in the Spectator essays. Dennis doesn’t only want Addison to be consistent in his relative assessment of Homer, Virgil, and Milton, but he asserts that the only logical critique would proclaim Milton preeminent. Dennis identifies an ambivalence and ambiguity in Addison’s essays that results from his grappling with his past encounters with Paradise Lost and with the political anxiety the poem so readily evoked. Such politic dissembling would not do for Dennis, who had decided Milton was indeed more sublime than any other poet, ancient or modern.

Both Addison and Dennis align Milton with classical predecessors and, like Hume, treat Paradise Lost as worthy of the extended analysis that was otherwise reserved for those texts alone. Addison’s tactic to privilege Paradise Lost while carefully downplaying, excising, or revising Milton’s authorship, is of a type with the strategies of Hume. Addison, however, ultimately retreated from the riskier positions Dennis was willing to take, instead finding safer ground well away from the zeal and enthusiasm that had spooked him in 1694. Combined with a near-total obfuscation of Milton’s political life, the effect was to isolate the poetry from the poet and thus make Paradise Lost palatable for the age.

It is understandable that when later observers such as Johnson constructed narratives to account for Paradise Lost’s survival and popularity, they would credit Addison’s Spectator essays for making the poem “popular.” The series of essays encouraged the nation to read the poem with attention and reverence usually reserved for the Bible or classical texts. Unlike Hume’s Annotations, never reprinted after 1695, and Dennis’s obscure, scattered, and unfashionably pedantic criticism, Addison’s essays enjoyed a substantial afterlife. It is indeed tempting to accept the commonplace that Addison “rediscovered” Paradise Lost in 1712 and successfully rescued it from Restoration trauma and anxiety. However, Addison’s critique was to spur one last, infamous intervention in the reception of the poem.

Notes

Joseph Addison, “An Account of the Greatest English Poets,” Annual Miscellany (London: Jacob Tonson, 1694), Sig. Y1r-Y2. Available from Early English Books Online. The Milton excerpt is also reprinted in Shawcross, 105–106.

John Shawcross, Milton: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1970), 105.

Abigail Williams, Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture 1681–1714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 6.

Miscellany,Miscellany, Sig. Y4.

Robert D. Horn, “Addison’s Campaign and Macaulay,” PMLA 63 (1948): 886–902, 893.

John D. Baird, “Whig and Tory Panegyrics: Addison’s The Campaign and Philips’s Bleinheim Reconsidered,” Lumen Selected Proceedings from the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies 16 (1997), 163–177, 174.

Ibid.

Paul Davis, “Addison’s Forgotten Poetic Response to Paradise Lost,” Milton Quarterly 49.4 (December 2015), 243–274.

Ibid., 265.

Ibid., 269.

Ibid.

John Milton, Paradise Lost: A Poem in Twelve Books/A New Edition with Notes of Various Authors by Thomas Newton, D.D. (London: Printed for J. and R. Tonson and S. Draper in the Strand, 1749), 2 Volumes. Sig. a2v-a3.

Anonymous, MILTON Restor’d and BENTLEY Depos’d (London: E. Currl, 1732). Available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online.

See Donald F. Bond’s “Introduction” to The Spectator, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), xxvi–xxviii. See lxxxiii and Spectator No. 10 for Addison’s speculation that each paper was read twenty times.

John Dennis, To the Spectator on the 24th of April 1711/12, Critical Works, 2.28.

Throughout this chapter, I will refer to the Spectator essays simply by their number as given by Addison and Steele. The proliferation of editions of the Spectator throughout the eighteenth century and beyond attests to its popularity, but the standard academic edition remains Donald F. Bond’s (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).

Joseph Addison, “An Account of the Greatest English Poets,” in Annual Miscellany (London: Jacob Tonson, 1694), Sig. Y2.

Patrick Daly, Jr., “Patrick Hume and the Making of Addison’s Paradise Lost Papers,” Milton Studies 31 (1994), 179–195, 179.

This wording is in the original 1712 folio (9 February 1712) and is subsequently revised in future reprintings. See Daly, 182.

Ibid.

The fifth essay is a digression into the nature of criticism that serves as a preface of sorts to Addison’s sixth essay on the “defects” or “faults” in Paradise Lost.

John Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism, Critical Works, 1.333. See Chapter 3 for the discussion of Dennis’s claim that Paradise Lost was sui generis.

John Dryden, “A Discourse on Satire,” in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis translated into English verse by Mr. Dryden and Several Other Eminent Hands (London, 1693), iv.

John Dennis, The Person of Quality’s Answer to Mr. Collier’s Letter, Being a Disswasive from the Play-House (1704), Critical Works, 1.302. See the discussion of this in chapter 3.

See above for discussion of Davis’s explication of Addison’s “Milton’s Stile Imitated,” and Chapters 3 and 4 for examples of how Milton’s blindness or other biographical details in his poetry leads to eruptions of political anxiety in the work of the normally restrained Hume and the normally unrestrained Dennis.

Dryden’s clearest critique in his Juvenal includes the generic charge, but also suggests the poem is not an epic because it has an unhappy outcome and too few human characters. Addison rebuts the charge of the outcome by claiming that the Messiah rather than Satan is the hero of the poem (no. 297), and we’ve seen above how he cleverly increases the number of human characters from two to four.

Davis, 269–270.

Peter Smithers, The Life of Joseph Addison, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 265.

Smithers, 264–265.

Ibid.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Essays and Poems and Simplicity, A Comedy, edited by Robert Halsband and Isobel Grundy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 238.

Lee Andrew Elioseff, The Cultural Milieu of Addison’s Literary Criticism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963), 99.

An Account, l.

Dennis, Critical Works, 1.231.

Ibid., 1.339.

Miscellany,Miscellany, Sig.Y1r.

6 “Such Scorn of Enemies”Richard Bentley’s Paradise Lost

DOI: 10.4324/9781003276395-7

I profess to Your Highness, in the Integrity of my Heart, that what I am going to say is literally true this Minute I am writing …. There are … one Mr. Rymer and one Mr. Dennis, most profound Criticks. There is a Person styled Dr. B—tl--y, who has wrote near a thousand Pages of immense Erudition, giving a full and true Account of a certain Squable of wonderful Importance between himself and a Bookseller.

– Swift, A Tale of a Tub ¹

In his 1690 Essay Upon Ancient and Modern Learning, Sir William Temple had claimed the moderns fell far below the ancients not only because the ancients had more knowledge and genius, but because the moderns were distracted by “inquiries and contests about Matters of Religion,” suffered a lack of patronage from great princes, and wrote for profit as opposed to honor. Worst of all, according to Temple, the moderns had inflicted “the last maim given to Learning … the scorn of Pedantry.”² As discussed in previous chapters, John Dennis, who would be classed among the worst of the pedants by those on the side of the ancients, joined the fray in his 1701 The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry to directly refute Temple’s main contentions. Dennis asserted that Milton had demonstrated that the moderns could surpass the ancients if they too harnessed the sublime power of sacred subjects. In Dennis’s theory of the enthusiastic sublime, Dennis contended that where the ancients had “actual Pre-eminence” it was only because they had discovered the secret of “joining their Religion with their Poetry” (Critical Works, 1.206-7).³ The moderns, he claimed, could match the ancients if they began “incorporating Poetry with the Religion reveal’d to us in Sacred Writ” (Critical Works, 1.207). As we’ve seen, Paradise Lost was central to Dennis’s theory as he employed Milton’s Book 1 description of Satan as an example of sublimity, explaining that “the Reader cannot but observe of himself, that the greatest of these noble Ideas, is taken from Religion” (Critical Works, 1.220). Responding directly to Temple’s claims, Dennis declared that Milton excelled Virgil “by the Advantage of his Religion” both “in the Greatness of his Thought, and his Spirit,” despite receiving “no Encouragement” and having the “vast Disadvantage” of writing before Le Bossu’s treatise on the epic form (Critical Works, 1.271-2). While his contribution to the battle of the moderns vs. the ancients would be eclipsed by the more provocative response of that preeminent classicist Richard Bentley, Dennis was unique in his explicit enlistment of Milton’s sublime as a model for surpassing ancient achievement.

Outspoken and notoriously combative, we’ve seen how Dennis made an easy target for the wits who championed Temple and the ancients. Swift, who would relentlessly attack enthusiasms throughout his career, may have had the critic at least partly in mind as he explored the relation between enthusiasm and madness in the description of the fanatical Aeolists in A Tale of Tub. More explicitly, he lumped Dennis in with Richard Bentley as representative of a pedantic species of “True Criticks” descended from ancient origins:

Every true critic is a hero born, descending in a direct line from a celestial stem, by Momus and Hybris, who begat Zoilus, who begat Tigellius, who begat Etcaetera the elder, who begat Bentley, and Rymer, and Wotton, and Perrault, and Dennis, who begat Etcaetera the younger.⁴

Similarly, in the Preface to A Tale of a Tub (see the epigraph, above), Swift had affected incredulity that two such characters as Richard Bentley and John Dennis could even exist in a realm at the same time. While Dennis was a target of Swift’s scorn because of his employment of enthusiasm and his rebuttal of Swift’s mentor and patron, Bentley was the more significant target as an even greater symbol of the pedantry and professional scholarship represented by the “new philology.”

Bentley, Keeper of the King’s Library at St. James Palace since 1693 and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1700, had come to fame as the leading classicist of the age when he published his Letter to the Illustrious John Mill in 1691 and gave the Boyle Lectures for 1692. But it was his Dissertation Upon the Epistles of Phalaris, appended to the 1697 second edition of Wooten’s Reflections, that earned the special ire of Swift. The Dissertation was a muscular refutation of Temple’s Essay, laced with Bentley’s domineering arrogance and biting sarcasm. In his 1690 essay, Temple had singled out Aesop’s Fables and the Epistles of Phalaris as examples of ancient preeminence, declaring that the Epistles “have more Race, more Spirit, more Force of Wit and Genius, than any others I have ever seen, either antient or modern.”⁵ He acknowledged there was some debate about the provenance of the Epistles, but bravely asserted its authenticity:

Such diversity of Passions … such Freedom of Thought, such Boldness of Expression, such Bounty to his Friends, such Scorn of his Enemies, such Honor of Learned Men, Such Esteem of Good, such Knowledge of Life, such Contempt of Death, with such Fierceness of Nature and Cruelty of Revenge could never be represented, but by him that possessed them.⁶

Following Temple’s praises, young Charles Boyle produced a new edition of Phalaris’s letters in 1695, sarcastically complaining in the preface that Bentley had rudely, “out of his singular humanity,” denied him access to a manuscript in the King’s Library. Responding in his 1697 Dissertation, Bentley used his superior knowledge of the Greek language to demonstrate conclusively that the Epistles was spurious. This initial edition of the Dissertation was but a taste of what Bentley and the evolving philology could do. After being maligned in an indignant response from Boyle’s Christ Church colleagues, Bentley published a much-expanded edition of the Dissertation in 1699, including an explanation of the dispute between himself and Boyle over the King’s Library manuscript. That explanation is likely the “full and true Account of a certain Squable of wonderful Importance between himself and a Bookseller” mocked by Swift in A Tale of a Tub.⁷ The voluminous new edition of the Dissertation was a masterful demonstration that established beyond all doubt how anachronistic references, dialect, and form precluded the Epistles from having been written by the historical Phalaris. Moreover, the Dissertation featured Bentley in all his scholarly splendor, employing his trademark sarcasm and larger-than-life personality to grind his opponents down.

Having embarrassed Temple and the Christ Church wits, Bentley became a lightning rod of sorts to focus all the stray energy of the battle of the ancients and moderns. He became the emblematic modern and quintessential pedant, the professional scholar to be opposed by the dilettante, gentlemanly, amateur scholarship epitomized by Temple and aspired to by the likes of Addison, Swift, and Pope. When Dennis remarked that, “Of all the Commentators on the Paradise Lost, Mr. Addison was certainly the most ingenious, if he was not the most learned,” he was highlighting this growing gulf between the ingenious amateur and learned scholar (Critical Works, 2.223). The wits, however, would relentlessly employ these distinctions to denigrate the scholars in praise of clever and gentlemanly amateurs. And if Addison defined the genteel end of the spectrum, Bentley was securely master of the opposing end.

Bentley’s tumultuous career as the Master of Trinity, combined with the often-acerbic tone of his scholarly work, hints that the man had what might be termed an abrasive personality. But what exacerbated this, even beyond his willful entry of himself as a “character” of sorts in his scholarly notes, was his choice of subject. Contrary to the practice of other classical philologists of the time, Bentley chose subjects certain to put himself in the public eye. Producing a new and querulous edition of Horace (1712), for instance, was certain to attract attention. Kristine Haugen has characterized this as Bentley’s “most daring experiment … in making scholarship matter to a wider group of literary readers.”⁸ Horace was poetry for schoolboys, familiar to most and dear to an ever-expanding audience of “genteel” readers. For Bentley to exercise his particular skillset on Horace was not only to dabble in an area little touched by serious scholars, but to do so under the scornful gaze of those gentlemanly scholars who so resented him and the entire breed of “True Criticks.” To make matters worse, Bentley’s Horace was packed with, as Haugen aptly puts it, “hectoring pronouncements about his own excellence” and features Bentley “loudly … trumpeting his distaste for writing helpful commentary, his right to make conjectures, and his innate literary genius and taste.”⁹ Not only did the Horace put Bentley’s methods on display to a larger audience than could honestly appreciate and evaluate his Latin scholarship, but the volume “signaled to the wits that the pedantic, ill-bred barbarians were now within the gates of genteel culture.”¹⁰ Having been stung by the wits’ continued attacks on the Dissertation despite its mountainous piling on of evidence, Bentley’s method in his Horace was to assault his readers with even more erudition. If they disagreed with him, he promised he would

Attack outright their prejudice and resistance. In my annotations, I have drawn out many points diffusely and at great length, contrary to my custom. Even if they grow angry and struggle, I will overwhelm them with the weight of my reasons and the number of my examples, until at last I drag them by the neck into agreement with me.¹¹

When Bentley (in yet another odd choice of project) took on the task of editing Milton’s Paradise Lost this muscular approach would again be on display. In his Horace, Bentley explained his reliance on conjectural emendation and the unreliability of textual witnesses, a methodology that would appear baffling when applied to Milton’s epic. To properly restore a text, Bentley claims:

You need what the ancients ascribed to Aristarchus, a certain faculty of divination and prophecy. These can be acquired by no quantity of labor or length of life, but they come purely as the gift of nature and by happiness of birth …. For all the readings that obviously and willingly offered themselves when a Manuscript was collated have already been captured and anticipated: there is virtually nothing left but what you can excavate from the force of the meaning and the form of the language, solely by means of your genius. Therefore, in these Horatian notes I will produce more emendations from conjecture than from the help of Manuscripts, and, unless I am totally wrong, the greater part of them more certain. For when there are variant readings, authority itself often makes a fool of us, soothing the mistaken itch of those who would emend. On the contrary, when we propose conjectures against the authority of all Books, timidity and shame pull us by the ear, and solely reason, and the light of the meaning, and necessity itself can get the upper hand …. Therefore, don’t venerate Scribes alone, but dare to be wise for yourself; measure every word by the flow of the speech and the genius of the language, and so at last pronounce and render your verdict.

This statement of methodology is boiled down to its core in Bentley’s claim that “reason, and the thing itself count for more than a hundred manuscripts.”¹² If a particular manuscript agreed with Bentley, he found that helpful, but no manuscript authority at all was necessary for a genius such as Bentley, the Aristarchus of his age. He would willingly work without such a safety net as he fearlessly proposed emendations for which no reading existed. In his Milton and his Horace, Bentley would thus proclaim that the author wrote it so, or should have.¹³ In ancient texts, Bentley could ascribe such moments in Horace to the ignorance (or even supposed malice) of centuries of anonymous copyists. Milton posed a different challenge.

Contextualizing Bentley’s 1732 edition of Paradise Lost has proven difficult for modern commentators. Few critics have even bothered to attempt to place Bentley within the mainstream history of editing and criticism. Empson praised Zachary Pearce as one of the only of Bentley’s contemporary opponents who did not “take refuge in being rude” while responding to Bentley.¹⁴ Often, references to Bentley’s notes are included in the apparatus of modern Milton editions as mere specimens of absurdity to adorn the volume with a rare moment of levity. In his study of eighteenth-century editing, Marcus Walsh claims that Bentley’s “giant figure casts a disproportionate and in many ways distorting shadow over our view of the period’s approach to Miltonic editing.”¹⁵ To Walsh, Bentley’s Paradise Lost is an aberration in an otherwise smooth teleology of editing and critical practice. Among the reasons that Bentley resists easy assimilation into Walsh’s history of editing is his perception that Bentley’s reliance upon conjectural emendation is at odds with the practice of using “parallel places” in the manner of Pearce and later commentators.¹⁶ Treated as a singular aberration, a product of the great scholar’s dotage, or as a bizarre and anachronous artifact on the cusp of the development of modern English criticism, Bentley’s edition is most easily shunted aside.

Some of the same features of Bentley’s scholarship that provoked the scorn of the eighteenth-century wits also account for his continued frequent dismissal by modern scholars. Bentley’s overbearing tone in his apparatus and the fictions he weaves around his editorial practice make it difficult to objectively assess the whole of his effort. Disingenuously, Bentley claims his 1732 edition of Paradise Lost was a command performance requested by Queen Caroline, and that he produced the notes “extempore, and put them to the Press as soon as made.”¹⁷ While such proclamations appear calibrated to mitigate Bentley’s culpability for his emendations, annotations by Bentley in a second-edition Paradise Lost demonstrate that Bentley’s serious, editorial engagement with the poem extended at least from the mid-1720s.¹⁸ In seeking the origins of Bentley’s decision to edit Paradise Lost, critics have variously accepted Bentley’s claim that he was acquiescing to the Queen, or proposed that Elijah Fenton’s 1725 edition of Milton had given the scholar the idea that Milton’s text had been corrupted by his amanuensis.¹⁹ More recently, William Kolbrener has suggested that Bentley, a low-church “modern whig,” was at least in part responding to John Toland’s 1698 publication of Milton’s prose. Kolbrener’s claim comes within the context of his convincing, larger argument which posits that critical responses to Milton shift between two poles as Milton critics continually attempt to validate an image of Milton that is either “satanic” or “angelic,” orthodox or heterodox, radical or conservative, depending on their own critical perspective and moment.

Kolbrener identifies Stanley Fish’s “angelic Milton” and John Rumrich’s “satanic Milton” as the extremes of the contemporary phase of the battle.²⁰ He further identifies Bentley as the “Fish” of the early-eighteenth century, portraying Bentley’s 1732 edition as a rebuke to radical interpretations of Milton (such as those of John Toland):

[Bentley’s] reading of Milton can be seen as an appropriation of Milton on behalf of a different, though equally Whig ideology, that of the emergent latitudinarian orthodoxy. Bentley’s Milton elaborates the flip-side of immanentism (expounded later by the likes of Saurat and Empson), and it requires the re-instating of orthodox dualisms into Milton’s works.²¹

Kolbrener goes on to claim that what he terms Bentley’s reinvention of Milton as “orthodox” is “a phenomenon … paralleled in the current century by Stanley’s Fish’s reading of Areopagitica.”²² While Kolbrener’s analysis provides a cogent framework for examining much of Milton criticism from the Romantics onward, it is a stretch to claim Paradise Lost had already been marked as the property of Whigs and radicals in the decades prior to Bentley. Toland is most certainly an outlier in his embrace of Milton and his focus on Milton’s political prose. If anything – Toland’s own reception might have served as a warning to others (such as Addison) embracing Milton. As we’ve seen in previous chapters, Milton’s radical energies required accommodation and prompted maneuvering by critics as diverse as Dryden, Hume, and Addison. So it is difficult to discern exactly which predecessors Kolbrener has in mind for Bentley when he claims that “both Bentley and Fish come in the aftermath of the ascendancy of the ‘Whig Milton,’ and their readings of Milton come as responses to the readings of their predecessors.”²³ The remainder of this chapter will attempt to provide a context for Bentley’s methodology and critique in keeping with the contest over Milton that the previous chapters have discussed as developing hand-in-hand with the discipline of criticism itself in the Restoration and early eighteenth century. Despite Swift and Pope’s continual association of Bentley with Dennis as two similar members of the pedantic (and fanatic) tribe of “true criticks,” Bentley’s most radical interventions in Paradise Lost owe more to his predecessors Addison and Pope than to those who embraced Milton’s radicalism such as Toland or Dennis.

Bentley’s Life of Milton

Unlike Hume and Addison, whom we have seen consciously avoiding or even revising Milton’s biography to mitigate the political anxiety attending him, Bentley explicitly invokes the life of Milton as a framing device and justification for his edition. As discussed in Chapter 5, Milton’s absence is striking in Addison’s Spectator essays. Including a “Life of Milton” as preface to Milton’s works had become common only after Elijah Fenton’s 1725 edition of Paradise Lost. Breaking with the practice of including Fenton’s rather basic “Life of Milton,” Bentley doesn’t include a biography as a stand-alone feature of his 1732 edition but instead employs elements of Milton’s biography in a strategic manner. In the course of his preface and throughout his notes on the poem, Bentley provides a biographical sketch that strangely emphasizes Milton’s status as a political pariah. The second sentence of Bentley’s preface paints a bleak picture of Milton’s situation in the years in which he composed the poem:

Our celebrated Author, when he compos’d this Poem, being obnoxious to the Government, poor, friendless, and what is worst of all, blind with a Gutta Serena, could only dictate his Verses to be writ by another.²⁴

Bentley’s unusual depiction of Milton composing Paradise Lost while “poor,” “friendless,” and “obnoxious to the Government” sets the necessary conditions for Bentley to explain how the text of Milton’s poem was corrupt ab origine. Not only was the blind poet misunderstood by his amanuenses, but in his oppressed condition he was easily taken advantage of by a “friend” who inserted spurious verses of his own into the poem:

For, this suppos’d Friend, (called in these Notes the Editor) knowing Milton’s bad Circumstances; who, VII. 26,

Was faln on evil days and evil tongues,

With Darkness and with Dangers compass’d round

And Solitude;

thought he had a fit Opportunity to foist into the Book several of his own Verses …. And poor Milton in that Condition, with Three-score Years weight upon his Shoulders, might be reckoned more than half Dead.²⁵

Where Hume and Addison had studiously avoided connecting the invocation of Book 7 to Milton’s political situation following the Restoration, Bentley makes the reference explicit and uses it to explain his assertions about the textual condition of the poem. Later biographers, especially Richardson, would look to this invocation as a portrait of their author heroically enduring blindness and disillusionment. Bentley uses it to imagine a Milton powerless, “half Dead,” and helpless to control the production of his great poem. Elsewhere in his preface, Bentley even more directly confronts Milton’s political anathema, describing Milton’s condition when the first edition of the poem was printed as one of “Poverty, Infamy, and an universal Odium from the Royal and triumphant Party.”²⁶ In his emendations to Milton’s text, Bentley continues elaborating upon this portrait of an isolated and outcast Milton. For instance, early in Book I, while identifying a passage as a spurious insertion by the “Editor,” Bentley exclaims: “our Poet, blind, and then poor and friendless, had frequently foul Play.”²⁷ This emphasis upon Milton’s position as a “friendless” outcast is a singular feature of Bentley’s edition, savoring more of Winstanley and other opponents of the poet who were vocal in the Restoration and in contrast to the politic and tactful avoidance of Milton’s biography practiced by earlier editors and commentators.²⁸ Bentley weaponizes the political situation of Milton at the Restoration in order to explain his muscular interventions in the text, rather than as something that one could or should separate from the poem.

Not only does his stark portrayal of Milton in the Restoration help Bentley explain how the poem could have been corrupted, but it also leads Bentley to depict the poem’s reputation in the early decades of the eighteenth century as the more marvelous and unaccountable.

What a wonderful Perfomance … was this Paradise Lost? that under all these Disadvantages could gradually arise and soar to a national Applause and Admiration? How many Thousands would depress and vilify the Poem, out of Hatred and Detestation of the Poet; who they thought deserv’d Hanging on a Gibbet? What native, unextinguishable Beauty must be impress’d and instincted through the Whole, which the Defoedation of so many Parts by a bad Printer and a worse Editor could not hinder from shining forth?²⁹

But, in typical Bentley fashion, his admiration of the poem (and Milton) is mixed with a liberal dash of distaste. In Bentley’s hands, the story of Paradise Lost’s reception isn’t merely a heroic tale of a great epic overcoming initial public resistance. Instead, the poem’s rise to fame is testimony to the disproportionate sway of certain “best Pens” (Addison among them) and the ignorant acquiescence of apparently “vulgar readers” to such popular opinion. Bentley is indignant that even with the “Defoedation” of the text, it has garnered a reputation that puts it almost beyond criticism:

Nor can the Reader miss another Reflexion; How it could happen, that for above 60 Years time this Poem with such miserable Deformity by the Press, and not seldom flat Nonsense, could pass upon the whole Nation for a perfect, absolute, faultless Composition: the best Pens in the Kingdom contending in its Praises, as eclipsing all modern Essays whatever; and rivaling, if not excelling, both Homer and Virgil. And it’s likely, he’ll resolve it into This Cause; That is Readers first accede to it, possess’d by That from trusting to their Judgments … rather suspecting their own Capacity, than that any thing in the Book could possibly be amiss. Who durst oppose the universal Vogue?³⁰

Who “durst oppose the universal vogue” indeed but the modern Aristarchus who had counseled would-be critics to “dare to be wise” and to eschew the judgment of those who had come before? Gracing Paradise Lost with his attention, surely a signal of its value, Bentley at the same time denigrates not only the poem but also those “best Pens” such as Dennis and Addison who had extolled its greatness and claimed for it a place next to the classics. Bentley seems to suggest that the popularity of such a defective poem (as he found it) was fraudulent, a hoax perpetrated upon ignorant masses by the poor judgment of those wits who had come before. As with the arrogance evident in his Horace, Bentley’s hostile attitude toward Milton and the poem’s reputation evoked the most indignant responses to his edition, exerting more power over readers than the substantive content of the emendations themselves.

William Empson famously characterized Bentley as “the man who said the Tactless Thing.”³¹ Of all the tactless things Bentley said throughout his career, perhaps the most damning was to preface an edition of Paradise Lost by conjuring up the political Milton. A response “Addressed to Dr. Bentley, from Dean Swift” takes particular issue with Bentley’s portrayal of Milton’s situation upon the Restoration. Although it reads in places as though composed by Swift, it is most likely not from his hand. The author of MILTON Restor’d and BENTLEY Depos’d admits with some sarcasm that Milton’s “having defended the King’s Murder, and his being Oliver’s Latin Secretary, were Things not likely to recommend him to Favour on the Restoration.” However, in a manner that presages Johnson’s Life of Milton, the author lightly dismisses any real danger or antipathy to Milton persisting after the Act of Oblivion:

But, to say Milton was friendless, Doctor, is, I venture to assert, against all Authority … A Pardon from a powerful Intercession, sure Protection, publickly appearing and marrying a Gentleman’s Daughter … how suits this with being obnoxious to the Government, poor, and friendless? good Doctor, explain it.³²

The pamphlet’s title page declares it “Number 1,” and it contains responses to Bentley’s notes only so far as Book 1, verse 72 before suddenly breaking off to produce a specimen of thirty lines from Paradise Lost rendered in rhyme that “J. Swift” introduces as being composed by “a very ingenious Youth of Dublin.” Although the final page promises another installment in “a few Days,” this seems to be the only one of the series that was printed or survives. If more were planned, they may have been preempted by Zachary Pearce’s more complete response to Bentley. However, what we have of it demonstrates that raising the specter of the political Milton – even in 1732 – remained indeed unwelcome and tactless.

Bentley and Pope

The title page of MILTON Restor’d bears the motto: “Sing Heaven’ly Muse, from Pedantry be free.” This motto explicitly frames the conflict over Bentley’s Paradise Lost in terms of the eighteenth-century culture wars once again. The motto sets pedantry and professional scholarship in binary opposition to art and the proper, gentlemanly appreciation of art. Once again, the “wits” are rallied to defend the barricades against the “dunces.” Dispelling any doubt about the champions of the respective sides in the conflict, the author closes his preface with that explicit comparison between Bentley and Addison, telling Bentley:

Thus much I will say for your Edition; that, comparing it with that in Twelves with the Annotations annexed, Mankind may reasonably decide between the candid Critick and the petulant Carper, and thereby do justice to Dr. Bentley and Mr. Addison.³³

The conflict is between a “candid Critick” and a “petulant Carper,” and between a “Doctor,” representing the dull pedantry of professional scholarship, and a “Mr.” who epitomized the elegantly witty “gentleman” amateur.

Bentley himself had recognized that his treatment of Milton and Paradise Lost would be inflammatory.

Who durst oppose the universal Vogue? and risque his own Character, while he labour’d to exalt Milton’s? I wonder rather, that it’s done even now. Had these very Notes, been written forty Years ago; it would then have been Prudence to have suppress’d them, for fear of injuring one’s rising Fortune.³⁴

The ever-embattled Master of Trinity claims that only in his old age, at seventy, when he no longer had to fear “growing leaner by Censures,” was he free to publish his edition. Why he felt it permissible even then is a question that has engaged numerous critics. Joseph Levine has gone so far as to suggest that “it is just possible that he [Bentley] really meant his preface and commentary satirically, tongue in cheek, like a very Scriblerian … if so, instead of laughing at Bentley for his evident fiction, we should perhaps be laughing with him!”³⁵ This gives Bentley’s sense of humor too much credit. Evidence from the two surviving editions of Paradise Lost annotated by Bentley seems to indicate that his was an earnest and prolonged engagement with the poem. Bentley’s edition is not the aberrant distorting shadow envisioned by Walsh and others. While there may be some truth in the theory that Fenton’s edition suggested Bentley’s conceit that the poem was corrupted by the misunderstandings of Milton’s amanuensis, the very form and tone of Bentley’s apparatus suggests a nearer parallel in the 1723–25 edition of Shakespear. In Six Volumes. Collated and Corrected by the former Editions, by Mr. Pope.

Pope’s edition of Shakespeare is a fascinating entry in the annals of editing history. He valiantly attempts to separate his work as editor from that of a critic, declaring in the very first line of his preface that “It is not my design to enter into a Criticism upon this Author.”³⁶ Later, as he concludes the preface, Pope again tries to justify his methodology by carefully delineating what he famously describes as the “dull duty of an Editor” from that of a critic:

I have discharg’d the dull duty of an Editor, to the best of my judgement, with more labour than I expect thanks, and with a religious abhorrence of all Innovation, and without any indulgence to my private sense or conjecture.³⁷

Pope’s denial that he indulged his “private sense or conjecture” suggests his foray into editing is haunted by Bentley’s indulgence in and reliance upon “Sagacity, and happy Conjecture” in his Greek and Latin scholarship.³⁸ Pope is attempting to distance himself from the practices of classical scholarship and is particularly anxious to avoid any charge that he has followed methodologies similar to Bentley’s.

As Pope’s preface progresses – and in his approach to editing the works – he unavoidably falls into the role of critic, quite obviously when he declares Shakespeare:

with all these great excellencies, … has almost as great defects; and that as he has certainly written better, so he has perhaps written worse, than any other. But I think I can in some measure account for these defects, from several causes and accidents; without which it is hard to imagine that so large and so enlighten’d a mind could ever have been susceptible of them.³⁹

But Pope’s approach to Shakespeare’s corpus also forces him to become a “critic” in a less visible manner. While he seems content to fulfill that role of critic which was understood as the genteel, witty responsibility to point out passages of particular beauty or note, he is also obliged to engage even in textual criticism. The state of Shakespeare’s textual remains demanded his editor make hard choices. The “causes and accidents” to which Pope credits Shakespeare’s defects include those often used to excuse the ancients for their faults, and recalls some of Pope’s criticism of Homer in his 1715 translation of the Iliad. Pope claims that Shakespeare’s faults are due to his writing for the stage and therefore the taste of the common people. He points out also that Shakespeare was unaware of the “rules of writing,” and, most importantly as we consider his influence on Bentley, claims the texts of the plays fell victim to the “ignorance” of their publishers:

As I believe that what I have mentioned [partisan opinions by Jonson/Shakespeare adherents] gave rise to the opinion of Shakespear’s want of learning; so what has continued it down to us may have been the many blunders and illiteracies of the first Publishers of his works. In these Editions their ignorance shines almost in every page; nothing is more common than Actus tertia. Exit Omnes. Enter three Witches solus. Their French is as bad as their Latin … Their very Welsh is false.”⁴⁰

Pope’s blaming Shakespeare’s defects upon agents other than the author should remind us of Milton’s “friend” whom Bentley claimed must have interpolated verses into Paradise Lost. Here, the diverse corporate body of “the first Publishers” corresponds to Bentley’s device of Milton’s “editor.” Of course, with Shakespeare’s corpus, it is far easier to find the cause of such faults ultimately in the “players” and in the peculiarities of writing for performance. However, throughout his preface, Pope slowly but surely eliminates every textual authority that could testify to a definitive Shakespeare. The quartos are clearly suspect, even those published during Shakespeare’s lifetime. For, Pope writes, even in these

we meet with two or more editions by different printers, each of which has whole heaps of trash different from the other: which I should fancy was occasion’d, by their being taken from different copies, belonging to different playhouses.⁴¹

If both quarto editions of a play, by different publishers, contain “whole heaps of trash different from the other,” one is left at a loss to identify the standard by which the “trash” is to be separated from the genuine. As Pope goes on to explain, the First Folio is no help in this situation, for despite the claims of Heminges and Condell “that all other editions were stolen and surreptitious,” and that theirs was “purged from the errors of the former,” the Folio is gravely suspect in Pope’s estimation. He dismisses the Folio editors’ claim to correctness, saying this “is true as to the literal errors, and no other; for in all respects else it is far worse than the Quartos.” The source of the corruption in the Folio, as in the quartos, seems to have been the “players,” for in the Folio, Pope finds

additions of trifling and bombast passages are … far more numerous. For whatever had been added, since those Quarto’s, by the actors, or had stolen from their mouths into the written parts, were from thence conveyed into the written text, and all stand charged upon the Author.⁴²

He concludes that the First Folio “as the Quartos, was printed (at least partly) from no better copies than the Prompter’s Book, or Piece-meal Parts written out for the use of the actors.”⁴³ Thus, this editor who insists he will not play the role of critic leaves himself no authoritative text upon which to base his edition, a problem he never explicitly addresses. Instead, he bemoans the state of the texts and somewhat perversely wishes there were even more surviving early quartos, ultimately declaring that “there can be no question but had Shakespear published his works himself … we should not only be certain which are genuine, but should find in those that are, the errors lessened by some thousands.”⁴⁴ Had Pope not anticipated Bentley’s Paradise Lost by some seven years, perhaps he would have been less certain on this last point.

Pope, apparently by that “private sense” he had sworn not to indulge, casts eight plays out of the Shakespeare canon (including Pericles and Titus Andronicus). And he sounds remarkably like the Bentley we meet with in Paradise Lost as he asks:

how many faults may have been unjustly laid to his [Shakespeare’s] account from arbitrary Additions, Expunctions, Transpositions of scenes and lines, confusion of Characters and Persons, wrong application of Speeches, corruptions of innumerable Passages by the Ignorance, and wrong Corrections of ‘em again by Impertinence, of his first Editors? From one or other of these considerations, I am verily persuaded, that the greatest and the grossest part of what are thought his errors would vanish, and leave his character in a light very different from that disadvantageous one, in which it now appears to us.⁴⁵

Inheriting such confusion sown by those “impertinent” first players/printers/editors/, Pope struggles to make sense of the textual history. Ultimately having left himself no textual recourse, he declares Shakespeare beyond recovery and yet claims to have remained free of the urge to become a “critic” as represented by the likes of Bentley and Dennis.

It is impossible to repair the Injuries already done him [Shakespeare] … In what I have done I have rather given a proof of my willingness and desire, than of my ability, to do him justice. I have discharg’d the dull duty of an Editor, to the best of my judgement, with more labour than I expect thanks, and with a religious abhorrence of all Innovation, and without any indulgence to my private sense or conjecture.⁴⁶

Lewis Theobald, responding to this in his 1726 Shakespeare Restor’d, noted Pope’s claim to have followed some (unknowable) authority and retorted with a defense of judicious emendation:

I cannot help thinking … that what he [Pope] is pleased to call a religious Abhorrence of Innovation, is downright Superstition: neither can I be of Opinion, that the Writings of Shakespeare are so venerable, as that we should be excommunicated from good Sense, for daring to innovate properly.⁴⁷

As is made clear by Shakespeare Restored and Theobald’s later (1733) edition of Shakespeare, Theobald’s notion of “proper” innovation resembles the conjectural emendation modeled by Bentley in his classical work, in particular his Horace. Theobald’s aim is to use the new philological methods to recover Shakespeare’s meaning. Pope’s method, on the other hand, resembles Bentley’s in that he is often guided by his desire that his author had everywhere chosen the better of the options that lay before him. This has led Marcus Walsh to claim that Pope “overtly … adopted an aesthetic orientation.”⁴⁸ However, we cannot ignore that Pope’s entire preface is devoted to obfuscating his reliance on aesthetic choices. His avowal that he avoided “private sense or conjecture” suggests some external authority for his readings despite his having already eliminated all existing textual sources. In characterizing Pope’s abhorrence of “innovation” as “superstition,” that would leave a venerable text untouched even in its errors, Theobald is acknowledging Pope’s posture of textual/authorial orientation while remaining aware of Pope’s actual aesthetically oriented practice. If Pope’s readings aren’t based upon “private sense or conjecture,” and the texts were all corrupt, what then is their authority?

Pope’s methodology represents a more radical intervention in the text of Shakespeare than even Bentley was ultimately willing to make in his Milton.⁴⁹ Compare their explanations of how they handle the passages they identify as interpolations. Pope states that in his Shakespear

The various Readings are fairly put in the margin, so that every one may compare ‘em; and those I have prefer’d into the Text are constantly ex fide Codicum, upon authority. The Alterations or Additions which Shakespear himself made, are taken notice of as they occur. Some suspected passages which are excessively bad, (and which seem Interpolations by being so inserted that one can intirely omit them without any chasm, or deficience in the context) are degraded to the bottom of the page; with an Asterisk referring to the places of their insertion.⁵⁰

Pope is understandably mute on how he separates the genuine (authorial) “Alterations or Additions” from the suspect interpolations. Further, by “degrading” passages deemed spurious to the bottom of the page, omitting them “without any chasm,” he privileges his reading and imposes his will on the text.⁵¹ One of Bentley’s tests for his proposed excisions is also that they leave no “chasm,” but Bentley freely admits that he has silently corrected pointing, marked elisions, and given accents where necessary. Unlike Pope in his Shakespear, however, Bentley insists on leaving Milton’s text whole.

These small Improvements will be found in the present Text, which challenges to be the Truest and Correctest that has yet appear’d: not one word being alter’d in it; but all the Conjectures, that attempt a Restoration of the genuine Milton, cast into the Margin, and explan’d in the Notes. So that every Reader has his free Choice, whether he will accept or reject what is here offer’d him; and this without the least Disgust or Discontent in the Offerer.⁵²

Even those passages Bentley identifies as the “Editor’s Interpolations” are “cured by printing them in the Italic Letter, and inclosing them between two Hooks.”⁵³ Bentley is content to mark the alleged interpolations that could be deleted “without chasm,” but leaves them in the text of the poem, a less disruptive editorial practice than Pope’s.

Bentley, from the Letter to Mill onward, was notorious for the arrogant and scolding tone of his notes. It is this that makes his edition simultaneously outrageous and entertaining to the modern ear. His booming pronouncements can be counted upon to raise a laugh when read aloud in the midst of an academic conference. Although Bentley needed no schooling in this department, he was not alone in adopting such a tone when editing an English text, as becomes evident when comparing Pope’s first excision in his 1725 Shakespeare against one of Bentley’s. In The Tempest, at 2.1, after the newly shipwrecked Alonso says “Pr’thee peace,” Pope inserts his first note indicating lines as spurious:

All this that follows after the words, Pr’ythee peace – to the words You cram these words, &c. seems to have been interpolated, (perhaps by the Players) the verses there beginning again; and all that is between in prose, not only being very impertinent stuff, but most improper and ill plac’d Drollery in the mouths of unhappy shipwreck’d people. There is more of the same sort interspers’d in the remaining part of the scene.⁵⁴

Pope marks eighty-six lines as interpolated in this passage alone; however, contrary to his stated methodology in the preface, he has left them in the poem, marking them with a single apostrophe (which is confusingly similar to how he also marks particular beauties throughout the edition). Although he claims “there is more of the same sort interspers’d in the remaining part of the scene,” Pope indicates no more deletions in Act II at all, the next occurring in Act III, Scene 4. The diligent reader may not only wonder about Pope’s authority (other than private sense and conjecture) for designating the marked lines as interpolated, but is most certainly left in doubt as to which of the following lines in the scene he deems spurious and doesn’t deign to mark. A similar moment occurs in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, where Pope marks scene 1.2 as “low” and “trifling,” but leaves it in, unsure whether to call it an interpolation or an example of Shakespeare writing for the “gross taste of the age.”

This whole Scene, like many others in these plays, (some of which I believe were written by Shakespear, and others interpolated by the Players) is compos’d of the lowest and most trifling conceits, to be accounted for only from the gross taste of the age he liv’d in; Populo ut placerent. I wish I had authority to leave them out, but I have done all I could, set a mark of reprobation upon them; throughout this edition.††† [The daggers demonstrate Pope’s mark of reprobation]

The sentiment may be one shared even by modern editors and readers of Shakespeare, but such an editorial tone is thereby no less problematic for Pope, who had denied himself the role of “critic.” Furthermore, those familiar with Bentley cannot but help hear the resemblance, particularly in those notes where Bentley scolds Milton’s “friend” and “editor.” The first passage that Bentley determines spurious in Paradise Lost occurs at Book I, 197-200.

Prone on the flood, extended long and large,

Lay floating many a rood; in bulk as huge

[As whom the Fables name, of monstrous size,

Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr’d on Jove,

Briareos, or Tyhpon whom the Den

By ancient Tarsus held, or that Sea-beast]

Leviathan, which God of all his works

Created hugest that swim th’ Ocean stream:

Bentley’s brackets, once termed by A.E. Housman as his “terrible hooks,” enclose the lines he wishes to cast from the poem.⁵⁵ I quote the accompanying note at length here because it will serve as a fit example of Bentley’s typical tone throughout his edition.

These four Lines from the Fables I am unwilling to believe Milton’s. He compares Satan here to a Whale, so big as to be mistaken for a Promontory of Land. What need then of these fabulous Monsters, vulgar and known to the lowest Schoolboys, which make the sentence to lag, and the sense to dwindle? To be in the Den of Tarsus, doth not make Typhon the bigger: and Briareos Four Syllables, for Briareus Three … Lastly, to call a Whale the Sea-beast, what stuff is it? I leave them therefore to the Reader, content to set a Mark upon them, as supposing them, and more hereafter of this sort, spurious; and as knowing by other Passages, that our Poet, blind, and then poor and friendless, had frequently foul Play.⁵⁶

Unlike Pope before him, Bentley trusts the judgment of the reader to choose between the unadulterated text and his suggested excision, but never leaves it solely to the reader to find “more hereafter of this sort,” instead diligently marking and justifying each “spurious” passage. Bentley’s second excision demonstrates again how similar his treatment of the “editor” is to Pope’s use of the “ignorant” editors and players. In his note to 1.306-11, Bentley writes, “Here again, I suspect his Friend’s Courtesy bestow’d six Lines upon our Poet. They are in the Whole impertinent, and in Parts vicious.”⁵⁷ The very wording recalls Pope’s characterization of the “interpolated” Tempest lines as “not only being very impertinent stuff, but most improper and ill plac’d Drollery” (see above). Not surprisingly, Bishop Newton reported in the preface to his Variorum 1759 variorum edition that Pope had handwritten “rectè, benè, pulchrè” throughout the margins of his copy of Bentley’s Paradise Lost.⁵⁸

What made the reactions to Bentley’s edition so much more vehement than reactions to Pope was not that Bentley was any more arrogant in his treatment of Milton than Pope was with Shakespeare, but that Bentley employed a sort of scholarly transparency that Pope could not be bothered to employ. Bentley’s copious commentary and elaborate justifications of his readings put his methodology on display while Pope rarely explained, much less justified, his emendations of Shakespeare. Not far from Pope’s Shakespear in its critical assumptions and methodology, Bentley’s Paradise Lost ups the ante by responding to Pope’s anxious desire for textual determinacy in Shakespeare. Bentley’s edition provided a stark demonstration of how even works clearly authorized and published during an author’s lifetime could be treated as indeterminate and unstable textual artifacts, subject to every reader’s will. In fact, one frightening aspect of Bentley’s edition for its first readers was the possibility that Bentley’s performance wasn’t unique – that texts could be manipulated even by wills and intellects less formidable than Bentley’s. The anonymous author of MILTON Restor’d And BENTLEY Depos’d recognized this, with a touch of feeling that anticipates modern angst about the death of the author and centuries of discussion about Shakespeare’s canon.

The same Liberty may be assumed by every Reader, as by you Doctor; and so the whole of Milton’s or any other Poem, extinguished by degrees, and a new one set forth by Editors, challenge the Title not of Notes, but of a Text variorum. To regulate the Work of a deceased Author from various Readings in Manuscripts or printed Copies is a laborious, but useful Undertaking: But this way of restoring, i.e. interpolating by Guess, is so sacrilegious an Intrusion that, as it had its Rise, so it is hoped it will have its Fall with you.⁵⁹

The author of the pamphlet fears that if editors such as Bentley (and Pope?) have their way, any poem may morph into a “new one” – a poetic ship of Theseus assembled by critics, editors, and “every Reader.”⁶⁰ It is ironic how closely this approaches the vision of textual dissolution parodied by Pope’s recursive, self-effacing Dunciad Variorum. However, Bentley’s edition of Milton participates not only in a general history of editing practice but also operates within the more specific history of Milton criticism. Not without precedent in his practice, but only so bold as to display his methods and transgress Pope’s delicately maintained façade of a strict divide between the duties of “editors” and “critics,” Bentley remains in dialog with prior commentators on Paradise Lost, and particularly Addison.

The Candid Critick and the Petulant Carper: Bentley and Addison

Milton scholars have long suspected that Bentley didn’t actually believe in his device of the false “friend” and “editor” responsible for interpolating spurious verses into Paradise Lost. Evidence from a recently discovered 1674 edition of Paradise Lost annotated by Bentley provides compelling evidence that the “editor” was indeed a conscious fabrication.⁶¹ Yet, in his preface, Bentley defensively attested to the editor’s existence, declaring:

If any one fancy this Persona of an Editor to be a mere Fantom, a Fiction, an Artifice to skreen Milton himself; let him consider these four and sole Changes made in the second Edition …. These are prov’d here in the Notes, every one of them to be manifestly for the worse. And whoever allows them to be worse, and yet will contend they are the Poet’s own, betrays his Ill Judgment, as well as Ill Nature. But now if the Editor durst insert his Forgeries, even in the Second Edition, when the Poem and its Author had slowly grown to a vast Reputation; what durst he not do in the First, under the Poet’s Poverty, Infamy, and an universal Odium from the Royal and triumphant Party? Add to this a farther Confirmation; That when Milton afterwards publish’d his Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes; that Edition is without Faults; because He was then in high Credit, and had chang’d his old Printer and Supervisor.⁶²

Zachary Pearce, in his rapid and thorough response to Bentley’s edition, immediately pointed out that Bentley’s preface is in error about the publication dates because Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes were published prior to the 1674 second edition of Paradise Lost. Further, Bentley’s assertion that Paradise Regain’d and Samson Agonistes are “without Faults” is called into question by his own marginalia in the 1674 volume of Paradise Lost. There, on the verso of the title page, Bentley lists references to fable and romance from Paradise Regain’d, carefully marking exactly the sort of verses he so determinedly avows must be interpolations in Paradise Lost.⁶³ In the face of this evidence in the supposedly “without fault” edition of Paradise Regain’d, Bentley could hardly have maintained a sincere belief in a Milton who wouldn’t write verses such as these. The marginalia in the 1674 edition also shows conclusively that Bentley collated the first and second editions of the poem, as well as the manuscript to Book 1, a manuscript he denies exists.⁶⁴ Additionally, the second-edition marginalia demonstrates that Bentley treated Milton’s poem more gently in his earlier work on it, bracketing far fewer passages as spurious. If the “editor” is a fiction to justify Bentley’s more radical interventions, especially those “spurious” passages he encloses in his hooks to put his “mark of reprobation” upon, it is thus precisely a device to “skreen Milton himself” from Bentley’s criticisms. Contextualized alongside Pope’s interventions in his Shakespear, Bentley’s emendations may be less intrusive, but were nonetheless more controversial. In re-writing Paradise Lost to conform to his aesthetic sensibility and as he imagined Milton should have written it, Bentley dared to do to Milton what Addison had only suggested.

Grappling with Bentley’s audacity, Kolbrener claims that “Bentley’s ‘Milton’ emerges in response to the Milton bequeathed by what Sensabaugh called ‘Whig Theory Triumphant’” and that “the strategies of both Bentley and Fish, then, are to reverse the appraisals of the generations that preceded them.”⁶⁵ Other than the specific and unusual case of Toland, however, it is unclear exactly what preceding “generations” Kolbrener refers to. The image of the “Grand Old Whig” Milton, created by Sensabaugh and set up once again by Kolbrener as a strawman for Bentley to tilt against, is difficult to find in the actual generations preceding Bentley. Kolbrener explains that while Toland and Bentley were both Whigs, that label is “misleading” without further clarification, because “Modern Whigs like Bentley identified freedom with ‘wealth, enlightenment, and progress’” while “Old Whigs” like Toland identified freedom with a “particularly republican ‘virtue’ and located it squarely in the past.”⁶⁶ Even more bluntly, Kolbrener asserts:

Bentley’s sustained attack on Milton’s Editor was thus a continuation of the project he had begun in the Boyle Lectures – an attack on all forms of radical Whiggism. Via Paradise Lost, the Grand Whig Bentley attacked the Radical Whig Toland.⁶⁷

This pits Bentley against the religious-political “enthusiasm” of republicans such as Toland and posits that Milton had been securely appropriated by these “Radical Whigs,” necessitating an intervention on behalf of the more conservative faction. Kolbrener elaborates, “In that struggle between Low Churchmen and free-thinkers, Paradise Lost is among the battlegrounds, and our perception of Bentley’s infamous emendations becomes sharper when understood as a battle strategy.”⁶⁸

Bentley was indeed orthodox when he needed to be – for instance in his 1692 Boyle Lectures “Against Atheism,” which should be always assessed in context as Bentley’s audition for position and preferment in the church. However, once he was established as the Master of Trinity (1700) and Regius Professor of Divinity (1716), Bentley’s orthodoxy seems a bit less strident. Not only did The Grub-Street Journal poke fun at his lack of attention in Church, but it was rumored that the door to his pew rusted shut due to his lack of attendance at services.⁶⁹ As early as the 1690s Bentley was bragging about hosting a club at the Royal Library attended by Locke and Newton, no champions of orthodoxy in their private belief.⁷⁰ His unfinished and unpublished work on the New Testament, recently examined by Kristine Haugen, also undermines any attempt to portray Bentley as a fiery defender of orthodoxy. One of his earlier conjecture books for that project demonstrates a marked inclination to use textual scholarship to undermine Trinitarian implications in key passages of scripture. The one textual emendation of the New Testament he shared in his lifetime was to declare the famously Trinitarian comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8) an interpolation.⁷¹ This is a far cry from saying that Bentley himself was heterodox. But it does make him seem a less-likely bulwark of orthodoxy against the likes of Toland.

Moreover, the choice of Paradise Lost as a “battleground” for a political-religious conflict between Bentley and Toland is itself suspect. Toland seems to have left Paradise Lost and Milton’s poetry quite alone, maintaining an artificial division between Milton’s political prose and his poetry that echoes the ways in which other early readers tried to avoid the contamination of the epic. Moreover, in the generation preceding Bentley, Paradise Lost had already been wrested from the hands of one who dared emphasize its enthusiasm and highlight the poem’s unique features (or “irregularity”) at the expense of its “orthodoxy.” Addison’s reinvention of Milton along neo-classical lines to make his otherwise “prophaned pen” acceptable had already revised Dennis’s vision of the poet and poem. Dennis, with his scholarly focus on the enthusiastic sublime and his frank recognition that Paradise Lost showed Milton was “a little tainted with Socinianism,” receded into the background as Addison’s elegant notes became the accepted entry into the poem (Critical Works, 2.345).⁷²

If one searches for a generation of Milton critics preceding Bentley and inciting his response, it is clearly that studied neutral “Mr. Spectator” who holds the field. Neither Dennis, Toland, nor any cabal of free-thinkers could match the influence of Addison’s urbane observations on Milton’s great poem. While Kolbrener argues that “Fish and Bentley provided what was perhaps a corrective to the liberal (or satanic) avatars of Milton who celebrated difference for its own sake,” that “satanic” Milton, the Milton who authored Dennis’s “true original” poem, had already been relegated to the background by Addison’s safer, less-challenging version of the poet. While the wits, to include Swift and Pope, continually tried to link Dennis and Bentley together as two members of a similar species of pedantic, dull “true critic,” it is not Dennis who stands behind Bentley’s treatment of Milton, but Pope and the ingenious Mr. Addison. Just as the textual instability Bentley foists upon Paradise Lost seems to parody Pope’s wrestling with Shakespeare’s very real textual indeterminacies, many of Bentley’s most radical interventions appear to take Addison’s neoclassicism to such lengths it becomes caricature.

Both surviving copies of Paradise Lost annotated by Bentley reveal that he was an attentive and restless reader. He couldn’t lift his pen from the page, even while reading paratextual materials. In the 1720 edition (currently held at the Cambridge University Library), this habit extended even beyond the end of the poem, where the volume’s editor, Thomas Tickell, had included his friend and mentor’s Spectator essays. Although Bentley’s markings in the Spectator essays are sparse, they reveal how he responded to Milton’s epic (in part) through a fraught dialog with Addison. Sophie Read has highlighted how Bentley’s edition makes readers party to an imagined dialog between Bentley and Milton, and notes Bentley’s habit of silently debating previous commentators, including Addison.⁷³ However, what has remained largely unrecognized is how deeply, despite his carping at Addison in his notes, Bentley is influenced by Addison’s neoclassical critique of the poem.

Bentley’s notes on Addison’s Spectator essays range from simple underlines and marginal marks to jagged slashes through passages of Paradise Lost as they are quoted by Addison. Bentley more often annotates passages quoted from the poem rather than Addison’s commentary itself. As he read Addison, it was Paradise Lost that held Bentley’s attention, and the essays became in effect a lens focusing him on particular passages (much in the same way that Hume’s Annotations and the accompanying table in the 1695 Paradise Lost focused Addison’s own attention). Only once does Bentley address one of Addison’s claims directly in his marginal notes, correcting Addison’s assertion that Milton coined the term “miscreated,” with a terse note to the contrary: “Miscreated is often in Spencer.”⁷⁴ In his published edition, Bentley’s note on this passage reads, “And we have been told, Milton first coin’d the Word miscreated, but Spenser used it before him.”⁷⁵ Not naming Addison in print as the person he is correcting is typical Bentley, as is his failure to acknowledge that Hume had noted Spenser’s use of “miscreated” in his Annotations. Bentley’s habit of unacknowledged engagement not only with Addison or Hume but with predecessors such as Joseph Scaliger, has been noted by Haugen and Read. But the extent of Addison’s influence upon Bentley becomes evident only when reading them side-by-side and with the assistance of Bentley’s marginal notes in both volumes of Paradise Lost. An example of Bentley’s more overt engagement with Addison is his published annotation to Book 1, Line 590 where Satan

         he, above the rest,

In shape and gesture proudly eminent

Stood like a tow’r.

Bentley complains in his published edition, “I cannot comprehend, what’s the Gesture of a Tower … and yet this has been represented as, a celebrated line.”⁷⁶ One can almost hear a snort of derision. Of course, it was Addison (likely following Dennis’s example) who had marked this passage as particularly sublime, declaring in the Spectator that “there is no single passage of the poem worked up to a greater Sublimity” (No. 303).⁷⁷ When he read Addison’s remark in the Spectator essays appended to Tickell’s edition, Bentley had made one of his typical marginal marks and ominously underlined the word “Gesture” for special attention.

Bentley’s notes in the Spectator essays sometimes have the appearance of a checklist. The slashes with which Bentley marks passages of the poem reproduced in Addison’s notes often correspond to such slashes he would make (later?) in the text of the poem itself, and eventually to significant emendations in Bentley’s printed edition. Bentley’s angry-looking slashes in Tickell’s text, and in the Spectator Notes, are marks unique to the 1720 edition; there are no such slashes in the earlier 1674 notes. For example, of the five passages Bentley marked in Spectator 285, he ultimately claimed four of them (the ones bearing slashes) were interpolations by Milton’s devious editor.

The first passage Bentley marked on this page was Addison’s quoting 2.678-9:

------ God and his Son except,

Created thing nought valu’d he nor shunn’d.

Addison highlighted this verse as one of the few points where “a good-natured Reader sometimes over-looks a little slip even in the Grammar or Syntax, where it is impossible for him to mistake the Poet’s Sense” (No. 285). The syntax of this passage would indeed seem to lump God and the Son among created things. Bentley, who underlined “except” in Addison’s notes, deemed the line “faulty” and excused Milton’s error even as he suggested an emendation in his edition to make it: “God and his Son exempt, / No other Thing ought valued he.” Twice in his essays, Addison addressed the limbo of vanity section that Bentley slashed through on this page of the Spectator. In the first instance, Addison used it as an example of Milton’s rare use of “low” language. In his essay on Book III, however, Addison classified the passage as one of Milton’s “beautiful digressions:”

I must not conclude my Reflections upon this third Book of Paradise Lost, without taking notice of that celebrated Complaint of Milton with which it opens, and which certainly deserves all the Praises that have been given to it; tho’ as I have before hinted, it may rather be looked upon as an Excrescence, than as an Essential part of the Poem. The same Observation might be applied to that beautiful Digression upon Hypocrisie, in the same Book.

(No. 315)

This statement, with its reassertion of a vague aesthetic standard that ultimately trumps Addison’s strict Aristotelian methodology, comes after Addison has taken “exception” to the limbo of vanity episode and the appearance of Sin and Death as being “Astonishing, but not Credible,” and thus undermining the “Appearance of Probability…so absolutely requisite in the greater kinds of Poetry” (No. 315). Determined that Paradise Lost must follow classical rules governing the epic, Addison seemed obligated to lament Milton’s digressions even as he ultimately admired and excused them. But for Addison, even Milton’s “excrescences” could be beautiful excrescences! Bentley would have no such thing. He seems to have decided that the only way to confirm Paradise Lost a classic was to lay such digressions at the feet of the fictitious “editor” and thus justify cutting them from the poem. Theobald, the admirer of Bentley who had been pilloried for his own 1726 answer to Pope’s Shakespear and was doomed to continue throughout history as Pope’s “Tibbald,” saw Bentley’s method clearly:

The late Edition of Milton by the learned Dr. Bentley is, in the main, a Performance of another Species. It is plain, it is the Intention of that Great Man rather to correct and pare off the Excrescencies of the Paradise Lost … than to restore corrupted Passages.⁷⁸

Accordingly, it should not surprise us that the limbo of vanity passage Addison called that “beautiful Digression upon Hypocrisie” is the longest passage that Bentley brackets for excision from Paradise Lost.

One might ask at this point whether Bentley’s marks in the Spectator essays might simply be his affirming that he had already handled these verses – a checklist after the fact. But one of the striking differences between Bentley’s earlier notes in the 1674 edition and his later notes in the 1720 edition is that the number of lines bracketed for exclusion in the 1720 edition is far greater. A quick look at Book 1, comparing Bentley’s treatment of it in the 1674 edition with his notes in the 1720 edition and his final edition, illustrates Bentley’s evolving view of the poem. Of nine substantial passages he deems spurious in his 1732 edition, he bracketed only three of these in the 1674 edition. This continues a trend throughout the volumes, with brackets in the 1720 and published editions outnumbering those in the 1674 by a large margin. For instance, in the 1674 edition, Bentley busily emends the limbo of vanity lines but does not bracket them as spurious.

Another instance that attests to Addison’s continuing influence upon Bentley as he read the notes appended to the 1720 edition is his marks upon Book 1, lines 558-587, in the 1674 edition. His marks on this page demonstrate that even early in his work on the poem Bentley had a notion that some passages in Paradise Lost were suspect and spurious. In the 1674 edition he bracketed part of the “Uther’s son” passage that he would famously condemn as “Romantic Trash” in 1732. But we must also note what is missing in his annotations on this page. The “small infantry” pun and the “Stood like a Towr” passages are both unmarked. Bentley marked both these passages as he read the Spectator Notes in the 1720 Tickell’s edition, and in his published edition his annotations at these points implicitly reference Addison’s commentary.

Bentley’s notes in these two editions seem to indicate that he revisited many passages and greatly expanded the number of his brackets after reading or re-reading Addison’s notes. Less quantifiable is the general influence of Addison’s desire that the poem conform with classical rules, an approach that may have authorized many of the excisions Bentley later marked. Unlike Addison (or Theobald in his edition of Shakespeare), Bentley never provides a theoretical justification for his emendations, except to claim he is reversing the predations of the unscrupulous editor. But one way to make sense of Bentley is to consider his approach as taking Addison’s neoclassicism to grotesque lengths. Like Addison, Bentley found that Milton’s poem did not conform to the standard “rules.” Where Addison uncomfortably dismissed such aberrations and chaffed a bit under the neoclassical strictures, ultimately resorting to an unarticulated aesthetic appreciation that could accommodate “beautiful excrescences,” Bentley resolved to correct the poem. When Milton digresses, Bentley excises the digression. When Milton alludes to a classical source, Bentley brings the allusion strictly into line with its classical referent, a habit that has caused numerous critics to note Bentley’s rigid literalism when working with Milton’s allusions.

Justifying his revision of the poem’s final lines, Bentley refers to “an ingenious and celebrated Writer” who “would eject these two last Lines of the Book.” That writer was, of course, Addison, who worried that the final lines “renew in the Mind of the Reader that Anguish which was pretty well laid by.” Hume in 1695 hadn’t identified a problem with the final lines, but objected to their illustration in the folio editions (including the 1695), writing, “The Angel led our Parents, loath to depart from the beloved Seat, in each hand, which the Designer of the Copper plate has not well exprest, representing him, shoving them out, as we say, by Head and Shoulders.”⁷⁹ The underlying problem that seems to concern Hume, Addison, and Bentley at the close of Paradise Lost is genre. The ending smacked too much of tragedy because the outcome was not favorable for the hero. Dryden famously said this cast the poem’s status as epic into doubt, and John Dennis solved the conundrum by claiming Satan was in fact the hero of the poem, eventually refining this to conclude that Paradise Lost was only “something like an epick” (Critical Works, 1.333). Addison cleverly asserted that the Messiah was the hero, but even this expedient couldn’t resolve his dissatisfaction with the ending. With Addison’s worries in mind, Bentley asks, “Why … dismiss our first Parents in Anguish, and the Reader in Melancholy? ...Why wand’ring … And why slow?” Having left the lines alone in his 1674 copy, he rewrites them in the margins of the 1720. The revision endeavors to make the ending more hopeful as Adam and Eve depart the garden bravely, “sociably,” and “with heavn’ly comfort cheer’d.”⁸⁰ This final move epitomizes not only Bentley’s resolution to “correct” Paradise Lost, but his specific manner of doing so by out-Addisoning Addison. In enacting Addison’s critique, Bentley employs his preferred method of conjectural emendation to change the work, a misunderstanding about the role of critique, editing, and literary scholarship that further emphasized (and perhaps encouraged) the need to delineate between these modes of engagement with texts.

Kolbrener, arguing that Toland stands behind Bentley’s edition as the editor’s unnamed opponent, downplays the manner in which Addison is an immediate influence and opponent. For instance, Kolbrener claims that “Bentley’s attention to fables in Paradise Lost is of particular significance … [his] emendations (deletions usually) of Milton’s fables suggest that he was undoubtedly conscious of, to use Empson’s phrase, ‘the wild gang of comparative anthropologists’ who came ready to announce the equivalence between sacred and mythological history.”⁸¹ Thus, “we are not surprised” says Kolbrener, at Bentley’s emendation of the description of Eden in Book 3:

“Not Enna says he, not Daphne, nor Fons, Castalus, nor Nysa, nor Mt. Amara, could compare with Paradise.” Why, sir, who would suspect they could…?’ Given the tendencies of Bentley’s thought, we marvel not at his emendations, but at his restraint, wondering why he didn’t find more of the poem unacceptable.⁸²

Kolbrener’s implication is that the “Editor” is an avatar for Toland and his ilk. But it is telling that in his notes in the 1674 edition Bentley did not bracket these lines (3.268-85) while in the 1720 Tickell’s they are bracketed and slashed through. Who might compare Paradise with Enna? Bentley’s facetious query to the editor seems aimed not at Toland, or even at those comparative anthropologists or polyhistors, but at a far more immediate target: Addison. Commenting on Milton’s description of Paradise, Addison had noted that Milton had once again skirted around a potential fault:

the Poet has observed Aristotle’s Rule of lavishing all the Ornaments of Diction on the weak unactive parts of the Fable …. The Expressions are more florid and elaborate in these Descriptions, than in most other parts of the Poem …. The Drawings of Gardens, Rivers, Rainbows, and the like dead pieces of Nature, are justly censured in an heroic Poem, when they run out into an unnecessary length; the Description of Paradise would have been faulty, had not the Poet been very particular in it, not only as it is the Scene of the Principal Action, but as it is requisite to give us an Idea of that Happiness from which our first Parents fell. The plan of it is wonderfully beautified, and formed upon the short Sketch which we have of it in Holy Writ. Milton’s Exuberance of Imagination has poured forth such a Redundancy of Ornaments on this Seat of Happiness and Innocence, that it would be endless to point out each Particular.

(No. 321)

Mr. Spectator’s description of Milton’s “exuberance of imagination” and “redundancy of ornaments” in describing paradise recalls Addison’s early experience of reading Milton, as given in his 1694 “Account:”

With fear my spirits and my blood retire,

To see the Seraphs sunk in clouds of fire;

But when, with eager steps from hence I rise,

And view the first gay scenes of Paradise;

What tongue, what words of rapture can express

A vision so profuse of pleasantness.⁸³

Bentley’s quarrel with Milton’s intermingling of fable and a sacred subject seems to rebuke Addison for the leniency he gives Milton’s digressions, reminding him that the improbabilities he licenses on vague aesthetic grounds authorize a sort of profanity. He, Bentley, will hold Milton to the standard Addison had only lackadaisically enforced. Haugen, commenting on Bentley’s rejection of the polyhistors’ attempts to equate mythology and fable with sacred history, declares that Bentley:

utterly disregarded neoclassical poetic theory …. What Bentley practiced instead was a criticism that scrutinized every word and every line of a poem, asking many questions and often generating novel answers. In effect, Bentley and his fellow editors of poetry practiced close reading, the signature method of English study in the twentieth century.⁸⁴

However, in finding that many of Bentley’s most provocative questions and answers were directly influenced by Addison’s attempt to demonstrate the poem’s conformity to neoclassical strictures, we may find reason to doubt Bentley’s “utter disregard.” While Bentley avoided any discussion of methodology other than briefly and unsatisfactorily explaining his preference for conjectural emendation, his treatment of Milton’s fables and classical allusions might well be explained within a tradition of neoclassical critique, epitomized by Addison.

Haugen has suggested that Bentley’s public performances, first in his Horace and then in his Paradise Lost, were “heroic efforts to create a new social and intellectual role” demonstrating “that an English philological scholar could be a highly public, highly controversial, and highly exciting figure.”⁸⁵ In a sense, Bentley was inventing the public academic, that controversial figure courted by modern universities to star as a “game changer,” and counted on to create controversy and thus interest and publicity. However, Bentley’s close attention to Milton’s language and sense demanded that those who followed him, even those bent on ridiculing or refuting Bentley himself, would need to closely engage the text. As Haugen notes, remarking specifically about Bentley’s Horace, a significant aspect of Bentley’s method (and fascination) was “the pure study of language itself, essentially untroubled by textual history and driven by the simple urge to correct.”⁸⁶ The unknown author of Milton Restor’d suggested with unease that Bentley’s edition might not only foster a close reading that focused unwelcome attention on words and sense but might also reveal the fundamental instability of all texts and their vulnerability to “conjectural emendation” by critics, editors, and readers of all sorts. But the reaction to Bentley’s treatment of Milton and his poem also demonstrated that Milton and Paradise Lost had overcome the taint of his Interregnum activities and prose. While there would always remain those who would only grudgingly (if at all) accept Milton’s continued prominence (from Johnson to F.R. Leavis), the indignant replies to Bentley demonstrated that Paradise Lost would continue to resist repression and revision even as it remained a locus of critical debate. To counter Bentley’s performance, critics such as Pearce responded within the terms of the debate that he had set, paying rigorous attention to the poem and its language in a manner that shifted the responsibility for critical and editorial interventions ever farther away from the gentlemen amateurs and the culture wars they advocated.

Notes

Jonathan Swift, “A Tale of a Tub. Written for the Universal Improvement of Mankind. To Which is Added, an Account of a Battel between the Antient and Modern Books in St. James’s Library” (London: Printed for John Nutt, near Stationers-Hall, MDCCIV, 1704), 9.

William Temple, “Upon Ancient and Modern Learning,” in Miscellanea, the Second Part (London: Printed by J.R. for Ri. And Ra. Simpson, 1690), 70–71.

Dennis also boasted that Milton surpassed the ancients even though he received “no Encouragement” yet “often transcendently soar’d above both Ancients and Moderns” (Critical Works, 1.211).

Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub and Other Works, edited by Marcus Walsh (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010), 59.

Temple, 61.

Ibid.

The 1698 response to Bentley’s Dissertation was entitled Dr Bentley’s Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris, and the Fables of Aesop, Examin’d by the Honorable Charles Boyle, Esq. and was penned by a group of Christ Church fellows headed by Francis Atterbury.

Kristine Louise Haugen, Richard Bentley: Poetry and Enlightenment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2011), 130.

Ibid., 124–125.

Ibid., 132.

Bentley, ed. Q Horatius Flaccus, preface, sig. c2 r. Quoted and translated in Haugen, 133.

Ibid., notes, 147. Quoted in Haugen, 134.

See, for instance, his annotation justifying his emendation of Ode 1.3.17-20 in Horace. Bentley’s very first emendation in Paradise Lost, at Book 1.6 demonstrates this. Defending his desire to change “the secret top of Horeb” to the sacred top,” Bentley says, “I have such an Esteem for our Poet, that which of the two Words is better, That, I say, was dictated by Milton.” This is, incidentally, one of the genuine emendations that was “leaked” by The Grub Street Journal before Bentley’s publication.

William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral (New York: New Directions, 1974), 149.

Marcus Walsh, Shakespeare, Milton and Eighteenth-Century Literary Editing: The Beginnings of Interpretative Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 63.

Ibid., 74. I’ve demonstrated elsewhere that Bentley used parallel places extensively. See David Harper, “Bentley’s Annotated 1674 Edition of Paradise Lost: Hidden Method and Peculiar Madness,” Review of English Studies 64.263 (2013), 60–86.

Bentley, ed. The claim that the lines were “extempore” is found in the preface (unpaginated). The claim that this was a command performance is found in Bentley’s final note proclaiming it so (Non injussa cecini).

The second-edition Paradise Lost with Bentley’s annotations is held in Trinity College, Cambridge library (shelf mark Adv.c.2.13). I have discussed how these notes assist in dating Bentley’s work in Harper, RES 2013.

These theories date to Monk’s 1880 biography of Bentley.

These terms are unfortunate and, of course, oversimplifications. Their evaluative connotations had perhaps better been avoided. William Kolbrener, Milton’s Warring Angels (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997), 109.

Ibid., 111.

Ibid.

Ibid., emphasis mine.

Bentley, Preface, sig. a1r.

Ibid., Sig.a2r-a2v.

Ibid., Sig.a3r Bentley does, however, indicate that “the Poem and its Author had slowly grown to a vast Reputation” at the time of the second-edition’s printing.

Bentley, 1.197-200.

For a discussion of Winstanley and other vocal opponents of Milton in the early Restoration, see Chapter 1.

Bentley, Preface.

Ibid.

Empson, 149.

Anonymous, MILTON Restor’d and BENTLEY Depos’d (London: E. Curll, 1732). Available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online. It should be kept in mind that Curll was infamous for fraudulent publications.

Ibid., viii.

Bentley, Preface.

Joseph Levine, The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan Age (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991), 262–263.

Pope, ed. Shakespear (1725). I. Available from Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Pope suggests that Shakespeare would be a valid author for commentary and criticism, but appears to defer to later attempts.

Ibid., xxii.

For Bentley’s preference for conjecture, see the discussion of his Horace, above. The quote here is from the later preface of his Paradise Lost.

Pope, iv.

Ibid., xiv.

Ibid., xvi.

Ibid.

Ibid., xvii–xviii.

Ibid., xx.

Ibid., xxi.

Ibid., xxii.

Theobald, Shakespeare Restored (London: J&R Tonson, 1726), iv.

Walsh, Shakespeare, Milton, & Eighteenth-Century Literary Editing, 114.

Theobald, in his 1733 edition follows Bentley’s methodology (from his Horace) by explaining his emendations in footnotes. Such explanation is exceedingly sparse in Pope’s edition of Shakespeare.

Pope, xxii.

R.B. McKerrow counts 1,560 lines that Pope degrades. I haven’t confirmed this myself, and I would guess it is complicated by the scenes upon which Pope sets a “mark of reprobation” (see below) or moments when he disregards his stated methodology and leaves “interpolated” passages in the text (also below). R.B. McKerrow, “The Treatment of Shakespeare’s Text by His Earlier Editors 1709–1768,” Proceedings of the British Academy 19 (1933), 89–122, 108.

Bentley, Preface.

Ibid.

Pope ed., The Tempest, 2.1

M. Manilii, Astronomicon, Recensvit et Enarravit A.E. Housman (London: Cambridge Univeristy Press 1937), xviii.

Bentley, ed. 1.197-200.

Ibid., 1.307-11.

Newton reports in his Preface to his Works of Milton (London: J&R Tonson, 1759) that Warburton lent him Pope’s edition of Bentley’s Milton “wherein Mr. Pope had all along with his own hand set some mark of approbation, rectè, benè, pulchrè &c, in the margin over-against such emendations of the Doctor’s as seemed to him just and reasonable. It was a satisfaction to see what so great a genius thought particularly of that edition, and he appears throughout the whole to have been a very candid reader, and to have approved of more than really merits approbation” A4r.

Anonymous, MILTON Restor’d, viii.

This concern lends some irony to the pamphlet’s concluding by offering readers an example of Paradise Lost set in heroic verse, held up as a more proper appreciation of the poem than Bentley’s.

See Harper, RES 2013.

Bentley, Preface.

The marginalia cross referencing Paradise Regain’d are reproduced in Harper, RES 2013.

For plausible dating of and more complete discussion of how Bentley’s notes in the 1674 Paradise Lost demonstrate that Bentley himself didn’t believe in his fiction of the “editor,” see Harper RES 2013. Bentley’s use of the surviving manuscript was noted by Darbishire and Hale in their discussions of the 1720 edition’s marginalia. Darbishire, Milton’s Paradise Lost: The James Bryce Memorial Lecture (London, 1951). Hale, “Paradise Purified: Dr. Bentley’s Marginalia for His 1732 Edition of Paradise Lost,” Transactions of the Cambridge Philological Society 10 (1991), 58–74.

Kolbrener, 111.

Ibid., 112. Kolbrener quotes J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and History (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986).

Ibid., 120.

Ibid.

The Grub-Street Journal, no. 35 (3 September 1730) which includes a note supposedly from Bentley and composed “at Chappel time.” Bertrand Goldgar, The Grub-Street Journal, 1730–33, Vol. 1 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2002).

Haugen, 209.

For a nuanced discussion of Bentley’s work with the New Testament and his habit of silence about theological issues after the Letter to Mill, see Haugen, 187–210.

Dennis makes this observation upon quoting the Angelic hymn to the Son in Paradise Lost, Book 3.

Sophie Read, “Rhetoric and Rethinking in Bentley’s Paradise Lost,” Cambridge Quarterly 41 (2012), 209–228. Passim.

Marginalia in the 1720 “Tickell’s Edition” of Paradise Lost. This copy is maintained at the Cambridge University Library, shelfmark Adv.b.52.12.

Addison claims Milton coined “miscreated” in Spectator 285. Bentley’s published correction of this is in his note to Book 2.683.

Bentley, ed. Book 1.589-91.

Dennis had highlighted this same passage containing Milton’s description of Satan as an example of the poem’s deriving sublimity from specifically religious ideas. See Dennis, Critical Works, 2.220.

Theobald, The Works of Shakespeare (1732). Quoted in Shawcross, Critical Heritage, ii. 66.

P.H., Annotations, Book XII.637.

Bentley, ed., Book XII.648.

Kolbrener, 123.

Ibid., 126.

Addison, “An Account of the Greatest English Poets” (1694).

Haugen, 243.

Ibid., 153.

Ibid., 149.

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Index

Addison, Joseph 8, 11–13, 15–18, 21, 23, 24, 38–44, 65, 69, 73, 78–80, 91, 94, 98, 102–105, 116, 117, 121, 130, 134–159, 162, 166–169, 178–187, 190, 191; An Account of the Greatest English Poets 21, 39, 41–44, 46, 78, 102–103, 116, 129, 133–137, 144, 155, 158, 159, 186, 191; The Campaign 135, 158; Cato 80, 147–151; Spectator essays 15–18, 38, 41, 69, 71, 94, 98, 136–141, 145–158, 166, 180–184, 186, 190

Aristotle 56, 85, 92–94, 125, 140–144, 146, 149–150, 154–155, 186

Atterbury, Francis 188

Aubrey, John 30, 49

Bayle, Peter 42, 46

Beale, John 32, 45, 46

Bentley, Richard 8, 11, 12, 15–18, 24, 37, 45, 63, 98, 104, 113–116, 131, 132, 138, 160–191; Dissertation Upon the Epistles of Phalaris 104, 161–162, 188; Letter to Mill 161, 175, 190; Paradise Lost, 1732 12, 17, 37, 45, 113, 132, 138, 164–191; Q Horatius Flaccus 16, 163–164, 168, 173, 187–189

Blackmore, Sir Richard 105, 130

Boileau, Nicolas 56, 67, 71

Booth, Barton 62, 63, 77

Bossu, René Le 67–68, 71, 84–85, 87, 92, 100, 141–142, 161

Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of 33, 49

Burnett, Gilbert 26

Burton, Thomas 48, 69

Charles I, King of England (1625–1649) 8, 20, 22, 25, 27, 35–38, 90, 91, 117

Charles II, King of England (1660–1685) 17, 22, 26, 29, 44, 54, 86, 124, 131

Chaucer, Geoffrey 39–41, 126

Cibber, Colley 74

Collier, Jeremy 68, 83–84, 86–87, 90–91, 100, 144, 159

Congreve, William 39, 72, 130

Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Third Earl of Shaftesbury 78, 99

Cowley, Abraham 39–41, 54, 75

Cromwell, Oliver 35, 48, 51, 69

Crowne, John 103

Curll, Edmund 107–108, 189

Dacier, Anne 81

Daly, Patrick 136, 139, 146, 159

Darbishire, Helen 20, 30, 44–45, 70, 190

Davis, Paul 136–137, 139, 145–146, 158–159

Denham, Sir John 7

Dennis, John 8, 10–19, 23, 24, 38, 62–66, 68–70, 72–104, 127, 130, 133, 138–144, 146–162, 166, 168, 173, 180–185, 188, 190, 191; The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry 77, 81, 87–88, 94, 99–100, 151, 155, 160; Cato Examined 148; The Court of Death 72–77, 79, 97–99; The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry 87, 89–95, 98–101, 151, 153, 155, 159; Letters on Milton and Wycherley 151; The Person of Quality’s Answer to Mr Collier’s Letter 90, 100, 159; Preface to Liberty Asserted 101; Preface to Miscellanies in Verse and Prose 77, 99; Preface to the Passion of Byblis 80, 99; Remarks upon a book entitled Prince Arthur 72, 98; The Usefulness of the Stage 68, 82–83, 85–86, 99, 100

Dobranski, Steven 2–3, 19

Dryden, John 7–8, 10, 12–14, 16, 23–24, 32, 37, 39, 43, 45–72, 77, 80, 82, 91–94, 96, 100–104, 115, 124, 128–130, 132, 133, 140–142, 146, 159, 166, 185; Absalom and Achitophel 124; Discourse of Satire 65–67, 159; Of Dramatick Poesie 51; The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis 65, 92, 100, 159; The State of Innocence 13, 32, 49–70, 129, 133; Virgil’s Aeneid 50, 66; Virgil’s Georgics 102

D’Urfey, Thomas 103

Eliot, T. S 18, 20, 38, 46

Ellwood, Thomas 12

Erskine-Hill, Howard 37, 46, 109, 115–116, 118, 121, 125, 132–133

exegesis 122–124, 130

Fenton, Elijah 165–166

Fish, Stanley 3, 165–166, 179, 180

Flamsteed, John 107

Flanagan, Roy 3

Gay, John 79

Grub Street Journal 103, 180, 188, 190

Hall, John 81, 99, 129

Haugen, Kristine Louise 163, 180, 181, 186–188, 190–191

Havens, P. S 56, 61, 70

Higden, Henry 103

Hill, Abraham 46

Hobart, Sir John 32–35, 44, 45, 80, 82, 129, 143

Hog, William 111

Homer 33, 34, 65, 66, 68, 92–93, 100, 123, 125–128, 136, 140–144, 154, 157, 168, 171

Horace 16, 56, 125, 127, 163–164, 168, 173, 187–189

Howard, Edward 103–104, 130

Hume, Peter (P. H.; Patrick Hume) 5, 8, 10, 12, 14–20, 24, 28, 32, 38, 69, 80, 102–133, 136–140, 142–144, 146, 157–159, 166–167, 181, 185

Hunter, William B 2, 19

James II, King of England (1685–1688) 22, 118, 120

Johnson, Samuel 21–24, 27, 31, 32, 37–38, 43, 44, 116, 158, 169, 187

King-Killers, The History of 29–31, 45

Kit-Kat Club 72, 105–106, 129, 130, 138

Knapp, Francis 103

Knapton, James 73

Kneller, Sir Godfrey 102, 105, 130

Kolbrener, William 3, 19, 165–166, 179–180, 185–186, 189–191

Lee, Nathaniel 32, 52–57, 70

Leonard, John 19, 109, 132

L’Estrange, Roger 25

Locke, John 135, 180

Longinus 55, 81–82, 88, 95, 99, 129, 133

Lucan 46, 123, 125, 144–145

Marvell, Andrew 23, 35–37, 46, 48, 49, 51, 70, 115, 129

Mary II, Queen of England (1689–1694) 72–73, 75, 98, 106, 115, 118–119, 132–133

Mary of Modena 52–53

Milton, John 21–191; Areopagitica 16, 18, 20, 59–60, 165; De Doctrina Christiana 2–4, 17–19; Defense of the People of England 26; Eikonoklastes 17, 20, 25, 26, 30–31, 34, 35, 45, 46; Of Education 87, 92, 100; On True Religion 29; Paradise Lost 21–191; Paradise Regained 29, 37, 42–43, 85, 96, 178–179, 190; Poems (1673) 29; Pro Populo Defensio 17; The Ready and Easie Way to Establish A Free Commonwealth 25–26; The Reason of Church Government 16, 20, 89, 100; Samson Agonistes 29, 35, 36, 58, 68, 70, 84, 85, 90, 99, 178; Second Defense of the People of England 36, 117; The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates 30

Milton Restor’d and Bentley Depos’d 138, 158, 169, 177, 189

Miner, Earl 13, 20, 23, 31–32, 44, 45, 62–63, 71, 113

Monck, George 25–26

Montagu, Charles 39, 72, 135

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley 151, 159

Motteux, Peter 72

Mourning Poets, The 72, 75–76, 98–99

Moyles, R. G 39, 45, 46, 106, 108–110, 112, 114, 131–132

Nedham, Marchamont 25

Newton, Isaac 180

Newton, Thomas 18, 102, 108–109, 122–123, 132, 137, 158, 177, 190

Norris, Robert 79–80, 99

Oldys, Alexander 42–43, 47

Oras, Ants 18, 20, 24, 44, 108–110, 114–115, 123, 125–126, 132–133

Pearce, Zachary 164, 169, 178, 187

Philips, John 135, 158

Phillips, Edward 70

Pope, Alexander 11, 13, 16–17, 73, 98, 99, 147, 162, 166, 169–179, 181, 183, 189–190; Dunciad 122, 178; Iliad 171; Shakespear. In Six Volumes. Collated and Corrected by the former Editions, by Mr. Pope 16, 17, 170–177, 179, 181, 183, 189

Prior, Matthew 72, 130

Rapin, René 56, 67, 74, 98

Richardson, Jonathan 7–8, 11, 20–24, 34, 44, 46, 50–52, 63, 116, 167

Roscommon, Wentworth Dillon, Earl of 42, 46

Rumrich, John 2–3, 19, 20, 46, 165

Rymer, Thomas 23, 24, 62–63, 65–67, 70, 92–93, 101, 103, 107, 140, 142, 160, 161

Sackville, Charles, Earl of Dorset 7, 50–51, 63, 130

Salmasius, Claudius 26, 36

Salsilli, Giovanni 64

Scaliger, Joseph 145, 181

Selvaggi, Matteo 64–65

Settle, Elkanah 103

Shakespeare, William 10, 12, 16–17, 27, 63, 90, 106, 133, 138, 170–177, 179, 181, 183, 184, 189, 191

Shawcross, John 18, 40, 44, 46–47, 70, 98, 101, 134, 158, 191

Soames, William 67, 71

Spenser, Edmund 10, 39–41, 58, 66, 125, 132, 181

Steele, Richard 62–63, 72–74, 77, 98, 99, 138, 147–148, 158

Stepney, George 72

Sublime, the 13–15, 17, 52, 55, 72–102, 126–130, 141, 143, 152–157, 160–161, 180, 182; Dennis and; 13–14, 17, 72–102, 141, 152–157, 160–161, 180, 182; Dryden and; 52, 55; Peter Hume and; 101, 126–130

Swift, Jonathan 11, 13, 17, 73, 77–79, 160–162, 166, 168–169, 181, 188; Tale of a Tub 77–79, 160–162, 166, 168–169, 181, 188

Tasso, Torquato 64, 67, 125–127

Tatham, John 25

Temple, Sir William 77, 87, 104, 160–162, 188

Theobald, Lewis 17, 20, 173–174, 183, 184, 189, 191

Tickell, Thomas 151, 181–182, 184, 186, 190

Toland, John 34, 42, 79, 89, 165–166, 179–180, 185–186

Tonson, Jacob 7, 10, 14, 19, 31–32, 38–39, 45, 64, 65, 67, 73, 80, 102–134, 136, 151, 190

Virgil 7, 33, 34, 50, 65, 66, 68, 92, 93, 102, 112, 125–128, 136–137, 140–144, 157, 160–161, 168

Waller, Edmund 39

Walsh, Marcus 123–124, 133, 164, 170, 174, 188–189

Warburton, William 190

Ward, Edward 105, 130

Wesley, Samuel 72, 103

William III, King of England (1689–1702) 39, 98, 118, 120, 135

Williams, Abigail 39, 43, 46, 135, 158

Winstanley, William 37, 44, 46, 167

Wittreich, Joseph 27–28, 31, 44–45

Wood, Anthony à 30, 45

Wotton, William 104, 161

Yalden, Thomas 42, 47, 102

Zoilus (Homeromastix) 161