The Poet as Public Nuisance

Milton and the English Revolution By Christopher Hill Viking Press, 539 pp., $20 John Milton was a great poet who happened to be a rather peevish person and the holder of a number of crank political and moral notions. To devote over five hundred pages to his role in the English Revolution makes about as much sense as compiling a magisterial work on Jack Benny and the classical violin. Nevertheless, Christopher Hill, Master of Balliol College and a very talented leftist historian, has bent his considerable skill to depicting Milton as a serious champion of radicalism, less of a cad to his women than the factual record would indicate, and an amiable soul rather than the intolerant, slightly paranoid ranter and whiner that emerges from his letters and tracts.

Even if Christopher Hill were right— and he isn’t—was his effort well spent? I doubt it. Milton’s position in literature is now secure despite the premature gloating of critics like F. R. Leavis, who crowed in 1936 that “Milton’s dislodgement, in the past decade, after his two centuries of predominance, was effected with remarkably little fuss.” His role as a Cromwellian lickspittle, supporting the Lord Protector’s more-than-royal powers while justifying regicide, as well as his droning pamphleteering on pet grievances like divorce, belongs to an ugly and not very interesting minor side of a major talent.

AB

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Aram Bakshian Jr.

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Milton and the English Revolution By Christopher Hill Viking Press, 539 pp., $20 John Milton was a great poet who happened to be a rather peevish person and the holder of a number of crank political and moral notions. To devote over five hundred pages to his role in the English Revolution makes about as much sense as compiling a magisterial work on Jack Benny and the classical violin. Nevertheless, Christopher Hill, Master of Balliol College and a very talented leftist historian, has bent his considerable skill to depicting Milton as a serious champion of radicalism, less of a cad to his women than the factual record would indicate, and an amiable soul rather than the intolerant, slightly paranoid ranter and whiner that emerges from his letters and tracts.

Even if Christopher Hill were right— and he isn’t—was his effort well spent? I doubt it. Milton’s position in literature is now secure despite the premature gloating of critics like F. R. Leavis, who crowed in 1936 that “Milton’s dislodgement, in the past decade, after his two centuries of predominance, was effected with remarkably little fuss.” His role as a Cromwellian lickspittle, supporting the Lord Protector’s more-than-royal powers while justifying regicide, as well as his droning pamphleteering on pet grievances like divorce, belongs to an ugly and not very interesting minor side of a major talent.