The Volume to Own, 22 Feb 2003

By	Bruce Kendall "BEK" (Southern Pines, NC) - See all my reviews

Hughes presents all the poems and prose in chronological sequence, so it is easy to trace the great poet's increasing facility, and later mastery, in both areas. We start with Milton, the fifteen-year-old student, translating Psalms from the Hebrew as well as passages from the love poems of Ovid and Properius. We then follow him to Cambridge, where he really starts assimilating all his classical studies, first fashioning imitative Latin elegies followed by his first poems of native genius, "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity," "On Shakespeare," "L'Allegro and Il Penseroso."

Hughe's edition is invaluable as a tool for students, scholars, or general readers. The notes never get in the way of the text, but will lead the reader to relevant sources should he/she desire to learn more about a given allusion or want more background. If the reader is patient, and actually reads all the material that comes before "Paradise Lost", he/she will be rewarded with a richer understanding of Milton's magnum opus. Please be advised that if you have made it that far, don't stop there. "Paradise Regained" and "Sampson Agonistes" are powerful examples of epic poetry as well. I personally feel that "Paradise Regained" has had almost as large an impact on modern fiction in particular (Dostoevsky and Flaubert are prime examples)as has "Paradise Lost."

Blake said that Milton was of Satan's party without knowing it. Actually Milton's prose does open up some interesting possibilities in that sphere. In "Areopagitica" he advocates for the necessity of evil. He was, as history has amply recorded, hardly a defender of central authority. He was emphatic about individual liberty and wouldn't be dictated to by Pope or King.

There are several short early biographies of the poet at the end of the book. All paint a portrait of an idiosyncratic genius who suffered numerous setbacks both physical and political, particularly in his last decades. He was an extraordinarily brave man, who has taken some heat from Virginia Woolf and later feminists for his "ill use" of his daughters, who, the line goes, he kept in ignorance and near slavery so that they could aid him as ameneunses after he went blind. If such detractors had actually done any wide reading on the subject (Shawcrosse is an excellent source) they would not have made such charges. Though not what could be described as a "loving father," Milton certainly never inveighed against his daughters to remain "indentured" to him, nor did he subvert any marriage plans they arranged (none were forced into "arranged marriages" either, though the practice was still common in that era). He didn't tutor them in the Languages he asked them to transcribe, per se. But this begs the question, if they were'nt taught Latin, Greek and Hebrew, how would they have been able to act as scribes in those languages in the first place?

I'm sorry to see that this volume is now so expensive. In this day of large trade paperbacks, perhaps a more affordable edition will be forthcoming?

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