“Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642poetics of satire that justifies vehement invective as a “sanctifi’d bitternesse” having
precedent in the biblical prophets. That poetics also sanctions his uncommonly
severe ad hominem attacks on grounds of an assumed equation between author and
text: barbarous prose and slavish ideas emanate from and are indicators of a de-
praved life.^10 By the same token, Milton’s lengthy autobiographical passages serve
not only to answer personal attacks, but also as ethical proof, presenting his texts as
the arguments and rhetoric of a good man. Prophetic testimony is also prominent
in these tracts, as Milton relates his polemic to his vocation as bard and identifies his
own destiny with that of the nation. His greatest poetic achievement, he now
supposes, may be to celebrate the perfecting of the English nation as the Millen-
nium approaches.
“I Decided... to Devote to this Conflict All My Talents”
After visiting his father and various friends – perhaps Thomas Young and Alexan-
der Gil – Milton set up for himself in London. His lodging, Edward Phillips reports,
was in “St. Brides Church-yard, at the House of one Russel, a Taylor” (EL 60). That
was near Fleet Street, not far from St Paul’s and his childhood home in Bread
Street. Milton now had some financial independence from loans his father had
placed in his name.^11 He supplemented his income by tutoring a few private pupils,
beginning with his nephews: John Phillips boarded with him and John’s elder brother
Edward was at first a day pupil. Milton’s flat was somewhat cramped and noisy, but
he probably stayed there until autumn, 1640: it was hard, he later observed, to find
a suitable house “in such upset and tumultuous times” (CPW IV.1, 621). At St
Bride’s he wrote the Epitaphium Damonis, made an abortive start on an epic,^12 un-
dertook a course of reading in English and European history, started to note down
ideas for literary projects, and began to develop and implement his ideas about
educating the young.
From late 1639 to mid-1641 or thereabouts he made seven pages of notes in the
Trinity manuscript,^13 listing nearly one hundred titles for possible literary projects
drawn from the Bible and British history, several with one or two sentences of
elaboration and a few with more extended plot summaries. He chiefly considered
topics for dramas, perhaps drawn to the shorter kind by Aristotle’s preference for
tragedy, but more likely by his failure to get on with an epic. His serious reading in
the English chronicles led him to recognize that the Arthurian epic he had been
proposing for several years did not meet Tasso’s, and his own, requirement that an
epic subject be based on history. The Trinity list includes only one epic subject,
clearly historical: “A Heroicall Poem may be founded somwhere in Alfreds reigne,
especially at his issuing out of Edelingsey on the Danes. whose actions are wel like
those of Ulysses” (TM 38). Two topics are conceived as pastoral dramas and the rest
as tragedy.