became Latin Secretary to the Council of State, losing his eyesight in 1652 while
writing the Council’s defence of its regicide. Milton’s secretaries were to include
Marvell and John Dryden. In the second edition ofParadise Lost (1674), Milton
defended its blank verse against the ‘bondage of rhyming’. Yet in this same year, the
last of his life, he gave Dryden leave to turn it into rhyme – for an opera. Changed
times, and for Milton fallen times.
As a boy at St Paul’s School, Milton could have heard its Dean, John Donne, preach
in the Cathedral. Donne was writing before 1600. John Dryden died in 1700, the year
of William Congreve’s The Way of the World. Thus Donne, Milton and Dryden
together take us from 1600 to 1700. The prose of these poets shows the differences of
their eras: Donne’s sermons, Milton’s polemic, Dryden’s literary criticism. Donne’s
to mb survived the Fire of London in 1666, and stands in the cool spaces of
Christopher Wren’s new St Paul’s Cathedral in London as a reminder of more
dramatic days. ‘The Stuart century’ is a convenient historical label, pasting the name140 5 · STUART LITERATURE: TO 1700
Detail from ‘View of London’,
‘View of London’, engraved by Claes Jan Visscher
Visscher, 1616. The view is
from above the South Bank,
looking north across the
Thames (Thamesis) to Old St
Paul’s. Donne was not yet
Dean of the Cathedral; Milton
was a new boy at St Paul’s
School. Foreground (right) is
the (rebuilt) Globe theatre.