Notes to Chapter 1
and he probably read it early on. But Richardson’s story, based on hearsay, points to a
later date. He refers to the edition “produced” by the Earl of Dorset, which must be
the 1688 edition for which he was a prominent subscriber. He also reports a remark by
Dryden that he would not have translated his Virgil in rhyme if he had it to do again
- but he began that work only in 1693.
96 The receipt is now in the library of Christ’s College, Cambridge (Ms 8). The witness
was Edmund Tipton.
97 He may also have been too much involved in the project of bringing out, in parts and
then as a whole, the massive Exposition with Practical Observations on the Book of Job by
Joseph Caryl. The complete work was published in 1676–7, but early parts began to
appear in 1643, from different printers; the Simmons house by stages bought up all the
rights.
98 Thomas Birch, letter to P. Yorke, November 17, 1750, BL Add Ms. 35, 397, f. 321v.
The visit took place on November 13.
99 Thomas Birch, ed. A Complete Collection of the Historical, Political, and Miscellaneous
Works of John Milton, 2 vols (London, 1738), I, 61–3. Lady Merian has not been iden-
tified.
100 See, for example, Kathleen Swaim, Before and after the Fall (Amherst, Mass., 1986); and
Mary Ann Radzinowicz, “Man as a Probationer of Immortality,” in Approaches to
Paradise Lost, ed. C. A. Patrides (Toronto, 1968), 31–51.
101 See pp. 447–8.
102 See, for example, C. M. Bowra, From Virgil to Milton (London, 1945); Francis
Blessington, Paradise Lost and the Classical Epic (Boston, Mass., and London, 1979); G.
K. Hunter, Paradise Lost (Totowa, NJ, 1979); and Martin Mueller, “The Tragic Epic,”
in Children of Oedipus (Toronto, 1980), 213–30.
103 See, for example, Harold Toliver, “Milton’s Household Epic,” MS 9 (1976), 105–20;
and T. J. B. Spencer, “Paradise Lost: The Anti-Epic,” in Approaches to Paradise Lost, ed.
Patrides, 81–98.
104 See, for example, Richard S. Ide and Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr., guest eds, “Composite
Orders: The Genres of Milton’s Last Poems,” MS 17 (1983); Lewalski, Paradise Lost and
the Rhetoric of Literary Forms (Princeton, NJ, 1985); John R. Knott, Milton’s Pastoral
Vision (Chicago, 1971); Anthony Low, The Georgic Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1985),
310–22; and Sara Thorne-Thomsen, “Milton’s ‘Advent’rous Song’: Lyric Genres in
Paradise Lost,” Dissertation, Brown University, 1985.
105 See Joan Webber, Paradise Lost: Milton and His Epic Tradition (Seattle and London, 1979),
101–63; Anne Ferry, Milton’s Epic Voice (Chicago, 1983), 20–43; William Kerrigan, The
Prophetic Milton (Charlottesville, Va., 1974), 1–16, 125–86; George de F. Lord, “Milton’s
Dialogue with Omniscience,” in The Author in His Work, ed. Louis L. Martz and Aubrey
Wiliams (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1978), 31–50; and Marshall Grossman,
Authors to Themselves: Milton and the Revelation of History (Cambridge, 1987).
106 The Divine Comedy has Dante the pilgrim as hero, but while its spirit is epic its form is
not. See Irene Samuel, Dante and Milton (Ithaca, NY, 1966).
107 See the preface to Book II, Reason of Chuch-governement, CPW I, 808, where Milton
justifies the bardic poet in speaking more of himself than the “mere” prose writer.
108 For the Homer/Virgil debts see note 102; for Lucan, see p. 448 and notes 30, 31. Also
see, for example, Richard DuRocher, Milton and Ovid (Ithaca, NY, and London,
Notes to Chapter 13
