Notes to Chapter 1151 Christopher Milton’s deposition, December 5, 1674 (LR V, 214). Christopher also
reported, as from Elizabeth Milton, that her husband had indicated to her that, if there
were any overplus above £1,000, it was to go to Christopher’s children. But Christopher
honorably admits that he did not himself hear any such thing from his brother (215). If
true, this reveals Milton’s continuing resentment of his daughters; or, it may more
clearly reveal Elizabeth Milton’s animus toward them.
152 Copies of the relevant papers are in LR V, 226–32.
153 From Elizabeth Fisher’s testimony, May 15, in the prerogative Court of Canterbury,
LR V, 220–3.
154 Edward Phillips, Theatrum Poetarum, or A Compleat Collection of the Poets, Especially the
Most Eminent, of all Ages (London, 1675), sig. **r–v.
155 Ibid., 123–4. He did, however, deliver his own judgment in the entry for his brother,
John Phillips, added after Milton’s death. He attributes John’s success as a poet chiefly
to his education by Milton, “an Author of most deserv’d Fame late deceas’t, being the
exactest of Heroic Poets, (if the truth were well examin’d, and it is the opinion of
many both Learned and Judicious persons) either of the Ancients or Moderns, either
of our own or whatever Nation else” (114–15).
156 Milton’s choice, if it was his, to be buried in his parish church even though he was not
a regular parishioner and was no friend of the Anglican establishment, probably was
motivated by the desire to lie beside his father. He would have had no reason to seek
burial in the Nonconformist cemetery at Bunhill Fields since he was never formally
associated with any such congregation.
Epilogue: “Something... Written to Aftertimes”1 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York, 1973).
2 Letter 164, to John Thelwell, December 17, 1776; and The Statesman’s Manual, 1816,
cited in Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr., The Romantics on Milton: Formal Essays and Critical
Asides (Cleveland, Ohio, and London, 1970), 157, 228–9.
3 “Milton,” from the Edinburgh Review, August, 1825.
4 From a letter of Hopkins to Richard Walter Dixon, October 5, 1878, cited in James
Thorpe, ed., Milton Criticism: Selections from Four Centuries (London, 1951), 372. In a
letter to Robert Bridges, February 15, 1879, Hopkins states that he “hopes in time to
have a more balanced and Miltonic style.”
5 R. W. Griswold, Papers on Literature and Art (New York, 1846), I, 35.
6 Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. William Gilman, et al.,
16 vols (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), II, 106–7.
7 “Milton,” North American Review (July, 1838).
8 In her review of R. W. Griswold’s edition of Milton’s Prose, New York Daily Tribune,
October 7, 1845; Fuller, Papers on Literature and Art, 2 vols (New York, 1846), I, 36,
38–9.
9 Cited in Daniel Aaron, The Unwritten War: American Writers and the Civil War (New
York, 1973), 343.
10 Noted in The Diary of George Templeton Strong, ed. Allan Nevins and M. H. Thomas, 4
vols (New York, 1852), III, 368.
Notes to Chapter 14 and Epilogue