Milton, “The Last Elizabethan”

Dr. Johnson called John Milton, 1 (1608-1674) with some justification, “an acrimonious and surly republican,” and added that “scarcely any man ever wrote so much and praised so few.” 2 Wordsworth contradicted such censure by saying that his soul was like a star and dwelt apart, and that he was “ pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free”; 3 but it is hard to avoid the impression that this tough-minded Galahad was, except in the halcyon period of his Italian journey, an unclubable man. It is no uncommon phenomenon for critics to allow a coolness toward Milton’s personality to warp their judgment of his work, to the ultimate and very mortifying confusion of the critics. 4 Time may still further alienate contemporary taste from Milton’s temperament and from the subject matter of his writings; but, while poetry is poetry, time is not apt to change the perception a normal reader has of coming into a priceless and inalienable possession. Milton’s poetry is as arrogantly supreme as his archangel, and to those who question it needs to reply only: “Not to know me argues yourselves unknown.”