"the third book coincided with Milton’s last days of sight and the seventh with the return of the king that had clouded him with discountenance; that he was offended by the licentious festivity of the Restoration (pp. 101)"

Sold PL for five pounds

In this sense, he may be ragarded as one of the greatest punk rockers of all time

"Milton’s republicanism was, I am afraid, founded in an envious hatred of greatness, and a sullen desire of independence; in petulance impatient of controul, and pride disdainful of superiority. He hated monarchs in the state, and prelates in the church; for he hated all whom he was required to obey. It is to be suspected, that his predominant desire was to destroy rather than establish, and that he felt not so much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority. "

but this does not jive with what he wrote. Though writing maketh not a man's behavior, clearly.

C.f. Johnson could not have known at the time the workings of DDC, but as Empson points out, his beliefs on obedience and conscience align much more closely with Eve than Adam

"“He though woman made only for obedience, and man only for rebellion”

Milton kind of an asshole

What we hope ever to do with ease, we may learn first to do with diligence. ... Milton never learned the art of doing little things with grace, he overlooked the milder excellence of suavity and softness, he was a lion that had no skill in dandling the Kid

Allegory of sin and death

“unskillful allegory appears to me one of the greatest faults of the poem"

"Our Language, says Addison, sunk under him. But the truth is, that, both in prose and verse, he had formed his style by a perverse and pedantic principle. He was desirous to use English words with a foreign idiom. This in all his prose is discovered and condemend; for there judgement operates freely, neither softened by the beauty, nor awed by the dignity of his thoughts; but such is the power of his poetry… Milton’s style was not modified by his subject … One source of his peculiarity was his familiarity with the Tuscan poets: the disposition of his words is, I think, frequently Italian; "

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