Ut pictura poesis?

UT PICTURA POESIS? 289 'metaphor of the dark, enclosed space' consistently 'figures what is undesirable, and it sets up the open and expanding situation as the desirable one' (p 128). It seems unlikely that 'students ofMilton' will find that much 'refreshment' (p viii) in discoveries such as these. Thorpe is at his most interesting with the prose tracts where he suggests that Milton's desire for recognition led him to fantasize, to inflate theirimportance. But even this idea is characterized by a failure to enter into the spirit of the work. For instance, Milton's explanation of his poetic ambitions in the Reason of ChurchGovernment was not written simply 'because he wanted recognition for himself' (p 54); itwas written to make the argument ofthe tract more persuasive. Amongother things, Milton wishes to make it clear that the author who warns against the evils of prelaty writes not out of some narrow-minded fanaticism or 'some self-pleasing humor of vain glory' but out of an idealism with which the 'elegant and learned reader' can sympathize. Thorpe is at his least penetrating with the poetry: 'the world of Milton's dramatic poems is full of deception. Paradise Lost has, I believe, more deception in it than any other long poem in English.... What does all this deception signify? It signifies, I believe, one important way in which Milton looked at the world..., The world is still a tricky place' (pp 179-80). Since 'Milton's deepest self is given form in his poetry' (p 106), this lack ofpenetration amounts to a considerable handicap in a book about Milton's inner life. Ut pictura poesis? A.H. DE QUEHEN Vincent Carretta. The Snarling Muse: Verbal and Visual Political Satire from Pope to Churchill Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1983. xxi, 290. $25.00 FelicityA. Nussbaum. The BrinkofAll We Have: English Satires on Women, 1660--:1750 Lexington: University Press of Kentucky 1984. viii, 192. $20.00 'I have argued,' Vincent Carretta explains in his Epilogue to The Snarling Muse, 'that we can betterunderstand one medium ofsatire, politicalverse, by comparing and contrasting it with another, political engravings.' This comparative approach is indeed informative, and Carretta's extensive research produces a good number oftitles one had not heard ofand (more interestingly) prints one had not seen. The seventy-three prints reproduced in the book are enough to show the range, also the repetitiveness, of political engravers: their lively parodies of painting's more solemn forms, their now so unfunny businesses of drenches and clysters. Though few have much ofHogarth's powerto compose and draw, many ofthe illustrations do invite careful study. So it is annoying that their reduction in size and loss of sharpness have rendered most of the words emerging from characters' mouths illegible even through a magnifying glass, and a persistent minor irritation is UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 54, NUMBER 3, SPRING 1985 290 A.H. DE QUEHEN Carretta's failure to tell the reader if and on what page the prints he refers to are reproduced. In truth, the book is at times not altogether easy to read: when its raw materials have not been sufficiently melted down and recast in the new narrative mould. So one finds quotations unnecessarily used to state perfectly well known facts: for example, Bolingbroke's appropriation of Whig principles 'accurately described here by Quentin Skinner ...' (p 35). Or else superfluous statements by Carretta when a quotation has already done the job: Horace Walpole compared the two ministries when he observed in 1762, 'The' newadministration begins tempestuously. Myfather was not more abused after twenty years than Lord Bute is in twenty days. Weekly papers swarm, and like otherswarms ofinsects, sting.' As Horace Walpole remarks, the attacks on Bute were more numerous and strident than those on Sir Robert Walpole. (P 229) And yet this book is full of interest. In his later chapters, on the years 1742-60 and on Churchill and the early 1760s, Carretta has a lot to tell the average reader, who will have tended to neglect political satire after the death of Pope. Carretta sees typology becoming less accessible, or appropriate, as the new emphasis is on caricature. The syntheSis achieved by...