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r· .·'·' .. ' j • .. ,.-1 I ~ l", • I ·;_ : . I -~ l.l·, '·, ~...... / • !. .. .. : t •'I . ~. ·, ! ; r \ -. •. \ \ I " • I··, i .• - I ' ' · ' . '. 1 I ~'. 1 ,l ' . ·' 200 THE UNIVERSITY OF.'TORONTO . QUARTERLY ,-4 • ' ' . I ' them are tempted, and of.the Anglo-American-bloc type Mr. Tillyard (the 'C~ompanion P,ieces, Comus, Lycidas), Miss 'Finney (Milton and drama), 1 )\'Iessrs.;Whaler and Ross (Milton's imagery), _ Messrs·. Haller, Fink, :B~rker·and \7'/olfe (his political thought ·and his .relation to the Puritan Revolution) ..·.These are some of the new Miltonians who 'are ·adding to, the.work of the -.g~eat pioneers, Hanford, Gr~enlaw, Grierson, ~n·d Sau~aL 'But the vigor.ous stateof Milton studies can be ''fairly accurately gauged by the more popula/ works considered below, if to these are added Mr. Lewis's Preface and Mr. . Charles Williams's Introduction (already reviewed in our pages) ·and the criticism, as opposed to the polemic, of Mr. Stoll himself-for no account -of the Miltonians would.be complete without him. . M. Denis Saurat's volume is a secon9 edition of the most influen_tial book on Milton written in the .twentieth century. There is no Miltonian .· who would deny it that title, and perhaps h~rdly one who would n_ ot utter '' a caveat against its preconceptions and many of its findings. The new :edition does nothing to remove the necessity for this: it modifies no position formerly taken up, and ignores the work (and the objections) of other ' scholars. Mi, lton is still among the Cabbalists, to be expla~ned. (with _ . .Spenser, Blake, Victor 'Hugo, Walt Whitman,et al. !) by reference to the Zohar. M._ Saurat repeats his incredible proposition that the key to Milton's metaphysic.and theology is fou~d in the words,. Evil into the mind of God or man May come and go, so unapproved, and leave No spot or blame behind; so that creation and the natural history of man and his world are the resul't of the segregation of the evil (or more strictly ··the fallible) elements latent i~- the Infinite. Two and a half lines in all his voluminous writings, in a speech delivered by the as-yet-uninst-ructed Adam t~ Eve, on the ~ubJect of dre~ms! What·a place for Milton to deposit the key to his meaning-in · fact under the door-mat! .But of course the lines do not refer to the Deity at all ·and so cam-iot bear M.' Saurat's es~teric interpretation, though ·this .'·is· somewhat concealed by his tampering wi~th .the capitals. -Milton wrote' "God or Man"; -that is, angel or finan, god bei_ ng a common synonym for - angel, employed in Paradise Lost and commented upon in the De Doctrina. ~E'vil must be approved by· an intellectual being, angel or man, before sin.·can be imputed to him: this is all that Adam is saying~ Nor has M. Saurat retreated from his former position on the much-discussed question of the- "retraction." In his Study oj. Milton's Christian Doctrine .(1939), M·r.·Arthur Sewell averred that the disputed passage, Paradise Lost,.VII, '168-73,· "requires an interpretation precisely opposite to Professor Saurat's,, and the present reviewer remarked. that ~n The Mosaical Philosophy of Robert Fludd the true Miltonic "retraction," the opposi_ te of M. Saurat's3 is found. M .. Saurat now adds l~rgely to his treatment of Fludd, but with no.effort ~~ ~0 meet this-obstinate fact. But what .are facts to him in comparison with l • -- .-) - . -' \ ' ·.. • I ' ;.. 1 .. 1.. I ,' I · -· ~ 1, 1 i ·.: I I, . \ I '· r .. ,- - , '/"'·' ,··•• r ';- I 202 _THE' .uNIVERSITY olt TORONTO QUARTERLY tl;eo~ies! •It is the more provoking in these instances because there is some real ambi_ guity in Milton's handling of the problem ·of ~vil, and some obscurity in .the whole question of the retraction, which deserved a more sober treattpent. \Vhat~ver of ~alue M. Sam·at had to say on Milton-and it was not little~was said.in the.'first edition of his book. To him remains a chief par_ t of the credit for initiating the new study of Miltoi1's thought, which...

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