Milton to Pope: 1650–1720 by Kay Gilliland Stevenson (review)

54 the nature of creative imagination in images and aphorisms.’’ This is Ms. Goldsmith at her worst, a reader who apparently does not understand that there are better reasons than fear of censure for expressing ideas about the nature of imagination in metaphors and images rather than flat statements. Fortunately, she is usually more adroit. She is aware, for example, of the different strains in recent feministresponses to Pope, and her chapter on Epistle to a Lady gains from the implicit dialogue withtheseothercritics,whensheseesthat it is not women alone, but people in general , who seem to Pope contradictory and changeable. She makes valuable points about his portraits’ complexity and mystery ; his understanding that ‘‘women face greater problems in achieving rounded identities in society than men do’’; his need to defend Martha Blount’s reputation . The best feature of the book has nothing to do with itspsychologizingpremise. Whenever a public event or ministerial crisis may have impact on Pope’s career, Ms. Goldsmith deftly weaves the historical information into her narrativeandsituates Pope in a complex historical context . Its allowance for Pope’s life in a difficult political climate may make this book preferable to other short biographies for some purposes, despite its lack of interest for specialists, but its veryhigh price makes it unattractive for college libraries . Patricia B. Craddock University of Florida KAY GILLILAND STEVENSON. Milton to Pope: 1650–1720. Houndsmills, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2001. Pp. x ⫹ 292. $59.95. This clearly written and readable book offers advanced students the chance to catch up on details of scholarship that their elders already know: for example, the variation in dating produced by Julian and Gregorian calendars (old style and new style); the value of old money and its abbreviations, and the appearance of broadsides. Somewhat incongruously, however, with few exceptions, Ms. Stevenson concentrates on authors well known neither to students nor to scholars in the field—writers such as John Playford , Arise Evans, Comenius, and Elizabeth Cellier. The book is extremely lopsided in several ways. Its emphasis on esoteric references limits its usefulnessto students, while its explanation that a pound equaled twenty shillings fails to enlighten those in the field. It leaves out extended analysis of major seventeenthcentury figures like Wycherley and Congreve (it mentions The Way of the World once) for the sake of a clutter of minor scribblers. That is, the book is all contexts —interesting though they are—and no cynosures, even when Ms. Stevenson is discussing the seventeenth century, her clear favorite. It foregoes analysis of Swift, whose Tale of a Tub would surely merit a chapter in a book covering the period specified; in the chronology it identifies him as Dean of St. Paul’s; the same list misrepresents his famous jeu d’esprit, Meditation upon a Broomstick, as Meditations upon a Broomstick. Milton receives an entire subsection of a chapter, and Popeacoupleofpagesandafewscattered remarks. The book contains no sustained analysis of The Rape of the Lock. Ms. Stevenson is also coauthor of Heaven and the Flesh: Imagery of Desire from the Renaissance to the Rococo (1995) and of Paradise Lost in Short: Smith, Stillingfleet, and the Transformation of Epic (1998). Throughout Mil- 55 ton to Pope: 1650–1720, the phrase ‘‘the century,’’ which often recurs, always means the seventeenth century. After two and a half pageson TheSpectatorandThe Tatler (with no mention of The Review, The Guardian, or The Examiner), Ms. Stevenson seems to turn with relief back to the previous century: ‘‘While The Spectator and other periodicals of the early eighteenth century are best-known, . . . it would be a mistake to ignore their predecessors in the late seventeenth century which had catered to the taste of a more popular audience.’’ While discussing James Sutherland’s On English Prose (1957), she cannot conceal her distaste for those writers who succeeded Hobbes, Dryden, and Addison; she speaks of ‘‘the pompous gentility of late eighteenthcentury writing.’’ She takes note of attempts to bring the long eighteenth century into vogue; she proposes, instead, a long seventeenth century with ten years or so tacked on at either end. Why has she chosen to defy the usual periodic categories and split the lives of Milton and Pope into halves? Since...