Milton’s later years and death

After the Restoration and despite jeopardy to himself, Milton continued to advocate freedom of worship and republicanism for England while he supervised the publication of his major poems and other works. For a time soon after the succession of Charles II, Milton was under arrest and menaced by possible execution for involvement in the regicide and in Cromwell’s government. Although the circumstances of clemency toward Milton are not fully known, it is likely that certain figures influential with the regime of Charles II—such as Christopher Milton, Andrew Marvell, and William Davenant—interceded on his behalf. The exact date and location of Milton’s death remain unknown; he likely died in London on November 8, 1674, from complications of the gout (possibly renal failure). He was buried inside St. Giles Cripplegate Church in London.

Fame and reputation

Milton’s fame and reputation derive chiefly from Paradise Lost, which, when first published in 1667, did not gain wide admiration. Because of Milton’s political and religious views, only his close friends and associates commended his epic. Marvell, who assisted Milton when he was Latin secretary during the interregnum, expressed extraordinary admiration of Paradise Lost in verses at the outset of the 1674 edition. John Dryden, after having consulted with Milton and elicited his approval, adapted the epic to heroic couplets, the measure that characterized much verse in that era. The result was The State of Innocence and Fall of Man, an operatic adaptation published in 1677, though never performed. At the end of the 17th century, admiration of Paradise Lost extended beyond a small circle. Indeed, five editions of the poem appeared between 1688 and 1698, three of them in English and two in Latin; the 1695 edition in English, with Patrick Hume’s commentary and annotations, is considered the first scholarly edition.

By the early 18th century, Paradise Lost had begun to draw more acclaim. Joseph Addison published a series of essays in The Spectator (1712) in which he ranked Milton’s epic with the works of Classical antiquity. Because the Neoclassical movement in poetry, which emphasized heroic couplets, prevailed in this era, Paradise Lost was perceived as a magnificent exception in its use of blank verse. And because its genre was that of a biblical epic, Paradise Lost was granted unique status. Alexander Pope, the quintessential Neoclassical poet, borrowed heavily from the imagery of Milton’s poem and in The Rape of the Lock (1712–14) constructed a mock-epic that becomes a genial parody of Paradise Lost.

Voltaire lavishly praised Paradise Lost in 1727 when writing of epic poetry. Translations of Milton’s epic into French, German, and Italian appeared before mid-century. Joseph Warton in 1756 cited Milton’s splendid topographical settings, especially Eden in Paradise Lost, and praised the flights of sublime imagination that elevated readers into heaven and near the throne of God. In doing so, Warton emphasized two of the poem’s characteristics—Milton’s celebration of nature and his unbridled imagination—that would later be highly valued by English Romantic authors. But by the end of the 18th century, Milton’s reputation had suffered because of Samuel Johnson, whose critical biography in The Lives of the Poets (1779–81), while praising the sublimity of Paradise Lost, disfavoured Milton’s images from nature, which Johnson attributed not to direct experience but to derivations from books.

During the early 19th century, Milton became popular among a number of major Romantic authors, such as William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Lord Byron, who in Paradise Lost perceived Satan as a heroic rebel opposing established traditions and God as a tyrant. Appropriating elements of Milton’s biography and of his works, these authors created a historical and literary context for their own revolutionary ideas. Shelley’s Prometheus in Prometheus Unbound (1820), for instance, is modeled after Milton’s Satan. By the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, however, Milton had yet again fallen into disfavour. The most influential voice lessening Milton’s reputation was that of T.S. Eliot, whose aesthetic interests gravitated toward the Metaphysical poets, certain Renaissance dramatists, and other contemporaries of Milton. Eliot complained that Milton’s epic verse lacked earnest feeling, was “stiff and tortuous,” and was so inflexible that it discouraged imitation.

Yet another shift in Milton’s reputation occurred in the late 20th century, when the author, while still appreciated for his literary and aesthetic achievements in verse, came to be viewed as a chronicler—even in his poems—of the tensions, conflicts, and upheavals of 17th-century England. At the same time, however, scholars often portrayed Milton variously as a forebear of present-day sensitivities and sensibilities and as an exponent of regressive views. In Paradise Lost, for instance, the conjugal relationship between Adam and Eve—both before and after the Fall—is strictly hierarchical, with the husband as overseer of the wife. But this representation of marriage, considered an expression of Milton’s regressive views, contrasts with The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, where Milton contends that the basis of marriage is compatibility. If the partners are no longer compatible, he argues, the marriage is in effect dissolved. Though such a liberal view of divorce was unacceptable in Milton’s era, it struck a more responsive chord in those countries where at the turn of the 21st century marriage was understood as a voluntary union between equals. By situating Milton’s work within the social, political, and religious currents of his era, scholars, nevertheless, demonstrated the enduring value and modern-day relevance of his works.