MILTON'S EPIC

New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 741, 25 September 1953, Page 14

MILTON'S EPIC

THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN MIL.TON, Volume 1, Paradise Lost, edited by Helen Darbishire; Oxford University Press. English price, 30/-. "HE literary taste of any age is influenced by its style and quality of book production. One recalls yividiy how different Burns’s Collected Poems seem when dominated by the Gothic shades of a 19th Century illustrator:

or how much more clipped and hygienic James Hogg apPears in large, clear type with an introduction bv. Andre Gide. So in this new edition of Milton’s poetry. the eompact and careful typography and the craftsmanship for which the Ox-.

ford University Press is justly famed enable one to read Milton with new eyes. Helen Darbishire, according to sevyeral informed critics, has produced an edition of Milton which is more in accord With Milton’s original intention than any other. Her meticulous and scholarly observation of every ‘variation in spelling and punctuation is unquestionably a labour to be admired; and -her textual commentary makes it plain that her scholarship has been illuminated by insight. Paradise Lost, to which T, S. Eliot once referred as a Chinese Wall built across the road of English literature. emerges in all its lights and shades. But apart from those undeniably great passages which are scattered through the work, the section which relates to the fal] of the Angels and the character of Satan, and the lyrical description of Adam and Eve unfallen, alone have full dramatic force. One is overwhelmed by Milton, yet often left dissatisfied, His earth and hell are real enough; his heayen is a somewhat

draughty :room.

James K.

Baxter