In 1732 a cantankerous, seventy-year-old academic named Richard Bentley, then England’s foremost classicist and a specialist in textual emendation, published a notorious edition of
The next notable edition was Thomas Newton’s beautiful two-volume variorum of 1749. Its copious and often unequaled annotations were mostly reprinted, with the addition of many new ones, in the 1826 variorum of Milton’s entire poetic works assembled by Reverend Henry Todd. Anyone who becomes seriously curious about the meaning of a particular word or passage in Milton will want to go back to Todd and Newton, and behind them to the first of Milton’s annotators, Patrick Hume. They will also want to explore works such as Jonathan Richardson’s
Among the editions of the last century or so, we were most surprised to discover the sustained elucidation of A. W. Verity, who is largely forgotten today; besides the excellence of their commentary, his notes teem with examples of Romantic and Victorian imitation of Milton and will prove useful in future studies of that subject. In working on this edition, we came to think of Verity as the unknown god of Milton annotation. We also paid especially close attention to the thoughtful notes of Alastair Fowler and John Leonard, and consulted Merritt Hughes, Douglas Bush, Scott Elledge, and Roy Flannagan, among others.
COSMOS
Heaven sits atop Milton’s cosmos. Beneath it lies Chaos. We sense that both of these realms have, so to speak, been around forever. It would be a nice point in Milton’s theology to ask whether Chaos precedes Heaven or vice versa, since the very existence of God seems to require an abode, and therefore a Heaven of some sort, while on the other hand Chaos appears to be the precondition of all creations, including those of the Son, the angels, and Heaven. As the poem begins, these two established cosmic areas have been joined by two new spaces. At the bottom of Chaos stands Hell, the elder of the new realms. Between Heaven and Chaos, suspended on a golden chain affixed to Heaven (2. 1004–6), lies the most recent of God’s creations: our Earth, including the planets and stars surrounding it.