" Had he known it, he never could
have produced his vulgar parody, _The State of Innocence_, a piece
upon which he received the compliments of his cotemporaries, as
"having refined the ore of Milton."
With the one exception of Dryden, a better critic than poet, Milton's
repute was the work of the Whigs. The first _edition de luxe_ of
_Paradise Lost_ (1688) was brought out by a subscription got up by the
"Whig leader, Lord Somers. In this edition Dryden's pinchbeck epigram
so often quoted, first appeared--
Three poets in three distant ages born, &c.
It was the Whig essayist, Addison, whose papers in the _Spectator_
(1712) did most to make the poem popularly known. In 1737, in
the height of the Whig ascendancy, the bust of Milton penetrated
Westminster Abbey, though, in the generation before, the Dean of that
day had refused to admit an inscription on the monument erected to
John Phillips, because the name of Milton occurred in it.
The zeal of the Liberal party in the propagation of the cult of Milton
was of course encountered by an equal passion on the part of the Tory
opposition. They were exasperated by the lustre which was reflected
upon Revolution principles by the name of Milton.
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