Milton's 'History of Britain': Republican Historiography in the English Revolution.

Milton's History of Britain is interesting only because John Milton wrote it. Its coverage goes no further than the Norman Conquest and it is entirely derivative; Milton cobbled together his narrative from earlier historians in order to support whatever prejudices he held at the time of writing. Anthony Wood got it right when he remarked that Milton's main achievement was to put "old Authors neatly together in a connex'd story."

Still, the History was written by John Milton, so it is useful to have a careful study of its composition and its place in seventeenthcentury historical writing, and that is what von Maltzahn provides. Written in stages several years apart, published (in 1670) years after its composition, and in places gutted by the censor, Milton's old enemy Roger L'Estrange, the History presents daunting problems for the modern scholar. Von Maltzahn disentangles some of them, including the relationship of the so-called "Digression" (into the state of England in 1649) to the rest of the text. Earlier Miltonists have tried to explain the Digression, with its disillusioned portrayal of the new republic, as simply stemming from a temporary fit of pique when the brave new world promised by the execution of Charles I did not immediately materialize. Although von Maltzahn sometimes obscures his argument by piling on the evidence to excess, embedded in his book is a more satisfactory explanation.

Milton's purpose, he shows, was to recall his contemporaries to the civic virtue that they had either never attained or were (even in the moment of revolutionary triumph) now deserting. Historians have always categorized Milton among the classical republicans, whose ideal was a state governed by an aristocracy of virtue, so there is nothing dramatically new in this. But it is useful to be shown how the theme infuses the entire History, not just the openly present-minded Digression. Milton dismisses the earlier chroniclers as "monks and mechanicks" because of their failure to meet the elevated standards of stylistic eloquence set by Tacitus and Livy. His skeptical dismissal of cherished myths of British pre-history like the Arthurian legends shows a critical spirit that we naturally admire, but that critical approach quickly vanished when he confronted the classical past. Like any good humanist, Milton admired the rational discipline of Roman civilization, not the wild barbarism of native British tribes who actually allowed women to govern and command in battle. (More might be said of the way in which Milton's narrative is constructed on conventional assumptions about gender.)

Von Maltzahn is a learned, if sometimes long-winded, guide through all this. He usefully explains Milton's preference for Gildas over other sources (Gildas was a good stick with which to beat defenders of monarchy) and his greater emphasis on the history of the church than of laws and institutions. Indeed, Milton showed little interest in the mythical "Ancient Constitution" that had inspired his fellow Parliamentarians; von Maltzahn points out that his politics were so founded in abstract principles that he did not need history to sustain them. The past was useful mainly as a guide to "national character," which in the end was shaped by education. Milton in effect believed that only men capable of classical eloquence and attuned to the austere civic virtues of the Roman republic should be permitted to rule. But in real life, as he bitterly reflected in the Digression, the republic's leaders were plebeian merchants and provincials who had not absorbed the sacred classical texts. Once again we encounter a Milton more at home in the Latin culture of the intellectuals than in the muddy waters of political reality.

YALE UNIVERSITY