Richard J. DuRocher. Milton among the Romans: the Pedagogy and Influence of Milton's Latin Curriculum.

(Medieval & Renaissance Literary Studies.) Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2001. xiv + 210 pp. index, illus, bibl. $58. ISBN: 0-8207-0328-1.

DuRocher argues that Milton's six-year (1640-46) stint teaching Latin authors in a private tutorial had a profound and hitherto unrecognized effect on his poetry and prose. His source for identifying the authors is the biography of Milton by his nephew Edward Phillips, who was himself one of the tutees: "Of the Latin, the four grand authors De Re Rustica, Cato, Varro, Columella and Palladius; Cornelius Celsus, an ancient physician of the Romans; a great part of Pliny's Natural History; Vitruvius his Architecture; Frontinus his Stratagems; with the two egregious poets, Lucretius and Manilius" (1, cited from the Hughes edition, John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, 1029).

It certainly makes sense to focus on authors that we know Milton studied and taught for an extended period of time, and DuRocher performs a valuable service for Milton scholars in evaluating these authors and relating them to the context of Milton's works. However, as DuRocher acknowledges in a footnote, "Phillips continues by listing several Greek authors and scriptural books, in the original languages, along with French and Italian texts, through which Milton led his students" (176). In fact, Phillips lists eleven Greek authors including the canonical Hesiod, Plutarch, Xenophon, and Apollonius of Rhodes. Thus to establish a separate context of "Milton among the Romans" and to examine his educational philosophy without considering the totality of the curriculum for that six-year period are strategies that are open to question.

DuRocher also refers to Milton as a "historian" with a bias toward Latin sources (32) and as a writer familiar with "scientific traditions" (36). Since all of the evidence suggests that Milton could not read Anglo-Saxon, his focus on Latin sources in his history of Britain was a matter of necessity, not choice. And while Milton did cite or allude to Latin authors in attempting to reconcile "natural philosophy" with scriptural truth, "Milton was a pamphleteer and a poet, not a scientist," not even, for all his tampering with physic, "an amateur of science" (Kester Svendsen, Milton and Science, 43).

All this being said, DuRocher offers some valuable insights into Milton's thought and poetic practice. For example, in chapter 1, "Conning the Creature: Limits of Natural Knowledge in Paradise Lost," DuRocher reminds us that "The continuous hermeneutic struggle between sacred truth and ancient fable is integral to our experience of Paradise Lost" (49). In chapter 2, "Careful Plowing: Culture and Agriculture in Paradise Lost," DuRocher notes that "fruit" is mentioned before "seed" in the opening lines of Paradise Lost, and that the "fruitless" act of earing the fruit of the forbidden tree bears fruit in Christ's fruitful sacrifice, "a dazzling reversal summarized by the doctrine of the fortunate fall" (55). In chapter 3, "Building Pandaemonium: Vitruvian Architecture in Paradise Lost," DuRocher illustrates how Milton's study of Vitruvius' De architectura allowed him to employ "the double strategy of celebraring and undermining the structure" (80), of simultaneously recognizing the achievement of heaven's architect (Mulciber) while questioning the moral "foundations" of the artifact. DuRocher wisely hedges on the question of Milton's belief in astrology (chap.4, "A Marriage Made in Heaven: Natural Astrology in Manilius and Milton"), but overstates the case for an ecologically-sensitive Milton in chapter 5, "The Wounded Earth in Paradise Lost." Finally, DuRocher, in his concluding chapter, "Regenerating Rome: Milton on Learning and Wisdom Once More," addresses the perennial question posed in the fourth book of Paradise Regained: "Does the Son's denunciation of Rome [or Greece] imply a devaluation of Roman [or Greek] literature?" (254). DuRocher responds to the question obliquely by suggesting that, like Augustine, Milton felt that "the value of the pagan material far outweighs any danger of contamination from it" (159).

In sum, DuRocher's lucid, engaging analysis of the Roman authors that Milton read and taught during his stint as a schoolmaster adds to our knowledge of Milton's sources and provides some provocative suggestions as to how he might have used these sources in his own work.

JOHN MULRYAN

St. Bonaventure University