An Early Appreciation of "Paradise Lost"

An Early Comment on Milton's Poems (1645)

“…Gunning's intimations in 1648 do not fully anticipate the bitter views of Milton prevailing at the publication of Paradise Lost (1667). That epic, in some part promised by Poems (1645), then needed longer rescuing from the evil reputation of its “criminall & obsolete” author, before his “monument would be reared amid the shrines of monarchs” (Rosenheim 282, quoting Sir John Hobart, 30 January 1667/8; Milton, Poems [1785], xxiii‐xxiv).…”