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PARTISAN REVIEW
reason for supposing Milton intended to suggest either alternative
than for supposing he wanted to suggest both. Even if he had in–
tended an exact and detailed correspondence of persons or stories as
well as meadows, the slap at Eve would still be Empson's invention
imposed upon Milton; the correspondence might just as well be
complimentary.
If
all
these criticisms of Empson are correct, and if "Milton and
Bentley" provides a fair sampling, our critic doesn't quote, cite, gen–
eralize, or read accurately, and the reader may well ask what's left?
Not much more, it would appear, than a faculty for muddling around
in interesting places. This is partly a true bill. Bentley is an interesting
place for Empson to muddle, and Empson's muddling isn't at all un–
like Bentley's. Both men have a preconceived pattern to impose on
Milton, whose effects often depend on a willingness to sacrifice neat–
ness in details for the large architecture, the deliberate multiplicity
of reference. Milton is writing about the fall of man, the history of
the world, metamorphosis, theogony, and contemporary ecclesiastical
politics,
all
at once. Bentley, with his enlightened concepts of correct–
ness, doesn't like to see any author talking about two things at once;
he is specially strict about questions of relevance, so that Pearce can
often hoist him with his own petard by quoting classical precedent
for a liberty which he denies Milton. In any event, Bentley denounces
"irrelevances" which come from the romances as "romantic"; when
they are geographical, he calls them pedantry, and when they are
not quite congruent with the Bible story, he feels shocked. His notions
of matter and spirit are rather more distinct than Milton's, and he
doesn't suffer allegory gladly. Given these principles, grant him the
authority of an editor, and almost all his emendations follow as a
matter of course.
Empson also stretches Milton on a Procrustes' bed, but of a
slightly different design. The violations of decorum which Milton
evidently considered somewhere between the natural, the tolerable,
and the necessary, and which angered Bentley into the hypothesis of
an editor, Empson treats as positive virtues. Whether Milton wanted
an incongruity, or couldn't avoid it, or was unaware of it, Empson
is eager to see an unintentional richness in the poem; and I suppose
one sounds ungrateful or petulant in refusin" to iee what he's dug
