John Milton's claim to continued recollection rests primarily, of course, on his preeminence as a poet. In 1642 he said that he had been forced by a sense of political duty to interrupt his efforts to become "a Poet soaring in the high region of his fancies." He had instead to linger "here below in the cool element of prose," where he had the use of his "left hand" only. In terms of his ultimate creative ambitions, poetry was to prose as heaven was to earth. But Milton's own early assessment of the discursive media competing for his energies should not be taken at face value. His earthly commitments were strong enough to keep him "here below in the cool element of prose" for nearly two decades, until the demise of the English Revolution in 1660. Even then Milton did not fall entirely silent as a prose writer: in the...