This very interesting book focuses on Milton’s major manuscripts from the 1640s, his Commonplace Book and the “Digression” (meant for, but not included, in the print version of the History of Britain), in seeking to cast new light on Milton’s reading habits, rhetorical strategies, and developing thought, particularly about civil liberty. It addresses the evolution and deployment of Milton’s research and ideas in the crucial period from the Divorce tracts and Areopagitica (1643–44) through his major defenses of the Commonwealth government: Eikonoklastes, directed to the English people, and the Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio (1649, 1651), directed to the European intellectual community. After an introduction that argues unobjectionably for the importance of manuscript evidence and historical context in reading Milton, the book is divided into seven chapters and two appendixes useful to those interested in doing more with the Commonplace Book. There are also eight illustrations of relevant manuscript material.

While there are too many threads to summarize easily, I take Thomas Fulton’s basic argument to be that these manuscripts reflect Milton’s more authentic views when set against the public, printed record and help us to see not only how his ideas develop but also how his sense of audience affects his (sometimes apparently contradictory) use of materials from his reading. The book also has interesting things to say about the relation of manuscript to print publication in this period and the evolution of Milton’s religious and political thought. For example in chapter 3, on Areopagitica, Fulton does a commendable job of summarizing recent debates about the work and argues (against Stanley Fish and others) that it is a strong tolerationist document (102). Among other things, Fulton analyzes Milton’s changing use of the term “discipline” to maintain (as Barbara Lewalski and others have done) that Areopagitica culminates a two-year period in which Milton “turned sharply from key concepts identifying a long tradition of Puritan and Calvinist political thought,” with the “seeds for this defining turn … already planted in the Commonplace Book” (96–97).

The story that Fulton tells of Milton in the mid-1640s–51 runs something like this: Milton’s increasing disillusionment with Parliament (rhetorical flattery notwithstanding) led him away from polemics and toward two different projects: publishing his poetry in 1645 and working on history, notably his History of Britain. The latter reflected Milton’s ongoing interest in historical evidence (of the sort referenced frequently in the Commonplace Book), and the manuscript “Digression,” which compares the lost opportunity of his own time with the lost opportunity for British freedom in the fifth century after the Roman occupation, remained unpublished in 1670 by Milton’s own choice, not the censor’s. Its exclusion suggests Milton’s care in adjusting his print publication to best rhetorical effect, understanding his audience’s expectations and limitations. (Fulton makes this case more firmly in his chapters on Tenure and Pro Populo.) Fulton further suggests that the “Digression” may have been excluded because the events of 1648 gave Milton new hope, and even if that hope was dashed with the Restoration, he was willing to take a longer view in 1670 than he was able to sustain in the mid-1640s.

More important, I believe, than this argument about the “Digression” is the good work Fulton does with Milton’s Commonplace Book, particularly its political index. He shows it to be a record of research drawn largely from historical examples and political theory, as opposed to a (more usual) set of sententiae drawn largely from classical and biblical texts (50–51, 55–57, 201); it is a resource for political thought rather than a catalog of customary authorities. The evidence of Milton’s reading clarifies some of the sources and influences that led to his arguments for civil and religious liberty based on history and natural law, instead of the more expected Bible and classical authority. This is especially true for Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, written with renewed hope for England’s future after Pride’s Purge at the end of 1648. Yet it is also clear, Fulton argues, that Milton uses his sources (or, in the case of Machiavelli, does not indicate his sources) to support a radical and somewhat idiosyncratic view of natural law, human freedom, and popular sovereignty. “Milton’s task in The Tenure was to go beyond the tradition of resistance theory in Protestant theology to show that both kings and magistrates are given power by those over whom they hold authority. That the ‘tenure’ given them … is determined by the people” (151). In a case such as this, Milton the rhetorician must use terms and examples that will invite his reader to pay attention but perhaps, Fulton seems to suggest, not enough attention to accuse Milton of leaving the Protestant mainstream.

Fulton makes the point that The Tenure’s first edition, written while the trial of Charles I was in progress and published shortly after his execution, borrows in its haste many direct citations from the Commonplace Book, which in practice meant much from historical example and little or nothing from scripture or the classics (155–56). Writing later on behalf and in defense of the Commonwealth government in Eikonoklastes and Pro Populo, Fulton argues, Milton is more careful to include materials form the biblical and Protestant Reformation tradition and to appear, at least, to use them somewhat more sympathetically than he had in the Tenure. In Pro Populo Milton also shows off his classical learning, in part to meet the expectations of his international audience and in part to embarrass his polemical adversary, the classicist Salmasius. Fulton adduces, among other evidence, this nice statistic: while Tenure has but five classical references, Pro Populo has 230 (191).

Fulton takes great care to make his points and argue his positions carefully and with considerable evidence. He is generous in alluding to the many shoulders on which he stands, both historians and literary scholars. While many of his conclusions are not new, his careful arguments strengthen the case for Milton as a tolerationist, radical thinker, and master rhetorician. My only quarrel with this book is that I almost wish it had become two books, one on the relation of the manuscript materials to Milton’s evolving view of civil liberty and one on the history of manuscript and print culture and Milton’s uses of both in the context of his time. As it now stands the book suffers (mildly) from incomplete coherence and a sense of the same arguments being repeated for only slightly different purposes. Nonetheless, I admire this book and heartily recommend it to both my Miltonist colleagues and to those interested in the history of the book, in the evolution of civil libertarian thought, and in the use of evidence in rhetorical and polemical strategy.