In assessing the merits of any life of Milton, there is a tendency to allow one criterion to dominate the rest. What does the book make of Milton's political involvement, his personal relationships, his theological beliefs, his position within his century, his development as a poet, his writing of Paradise Lost? In the case of Eden Renewed, the title alone suggests that the last of these might safely be given first place; and in fact chapters one to ten are in part a perceptive and sympathetic demonstration of how all the other strands of Milton's life led towards the culminating endeavour of his most famous work. Peter Levi's readership will surely include many whose interest in Milton stems chiefly from their interest in Paradise Lost. In addition, a certain tension has been built up by the time one arrives at the chapter entitled "The Great Poem".

It would be unfair to expect Levi's treatment of Paradise Lost to be as inspiring as the poem, but a book-by-book account, whether one knows the work or not, is the most mundane format one could possibly have. Things do improve when Levi himself becomes more enthusiastic. His immediate responses are vivid and beguiling when he finds these qualities in the poetry, and he says of our first parents, "Milton adores them and is enthusiastic about their coupling", and, "Beetles and worms sensibly keep off while Adam and Eve make love" (so do the birds and beasts, but let us not quibble). The companionable and non-scholarly style of the biography works quite well in this chapter, unmarred by the lack of sources for prose quotations which in the earlier chapters could well prove irksome to those whose memory or knowledge is unequal to filling the gaps. But Levi clearly does not feel that his praise of the temptation scene between Satan and Eve ("we feel it as drama, enjoy it as poetry and admire it as literature, all at once") can be applied to very much of the poem.

He is disinclined to allow any directly political reading of Paradise Lost, arguing that Michael's forecast in Books 11 and 12 "makes no mention whatever of the events of 1649-60", and contending (in oblique disagreement with Alastair Fowler) that the reference in Book 1 to Charlemain falling by Fontarabbia "cannot be an intended insult to Charles II, who went to Fuenterrabia in 1659, because no one noticed it was". (The logic seems even shakier than that of the assertion in chapter 13 that Milton's own progress from innocent to passionate lover can be fairly deduced "from his description of the two conditions in Paradise Lost".) It is surprising to be told the invocation to Book 9 expresses Milton's suspicion that "true epic verse was unattainable in London in the mid-17th century". The possibility that the poet, with his "higher argument", might be attempting an epic of an entirely new and superior kind is ignored, as is the idea that it might be quite deliberate on Milton's part to make Satan an "epic hero misconceived and exaggerated".

Three pages of general discussion of Paradise Lost in the penultimate chapter ("The great poet") finish with the remark: "Paradise Lost is a remarkable performance, and it repays the study it requires". One can hardly feel it has repaid Levi's, if he can also say: "It seems to me that the entire plot is merely a string in the end to tie together the things Milton chooses to write about: he might have done better to write an Odyssey". Space is, however, given to Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes in the same chapter. The former has always been a favourite of Levi's, and the latter is awe-inspiringly original, and "has long been taken for Milton's final and perhaps greatest moral statement". A seven-page consideration of Milton's "brilliantly lucid and trenchant" De Doctrina Christiana is saved for the final chapter, where Levi does not think it has taken up too much of our time, though it may have taken up too much of Milton's.

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The reader is left more than a little baffled by this attempt to salute the memorable achievements of a peculiarly distinguished mind. The ghost of an ungraspable greatness hovers over the last few pages, but the concluding quotation from John Toland (acknowledging Milton as a defender of liberty, and believer in the divine properties of goodness, justice, and mercy), is perhaps as good a resting place as any.

Rodie Sudbery is a researcher and part-time tutor in English literature, University of York.

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