Epic Silence

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England's great poet is a frustrating subject for a Life

Milton: Poet, pamphleteer and patriot By Anna Beer Bloomsbury Pounds 20

There were "perhaps" sweetmeats and junkets at the baptism of John Milton. "Perhaps" his father received a special cake. The celebration "might" have continued in the local inns later in the day.

This kind of suppositious language, the stock-in-trade of biographers faced with a dearth of hard fact, appears on the first page of Anna Beer's account of John Milton's life and work. Elsewhere she is fastidious in avoiding it, even having a bit of fun with those who are less scrupulous. Here, for instance, is AN Wilson, from his …