Wow, Conrad. For 18 you're well read. I love the Romantic poets you mentioned as well as Coleridge and Keats. It may interest you to know that Wordsworth ( who according to the great scholar Northrup Frye
cherished Milton as did every 18th century Romantic writer ) waited his entire life for the reincarnation of Milton. William Blake believed Milton was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and wrote the poem "Milton"
believing he was the reincarnation of Milton.Wordsworth met the little known Blake and read his "Songs Of
Innocence and Experience" as well as "The Four Zoas", his prophecies about Europe and America and his masterpiece "Jerusalem". Wordsworth thought Blake was a madman but made more sense to him than his bitter rival Lord Byron. It wasn't until nearly a century later that scholars came across the obscure
Blake whose work became famous posthumously. But, Wordsworth should have known better. It is widely believed that John Keats who died at 26 would have been the greatest writer ever had he lived a lot longer.
He was a Romantic who wrote his five great odes and a book "On Milton" before he got sick and stopped writing at age 24. Milton aided Oliver Cromwell in bringing down King Charles I which caused a domino effect through Europe and Milton heavily influenced The U.S.Constitution especially with the greatest
prose piece and polemic ever written:" Aereopagitica". The U.S. intellectuals and politicians interpreted
Milton's supreme epic "Paradise Lost" as fuel to fight the British. Milton's 17th century ideas of free will, freedom of speech, the necessity to allow divorce, the need to always keep church and government
separate, the corruption of the clergy, the need for popular culture and banning hateful or pornographic material made him the world's greatest and most influential writer along with Shakespeare. He is the most
difficult writer to understand and his companion poems ( He was blind and relied on his memory for most
of his works ) "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" were full of beautiful images and metaphors but simply went over every critic and scholar's head. Writer/Critics like S.T. Coleridge and T.S. Eliot could not "mine the
ore" of these poems. What I find strange is that the two greatest writers ever are shrouded in mystery.
Dr. Samuel Jonson was critical of Shakespeare and Milton because of this. As for The Roman Empire
there was a lot of religious dogma and corruption that laid the groundwork for The Roman Catholic Church
which was one of the most evil entities in history. I despised many Roman leaders like Nero, Caligula and even Constantine and instead admired the Greeks especially, Plato, Socrates, Euripides, Homer, Sappho,
Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Sophocles and other writer/philosophers. I did like Lucretius' "On The Nature Of
The Universe" and other Roman writers like Horace ( who Milton liked ), Pindar and Machiavelli's "The Prince" which was a philosophical treatise on the corruption of politicians.An idea he had in common with Shakespeare and Milton. I took philosophy and while some of the thinkers like Plato, DesCartes, Mills and
St. Thomas Acquinas were the few I related to and liked I despised empiricists like Locke, as well as
existentialists like Camus and Sartre. I hated Neitsczhe although I have to admit he was misrepresented by the Nazis. I have no respect for the nazi poet Ezra Pound, who can stuff his Cantos, original as they may be. As for female authors I like Margaret Atwood, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, Margaret Laurence
and Sylvia Plath. But I'll stop here as I've probably put some people to sleep. -Greg B.
Greg Bauder has a BA in English and has had five books published about schizophrenia, a disease he's had for 31 years.
Melissa_W
