Tillyard, one of the foremost Milton scholars of his day, had suggested that we can only fully understand Paradise Lost when we understand the man who wrote it.

Professor Harding, a Milton scholar at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, does not mean to suggest that there is anything demonic about Democrats.

He's never been comfortable with the T. S. Eliot tradition, he says, though he's one of the leading Milton scholars in America.

Mr. Lewis may be forgiven his error, for rather than reading the lengthy and complex "Areopagitica," he has apparently relied on the opinions of the many Milton scholars who should know better but don't wish to.

But jabs are likely, if not from the faithful, then almost certainly from Milton scholars.

John Rogers, Class of '84, and the English department's resident Milton scholar, said, "It's the God-damnedest thing I've ever seen."

It has been well received by Milton scholars and collectors worldwide.

I had no idea you were a Milton scholar.

He used to fancy himself a Milton scholar, but never buckled down to work and now thinks that had he stayed in America, he "would have been nothing."

Contentedly married to a Milton scholar named Martin, she is at work on a biography of the Canadian pioneer Susanna Moodie (about whom, incidentally, Ms. Shields herself has written a book).