He also wrote poetry ...

... The power of Milton. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Campbell and Corns discover a Milton who would have been at home in the corridors of New Labour power or in the managerialized modern university. He is a nimble committee man, like some wily pro-vice-chancellor who proudly wears his radical credentials yet is prepared to write position papers to order and to modify his stance in response to subtle changes in the ideological direction of his leader. Milton’s great enemy Salmacius comes to resemble Professor Maurice Zapp, the character in the campus novels of David Lodge: a “celebrity scholar” with his inflated salary and termagant wife “who bossed him around while simultaneously promoting and managing his academic career with a ruthless vigour”.