Not the fellow he became …

… The Young and Restless Milton – In Medias Res – Medium. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Paradise Lost dominates our view of the poet. We think of him as a grim, aloof ideologue who inhabited a magnificent but joyless world. Many of his political tracts and mature poems reinforce that image. Most readers find it hard to imagine the younger poet who was insecure, lovesick, and even raunchy. It is even harder to imagine Milton joking about the Trinity as he does in Elegiarum Liber (“The Book of Elegies”).