One of the topics that Milton discusses in Areopagitica (1644) is the inadequacy of cloistered virtue. The focus of his discussion is The Faerie Queene (1590,1596,1609), in which Spenser relates Mammon's temptation of Guyon in the underworld (FQ, 2.7). Milton writes as follows:

He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister'd vertue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary. That vertue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evill, and knows not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank vertue, not a pure; her whitenesse is but an excrementall whitenesse; Which was the reason why our sage and serious Poet Spencer, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher then Scotus or Aquinas, describing true temperance under the person of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bowr of earthly blisse that he might see and know, and yet abstain. Since therefore the knowledge and survay of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of human vertue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more safely, and with lesse danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity then by reading all manner of tractats, and hearing all manner of reason? (CPW, 2:514-17).

    Thus Milton describes Guyon and the Palmer in The Faerie Queene. The passage is significant as one of Milton's strongest comments in praise of Spenser and has become the focal point of discussions concerning Spenser's influence on Milton (Guillory, Poetic Authority, 131). But as readers of Spenser recognize, the Palmer does not accompany Guyon into Mammon's cave. Milton's retelling of The Faerie Queene departs from Spenser's text, and scholars have generally held that Milton made a mistake. Milton's summary of Guyon's adventure clashes with most readings of Spenser's poem, and John Guillory has noted the unusual complexity of critical debate surrounding Milton's words (Guillory, "Milton, John," 474). Probably more than anyone else, Harold Bloom has drawn attention to Milton's mistake. Bloom argues that Milton unconsciously rewrites Spenser's text to distance himself from his poetic precursor, and he has used Milton's reworking of The Faerie Queene to support his larger theory of the anxiety of influence.(FN1) But Milton's restatement of Guyon's journey is not as egregious an error as critics have generally suggested. On close examination, Milton's revision of The Faerie Queene turns out to be more deliberate than accidental and is part of his rhetorical strategy rather than a mistake.
    The critical tradition surrounding Milton's lapse apparently begins with Ernest Sirluck. In a gloss on the passage, Sirluck says that while the error shows that Milton thought he knew The Faerie Queene well enough not to check the text, he also misunderstood Spenser's psychology. According to Sirluck, Guyon needs the active intervention of reason, as represented by the Palmer, to resist the temptations of the Bower of Bliss, but Spenser separates Guyon from the Palmer partly to show that Guyon's habitual temperance is sufficient to resist Mammon. When Milton remembers and reworks the incident, he does not separate the Palmer from Guyon. Sirluck argues that Milton is being less Aristotelian than Spenser, and that Milton "is less disposed to rely on the security of habit; in all significant situations, choosing [...] is, for him, active reasoning" (CPW, 2:516n108).(FN2)
    Sirluck's observation and analysis attracted the attention of later critics. Some, such as Edward W. Tayler, have chiefly repeated Sirluck's interpretation without significant elaboration (194), while others, such as Paul M. Dowling and Maureen Quilligan, have gone further. Dowling notes Sirluck's explanation of the separation of Guyon and the Palmer in The Faerie Queene and adds that Milton rewrites the episode to agree with his rejection of virtue founded on habit ("Scholastick Grosnesse," 70-71). For Quilligan, Milton's revision introduces the presence of a reader, in the form of the Palmer, into the text of Guyon's actions, and his mistake shows his recognition that there is an extra presence within the text, one that sees and knows and sometimes abstains (51, 65). But of all the reactions to Milton's allusion, Bloom's has been particularly influential and widely quoted. Bloom calls Milton's revision an "astonishing mistake" (Map, 127) one that is "no ordinary error, no mere lapse in memory, but is itself a powerful misinterpretation of Spenser, and a strong defense against him. For Guyon is not so much Adam's precursor as he is Milton's own, the giant model imitated by the Abdiel of Paradise Lost" (Map, 128). According to Bloom, "St. Augustine identified memory with the father, and we may surmise that a lapse in a memory as preternatural as Milton's is a movement against the father" (Map, 128). Milton's error is, for Bloom, an unconscious act through which "Milton re-writes Spenser so as to increase the distance between his poetic father and himself" (Map, 128).
    Guillory has considered Bloom's position at length, but he argues that "Milton is writing to decrease the distance between himself and Spenser," to add Spenser's name to his argument (Poetic Authority, 132). He finds it unlikely that Guyon is a "giant model" for either Milton or Abdiel, and he argues that if Bloom's interpretation were correct, then "Milton would have written the Mammon episode as Spenser did, with Guyon unaccompanied, and he misremembers the fact of the Palmer's absence to reserve for himself the heroic model of virtue standing alone against temptation" (Poetic Authority, 133). For Guillory, such a reading is flawed, though, because it depends heavily on Milton's later characterization of Abdiel in Paradise Lost (1667,1674). Guillory notes that the Lady of A Mask (1634) is more contemporary with Areopagitica, that "she needs the accompaniment of someone like the Palmer," and that Milton is more likely looking back at A Mask than ahead toward his epic (Poetic Authority, 133). For Guillory, Milton "has the guilty conscience of the student who has diverged from his teacher" (Poetic Authority, 134). Guillory's Milton recognizes the danger of self-reliance and "must 'bring in' the Palmer even as he brings Spenser into his argument, because it is the absence of both that signifies danger" (Poetic Authority, 135).
    Milton's revision of Spenser in Areopagitica is but one of various mistakes that appear throughout his works. While these errors have been noted in passing, they have seldom received extensive critical scrutiny (Leonard, 118nl). In his study of Milton's inaccurate allusions, John Leonard acknowledges that while Milton sometimes makes mistakes, on other occasions his alleged errors are volitional. According to Leonard, Milton's inaccuracies often follow a pattern of exaggerating the heroism or virtue of historical persons or literary figures. The critic must then decide whether Milton errs because he imagines an ideal world that never was, or if he intentionally misrepresents the facts for an iconoclastic or ironic purpose (96-97). Leonard proposes three questions for assessing Milton's mistakes: "1) Is Milton really inaccurate? 2) If so, is he being deliberately ironic? 3) If there is a deliberate irony, does it enhance or spoil the poem?" (102).
    The Palmer's separation from Guyon in book 2 of The Faerie Queene is a basic element of Spenser's plot. So too, the Cave of Mammon is one of the most memorable settings in Spenser's poem. But Spenser does not mention the Palmer at all during Guyon's temptation. In fact, Spenser belabors the separation of the Palmer from Guyon prior to the knighf s descent into Mammon's den:

So Guyon hauing lost his trusie guyde,
  Late left beyond that Ydle lake, proceedes
  Yet on his way, of none accompanyde;
  And euermore himselfe with comfort feedes,
  Of his owne verrues, and praise-worthie deedes. (FQ, 2.7.2.1-5)

    And after Guyon leaves Mammon's cave, Spenser emphasizes that the Palmer is reunited with him:

During the while, that Guyon did abide
  In Marnons house, the Palmer, whom whyleare
  That wanton Mayd of passage had denide,
  By further search had passage found elsewhere. (FQ, 2.8.3.1-4)

    In departing from Spenser's text, Milton follows Leonard's paradigm, and his error helps make the Guyon of Areopagitica seem more virtuous though not necessarily more heroic than the knight of The Fame Queene. Spenser's Guyon possibly displays greater strength and courage by confronting Mammon's temptations without the Palmer's help, and he comes across as a conventionally self-reliant hero. But for Milton, the presence of the Palmer affirms the propriety of Guyon's actions, since the Palmer is a moral guide. Milton believes that there may be danger in rash self-reliance, whether the lone heroism of Guyon in Tlie Faerie Queene or the unassisted interpretation of texts, and his introduction of the Palmer in Areopagitica underscores his belief that "all such [religious] tractats whether false or true are as the Prophesie of Isaiah was to the Eunuch, not to be understood without a guide" (CPW, 2:519).(FN3) To apply Leonard's three-part test to Milton's allusion, Milton seems to be inaccurate, but only at first glance; on closer examination, Spenser's text supports Milton's interpretation. Milton's reworking of The Faerie Queene also seems deliberately ironic. And Milton's irony enhances the effect of Areopagitica.
    Milton was thoroughly acquainted with Spenser's works, and his close familiarity with them makes his alleged error in Areopagitica unlikely. Even Bloom acknowledges as much when he cites Milton's "preternatural" memory (Map, 128). Alexander Gill the elder, the High Master of St. Paul's School when Milton was a student there, provided numerous examples from Spenser's poems, especially The Faerie Queene, in his Logonomia Anglica (1619 and 1621), whichMilton may have used as a textbook (Clark, 66-74; Fletcher, 1:168-87). In his Animadversions Upon the Remonstrants Defence, against Smectymnuus (1641), Milton cites "our admired Spencer" as a moral authority (CPW, 1:722), and he quotes at length from the May Eclogue of The Shepheardes Calender (1579) (CPW, 1:723). Milton's early poetry shows his debt to Spenser more than to any other English writer. He follows Spenser's example by using alexandrines to conclude the stanzas of On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough (1628), On the Morning of Christ's Nativity (1629), The Passion (1630), "On Time" (1633), and "At a Solemn Music" (1633). While Milton did not use archaic language as much as Spenser, he nonetheless follows Spenser's example in "On Shakespeare" (1630), where he mentions a "Star-ypointing Pyramid" (line 4); in On the Death of a Pair Infant Dying of a Cough, in which he uses "envermeil" (line 6), "eld" (line 13), and "Whilom" (line 24); in the Nativity Ode, where he employs "ere" (line 86), "ychain'd" (line 155), and "eyn" (line 223); and in A Mask, where he writes "mickle" (line 31), "to-ruffl'd" (line 380), and "azurn" (line 893). Milton's widow Elizabeth Minshull remembered that he had counted Spenser among his favorite English poets, and John Dryden remarked in the preface to his Fables Ancient and Modern (1700) that Milton had called Spenser his "original."(FN4) Milton apparently alludes to Spenser in "II Penseroso" (ca. 1631), where he says that

              great Bards beside
In sage and solemn tunes have sung,
Of Tourneys and of Trophies hung,
Of Forests, and enchantments drear,
Where more is meant than meets the ear. (lines 116-20)

    And in A Mask, the Attendant Spirit mentions

What the sage Poets taught by th' heavenly Muse
Storied of old in high immortal verse
Of dire Chimeras and enchanted Isles,
And rifted Rocks whose entrance leads to hell, (lines 515-18)

    So too, Milton features the nymph Sabrina in A Mask, and his myth of her drowning (lines 824-51) recalls but also departs from Spenser's account of her death (FQ, 2.10.19). Milton's discussion of Sabrina is preceded by his reference to Meliboeus, "The soothest Shepherd that ere pip't on plains" (line 823), an allusion to Spenser as Milton's poetic precursor and the source of his tale.
    The world of The Faerie Queene is part of the background of Milton's hell in Paradise Lost. Most obviously, Milton's allegory of Sin and Death in book 2 of his epic is at least partly indebted to Spenser's depiction of Error in book 1 of The Faerie Queene. And like the dark geography of The Faerie Queene, with its mysterious caves and forests, Milton's hell is a world of "Rocks, Caves, Lakes, Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death,/A Universe of death" (PL, 2.621-22). Mammon's temptation of Guyon particularly impressed Milton, and Spenser's Cave of Mammon is fundamental to the hell of Paradise Lost. Indeed, Bloom states, "Spenser's cave of Mammon is Milton's Hell" (Map, 128), and Guillory repeats Bloom's assertion (Poetic Authority, 136).(FN5) Mammon, in turn, figures prominently in Milton's underworld. In his account of the mining of hell, Milton says that under Mammon's instruction, humans "with impious hands/Rifl'd the bowels of thir mother Earth/For Treasures better hid" (PL, 1.686-88). Spenser's Mammon similarly mentions "the hid treasures" (FQ, 2.7.17.3) in "the quiet wombe" (FQ, 2.7.17.1) and "sacred tombe" (FQ, 2.7.17.3) of earth being dug with "Sacriledge" (FQ, 2.7.17A). Milton follows his account of the mining of hell with a description of smelting (PL, 1.700-07); in doing so, he recalls the smelting that takes place in Mammon's cave (FQ, 2.7.35-36).(FN6)
    The strong influence of Spenser on Milton's early poems preceded Areopagitica by about a decade. As the Trinity manuscript indicates, Milton was outlining dramatic versions oiParadise Lost around 1640 (CPW, 8:554-55,559-60; Shawcross, 173); and according to John Aubrey, Milton's nephew Edward Phillips had read some lines of Paradise Lost 4 around 1642 (13). Phillips later confirmed his reading of Milton's epic in his 1694 biography of the poet (72-73). While Milton's work on book 1 of Paradise Lost cannot be conclusively dated to the 1640s, he may nonetheless have been pondering Spenser's Mammon around the time that he was drafting Areopagitica. The figure of "our sage and serious Poet Spencer" was on his mind from the early poems through the appearance of that phrase in Areopagitica, as evidenced by his references to "sage and solemn tunes" in "H Penseroso" (line 117), and "sage Poets" (line 515) and "the sage/And serious doctrine of Virginity" (lines 786-87) in A Mask (line 515). Given the significance that Milton attaches to Spenser in his early writings, the importance of Mammon's cave to Paradise Lost, and Milton's praise of Spenser in Areopagitica, a reader as astute and sensitive as Milton would not have overlooked so obvious a point as Spenser's separation of Guyon from the Palmer.
    On its own, Milton's apparent misreading of Spenser seems surprisingly careless. But it is all the more striking since it is just one of several errors he makes in Areopagitica. In that carefully crafted work he makes two mistakes concerning the Licensing Order (CPW, 2:519nl20,2:569n303); he confuses the accounts of Valerius Maximus and Plutarch concerning Archilochus of Paros (CPW, 2:496n37); and he apparently contradicts Jerome on the matter of Cicero's editing of Lucretius (CPW, 2:498-99n49). In discussing these errors, Christopher Grose says that Milton's memory is "uncharacteristically flawed," and that his errors cannot be attributed to his sources. While Grose notes that Milton's revision of Spenser differs from his apparent lapses in scholarship, he adds that Milton sometimes disagrees with and even silently corrects Paolo Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent (222nl).(FN7) While such errors might point to sloppiness or carelessness on Milton's part, they also shed light on his methodology. He feels free to select, adapt, revise, and correct the works of others so that he may accommodate earlier writings to further his own views. In doing so, however, he presents so many inaccuracies that at times his tract seems unreliable.
    In light of his willingness to rework earlier material, Milton's alleged mistakes seem intentional and the resulting unreliability of his text appears volitional. The title page of Milton's pamphlet reads: Areopagitica; A Speech of Mr. John Milton For the Liberty of Vnlicenc'd Printing, To the Parlament of England.(FN8) The title of Areopagitica indicates that the work is a speech, and a speech made to Parliament. But Areopagitica was only a pamphlet in the form of a speech, and though it was addressed to Parliament it was not read there. Milton's title is an allusion to the Seventh Oration of Isocrates (ca. 355 b.c.), often called the Areopagiticus or Areopagitic Discourse, a speech designed to be read, not spoken; and the parallel between Areopagitica and the Areopagiticus is chiefly their form and situation (CPW, 2:486nl).(FN9) Beginning with the title page of his pamphlet, Milton deliberately misleads the reader. By proclaiming Areopagitica a speech, he gives an early signal that the text that follows may not completely be what it seems. And by calling his pamphlet a speech, Milton introduces the character of a fictional speaker, a common citizen who, like any other citizen, is capable of making mistakes. And so the "mistakes" that occur in Areopagitica are not the failings of Milton; they are, rather, the errors of Milton's persona, the "Mr. John Milton" who makes a speech to Parliament.
    Milton's approach in Areopagitica is consistent with his rhetorical strategy in other works. He carefully crafts an identity as a poet and speaker throughout his writings, and he was acutely interested in oral discourse (Marcus, 177-227; Wittreich, "The Crown of Eloquence," 3-54). In Samson Agonistes (1671), he casts the biblical legend of Samson in the form of a dramatic poem and conveys meaning through the conversations of his characters. In Paradise Regained (1671), he tells his tale largely through dialogues between Jesus and Satan. In addition, he begins that work with an invocation identifying himself as the author of Paradise Lost, an epic which includes invocations, the persona of a blind bard, and the political orations of Satan, Belial, Beelzebub, Moloch, and Mammon in Pandcemonium (PL, 2.11-506). In his prose works, too, he likewise demonstrates a strong concern for orality. His prolusions, which he delivered during his Cambridge years (1625-32), were a series of oral arguments displaying his early interest in rhetoric. In prolusion 6, for example, he considers himself in relation to such orators as Demosthenes, Aeschines, and Cicero (CPW, 1:268); and he compares himself at length to Orpheus and Amphion, two mythological figures known for their eloquence (CPW, 1:269). In The Reason of Church-Government (1642), he thinks of the pamphlet wars of the 1640s as a clash of speeches, in which the contention of the pamphleteers is "a troubl'd sea of noises and hoars disputes" (CPW, 1:821). In that same work he explains that while in Italy, he recited from memory some poems that he had composed as a young man (CPW, 1:809). These early poems, whether written or not, lived in his mind and were expressed to his listeners through his voice. For Milton, printed words may possess the characteristics and effects of speech and give life to their imagined speaker. For example, in his A Defence of the People of England (1651), he writes of Charles I rising from the dead and commending himself to the people through new slyness and meretricious arguments in the posthumously published Eikon Basilike (1649) (CPW, 4:306). The dead king speaks through the printed page, as if he were still alive. The idea also appears in Areopagitica, where he writes that "Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are" (CPW, 2:492). He continues his concern with orality in A Second Defence of the English People (1654). Though the work is a pamphlet, he presents it as a speech and gives explicit attention to oratory. He compares himself to "the distinguished orators of ancient times" (CPW, 4:554) and says that he shall "outstrip all the orators of every age" in the grandeur of his subject and theme (CPW, 4:554). He envisions himself "surrounded, in the Forum or on the Rostra," not by Romans or Athenians, but "with virtually all of Europe attentive, in session, and passing judgment" (CPW, 4:554). He says fhathe will speak "to the entire assembly and council of all the most influential men, cities, and nations everywhere" (CPW, 4:554). The printed page becomes for Milton a means of sharing his voice with the largest possible audience.
    Because oratory implies a speaker, Milton's written imitation of oral argument develops his literary persona. His early political tracts reveal his careful fashioning of a public image (Wheeler, 264; Loewenstein, "Milton and the Poetics of Defense," 183-84). In The Reason of Church-Government he recounts his education, his travels, and his aspirations for a poetic career (CPW, 1:808-16). He indicates that he has been reluctantly called from his poetic vocation by the troubles of his time, and that his prose writing is merely an achievement of his "left hand" (CPW, 1:808). In A Second Defence of the English People, he details his early studies, his incipient blindness, his Cambridge years, his reading of Greek and Latin authors, his Italian journey, and his engagement in the religious and political disputes of his era (CPW, 4:612-29). He explains that while he had settled down to his studies upon returning to England, his conscience prompted him to devote "all my talents and all my active powers" to the political and religious controversies of his day (CPW, 4:622). He combines his literary persona and interest in orality most notably in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce (1643, 1644), a work precipitated chiefly by his failed marriage to Mary Powell and which contains what Annabel Patterson has called "hidden autobiography" ("No Meer Amatorious Novel?" 92).(FN10) While the 1643 edition appeared anonymously, the title page of the 1644 edition identifies its author as "J.M." The title page of the 1644 edition adds: "To the Parlament of England with the Assembly," a note which invites comparison between the pamphlet and a speech. The 1644 edition begins, in turn, with a prefatory address to Parliament, in which Milton says, "I will utter now a doctrine" (CPW, 2:227); he thus presents himself as a speaker delivering an oration.
    Milton continues to express his interest in orality in Areopagitica, and the inaccuracies committed by the speaker in that work illuminate Milton's reading of The Faerie Queene. Milton feels free to accommodate the literal meaning of Spenser's text to suit his own didactic message; and rather than a grave misinterpretation, this accommodation is actually a plausible reading of Spenser's poem. Por Milton, Guyon is the embodiment of "true temperance" (CPW, 2:516). He is not the embodiment of "temperance stripped of reason," or of "habitual temperance." When Guyon enters Mammon's cave, he sees and knows temptation, and yet abstains. Throughout his subterranean soujourn, he makes choices and engages in rational discourse. When Mammon first meets Guyon, he underestimates the knight by mistaking him for an irrational being. "I read thee rash, and heedlesse of thy selfe," says Mammon (FQ, 2.7.7.8). Mammon then seeks to explain to Guyon the advantages of riches. But Guyon replies that knightly adventures are sufficient wealth for him (FQ, 2.7.10), and he explains at length that greed leads to many ills and evils (FQ, 2.7.12-14). Guyon further argues that it would be wrong to take Mammon's treasure, for the treasure was likely taken "From rightfull owner by vnrighteous lott,/Or thatbloudguiltnesse or guile themblott" (FQ, 2.7.19.4-5). When Guyon prepares to engage in a pointless battle against Disdain, Mammon convinces him not to, "hauing him with reason pacifyde" (FQ, 2.7.43.1). The knight encounters Tantalus, but he chooses not to help the sinner:

Abide the fortune of thy present fate,
And vnto all that Hue in high degree,
Ensample be of mind more temperate,
To teach them how to vse their present state. (FQ, 2.7.60.2-5)

    Guyon successfully evades Mammon's temptations because he exercises reason:

But he was wary wise in all his way,
 And well perceiued his deceiptfull sleight,
 Ne suffred lust his safety to betray;
So goodly did beguile the Guyler of his pray. (FQ, 2.7.64.6-9)

    Mammon's final attempt to destroy Guyon, and Guyon's resistance of that temptation, underscore Guyon's ability to think. Mammon tells the knight, "Ne sittest downe on that same siluer stoole,/To rest thy weary person, in the shadow coole" (FQ, 2.7.63.8-9). The "siluer stoole" is the Chair of Forgetfulness, on which Theseus was trapped by Hades.(FN11) Thus Guyon successfully evades the dissolution of his mind and the complete loss of rationality. According to David Mikics, the silver chair is Mammon's threat to transform Guyon into an allegorical figure so self-sufficient that he would be totally immobile. But Guyon avoids the immobility inherent in utter forgetfulness and continues to subject himself to the temptations that he strives to overcome (66). Instead of living a life of fugitive and cloistered virtue on the Chair of Forgetfulness, Spenser's knight continues to sally out and see his adversaries. Throughout his visit to Mammon's cave, he debates his tempter and responds to him as rationally as Jesus answers Satan in Paradise Regained. He is able to do so because he has internalized the Palmer and the rational capacity which the Palmer represents. But while Guyon embodies reason, he does not do so as perfectly as the Palmer. There are occasions when he needs the Palmer to guide him, but at other times his own reason is sufficient. And while Guyon presumably is not able to find his own way out of Mammon's cave, the Palmer does not lead him to the surface. Instead, Mammon assumes the Palmer's role as guide: "For thy great Mammon fayrely he besought,/Into the world to guyde him backe, as he him brought" (FQ, 2.7.65.8-9).
    While the Palmer provides rational direction to Guyon, Sirluck is misleading when he suggests that there is a dichotomy between Guyon and the Palmer and between Reason and Habitual Temperance (CPW, 2:516nl08). Elizabeth Heale argues that because the Palmer repeatedly explains and distinguishes the truth, he represents Aristotelian "practical wisdom," which accompanies moral virtue but is distinct from it (52).(FN12) According to Aristotle, practical wisdom comes with age and experience, and the opinions of the aged deserve special consideration (Ethics, 6.11.6). Guyon and the Palmer are not representative of moral or psychological extremes. Both are rational, but the Palmer, by account of his age and experience, is wiser. As Milton would have expressed it, the Palmer is what one becomes after many years of seeing and knowing, and yet abstaining.
    For Milton, Guyon is never entirely without the Palmer. Though he has been physically separated from his guide, the knight has learned from his previous experiences, however limited, and is thus able to respond rationally to temptation. The Palmer is also very much present in Spenser's narrative precisely because Spenser separates him from Guyon. Spenser stresses their separation at the beginning of canto 7 and their reunion at the beginning of canto 8; as a result, the knighf s descent to hell is sandwiched between the disappearance and reappearance of the Palmer. Mammon's temptations are a test of Guyon's temperance, and because he passes the test, Guyon demonstrates that he has learned from the Palmer and from prior experiences. In so emphatically separating Guyon from the Palmer, and in stressing that Guyon ventures into Mammon's cave alone, Spenser introduces the Palmer as an alternative presence (FQ, 2.7.2). In stating that the Palmer does not physically accompany Guyon, Spenser implicitly asks the reader to anticipate whether Guyon will be able to withstand Mammon's temptations successfully. In doing so, Spenser invites the reader to consider an alternative text, one in which the Palmer would have accompanied the knight on his subterranean adventure. Thus the absence of the Palmer in Mammon's cave actually makes the Palmer present as a foil within Spenser's allegory, for the reader may contrast Spenser's text with the alternative text that Spenser could have written.
    But Milton would have had little reason to rewrite The Faerie Queene to make the Palmer's rationality shape the true temperance of Guyon. In fact, Areopagitica denies such an interpretation. Milton writes:

Well knows he who uses to consider, that our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion. Truth is compar'd in Scripture to a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetuall progression, they sick'n into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. A man may be a heretick in the truth; and if he beleeve things only because his Pastor sayes so, or the Assembly so determins, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds, becomes his heresie. There is not any burden that som would gladlier post off to another, then the charge and care of their Religion. There be, who knows not that there be of Protestants and professors who live and dye in as arrant an implicit faith, as any lay Papist of Loretta. (CPW, 2:543-44)

    The opening of this passage reasserts the inadequacy of unexercised morality and connects the text to Milton's earlier discussion of Guyon as the antithesis of cloistered virtue. But unlike a person who believes something because a pastor affirms it as the truth, Guyon does not need the affirmation of the Palmer when he is in Mammon's den. Guyon instead thinks for himself. Milton will let neither Pastor nor Palmer do Guyon's reasoning for him. Milton does not make a profound moral or psychological point by having the Palmer accompany Guyon into Mammon's cave, for to do so would undermine the supremacy of individual conscience.
    Milton's discussion of Guyon in Areopagitica is not a critical analysis of The Faerie Queene. It is, instead, a consideration of temperance, in which Spenser's epic is but one subordinate element. Milton's references to Guyon and the Palmer in Areopagitica show that he was interested in the larger unity of Spenser's study. Milton says of Guyon that Spenser "brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bowr of earthly blisse" (CPW, 2:516). Milton combines the Bower of Bliss and the Cave of Mammon in this sentence because he is really concerned with the totality of book 2. Both places are the object of the preposition "through," as if, for Milton, these settings are essentially one arena in which temptation takes place. As Guillory remarks, Milton calls the Bower of Bliss "earthly," and this epithet does not appear in Spenser's account. "The conditions of our earthly existence are uppermost in Milton's mind at this point," says Guillory, "obscuring the difference between the Cave of Mammon and the Bower of Bliss. In context it is more important for Milton to allow the Cave of Mammon to function as another emblem of our earthly existence than to acknowledge its status as an underworld" (Poetic Authority, 133). Milton does not clearly distinguish the Bower of Bliss from the Cave of Mammon, nor does he develop a distinction between the attraction of the flesh and the lure of wealth and power. According to Milton, Spenser brings Guyon "in with his palmer" (CPW, 2:516) into the overall treatment of temperance within the poem. While Guyon goes "through the cave of Mammon, and the bowr of earthly blisse" (CPW, 2:516), Milton does not emphasize that the Palmer accompanies Guyon into Mammon's cave. He merely summarizes that throughout Spenser's treatment of temperance in book 2 of The Faerie Queene, the Palmer generally accompanies Guyon, and that the entirety of Spenser's account is about both characters. Strictly speaking, Milton's comment is inaccurate; the Palmer does not physically accompany Guyon through the Cave of Mammon. But the inaccuracy does not seriously compromise Milton's meaning, since Milton correctly notes that the Palmer and Guyon visit the Bower of Bliss together, and he does not discuss at length Guyon's journey into Mammon's realm.
    Milton's loose handling of Spenser's text may be explained by his remark that Spenser is a "sage and serious Poet [...] whom I dare be known to think a better teacher then Scotus or Aquinas" (CPW, 2:516). By calling Spenser "sage and serious," Milton praises him as an authority. But by calling him a poet, Milton contrasts him with such rigorous Scholastic philosophers as Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Spenser is not necessarily more correct in his moral views than Scotus or Aquinas, but because he employs poetry rather than analytic discourse, he is "a better teacher." And when Milton remarks that "I dare be known to think" Spenser a superior teacher, he anticipates that his view of poetry as a didactic tool superior to Scholastic exposition will be controversial. In his reference to The Faerie Queene, Milton demonstrates the sort of didacticism that he praises in Spenser's poetry, for he focuses on conveying a moral point rather than on observing all of the niceties of a scholastic debate. Keith W. Stavely has argued that to give such close attention to language in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and Tetrachordon (1645) was "to write notpamphlets but poems," and that in between those two "good poems" Milton "wrote an even better one," Areopagitica (65-66).
    In committing his "error," which contrary to Bloom is not so "astonishing" after all, Milton actually follows the precedent of Spenser, his poetic mentor. Throughout The Faerie Queene, Spenser commits a number of alleged "errors." These mistakes were especially troublesome to such eighteenth-century critics as Thomas Warton, who wrote that because of his hurried imagination Spenser could not always find time to prevent repetitions, contradictions, and inconsistencies in his poems, with the result that he sometimes breaks the rules of propriety, truth, and probability (2:3). But Douglas Bush has been less critical of Spenser's alleged mistakes. Bush notes that while the large number of Spenser's mythological errors suggests weakness in his classical learning, many of these errors "must have been deliberate" (90-91). For example, Spenser says of Hercules: "for Mas sake he did apply/His mightie hands, the distaffe vile to hold" (FQ, 5.5.24.3-4). Ovid, however, says that Hercules performed this task for Omphale (Heroides, 9.73-118). But while Spenser departs from Ovid, he nonetheless could have been correctly alluding to Tasso's version of the myth in Jerusalem Delivered (1574) (16.3). And in Daphnaida (1591), Spenser alludes to "the mother of the Gods, that sought/For faire Eurydice her daughter deere/Throghout the world" (lines 463-65), apparently conflating the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice with that of Ceres and Proserpine. But in a gloss on line 28 of the October Eclogue of The Shepheardes Calender, Spenser's E. K. explains that Orpheus "recovered his wife Eurydice from hell." Thus Spenser was familiar with the myth.
    In Areopagitica Milton follows the example of Spenser, his poetic teacher, so that his handling of "errors" imitates Spenser's poetic liberties in The Faerie Queene. Milton's attitude toward the elusive nature of truth is summarized in his retelling in Areopagitica of the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris, which both he and Spenser would have known from Plutarch's Moralia (5:7-9; chs. 351-52) and from a wide range of Renaissance mythog-raphies and reference works.(FN13) Milton writes:

Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master, and was a perfect shape most glorious to look on: but when he ascended, and his Apostles after him were laid asleep, then strait arose a wicked race of deceivers, who as that story goes of the AEgyptian Typhon with his conspirators, how they dealt with the good Osiris, took the virgin Truth, hewd her lovely form into a thousand peeces, and scatter'd them to the four winds. From that time ever since, the sad friends of Truth, such as durst appear, imitating the carefull search that Isis made for the mangl'd body of Osiris, went up and down gathering up limb by limb still as they could find them. We have not yet found them all, Lords and Commons, nor ever shall doe, till her Masters second comming; he shall bring together every joynt and member, and shall mould them into an immortall feature of lovelines and perfection. (CPW, 2:549)

    Like a poet, Milton uses the simile of Isis and Osiris to describe the state of truth.(FN14) He employs the fictive and imaginative to discuss the nature of the literal and real. Moreover, the myth of Isis and Osiris is a pagan myth, and so he looks beyond Christian teaching for a poetic representation of the impossibility of reconstructing the truth. And just as he rewrites Guyon's encounter with Mammon, he modifies the myth of Isis and Osiris. In the pagan myth, Osiris is male and Isis is female. But in Milton's Christianiza-tion of the myth, Osiris becomes the female Truth, while Isis is the male Christ. Thus Milton transposes the genders of the figures. He does not make a mistake, since his text clearly demonstrates his knowledge of the genders of the mythological figures. But he does create a slightly inaccurate analogy, and deliberately so. As a simile, Milton's tale of Isis and Osiris is an indirect means of discussing truth. And in Areopagitica, the handling of the myth is far more sympathetic than Milton's banishment of the false Egyptian gods in the Nativity Ode:

Nor is Osiris seen
In Memphian Grove or Green,
 Trampling the unshow'r'd Grass with lowings loud:
Nor can he be at rest
Within his sacred chest,
 Naught but profoundest Hell can be his shroud:
In vain with Timbrel'd Anthems dark
The sable-stoled Sorcerers bear his worshipt Ark. (lines 213-20)

    The treatment of Isis, Osiris, Typhon, and other pagan deities in the Nativity Ode points to Milton's recognition of the inadequacy of the myth as a means of conveying truth. The true light of Christ, whose second coming Milton foretells in Areopagitica, blinds the darkness of Osiris in the Ode: "The rays of Bethlehem blind his dusky eyn" (line 223).
    Milton's retelling of the myth of Isis and Osiris in Areopagitica echoes his earlier remarks about Guyon. When he says that "Truth indeed came once into the world with her divine Master" (CPW, 2:549), his words recall the image of "true temperance under the person of Guion," whom Spenser brings "in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bowr of earthly blisse" (CPW, 2:516), The Palmer does, in fact, accompany Guyon into the Bower of Blisse, which Milton calls "earthly," and so the Palmer becomes analogous to the "divine Master" who accompanies "Truth" into "the world." But in Spenser's poem, which Milton "corrects," Mammon ironically is Guyon's guide through the cave. In Milton's account of Isis and Osiris, the monstrous Typhon mangles Osiris, or Truth, and scatters his limbs. Milton's description of Typhon recalls Spenser's comments about Mammon near the end of Guyon's journey: "That dreadfull feend, which did behind him wayt,/Would him haue rent in thousand peeces strayt" (FQ, 2.7.64.4-5). Ever since the mangling of Osiris by Typhon, the sad friends of Truth, "such as durst appear" (CPW, 2:549), seek to reassemble the fragments of Truth, much as Isis vainly tried to reassemble the limbs of Osiris. Milton likewise says that "I dare be known" to think Spenser a better teacher than Aquinas or Duns Scotus (CPW, 2:516). Thus he "durst appear" to seek the truth through Spenser's writings. The parallels between Milton's myth of Isis and Osiris and his retelling of Guyon's journey show the difficulty of ascertaining the truth.
    Throughout Areopagitica, Milton intentionally presents fragments or flawed reconstructions of truth. David Loewenstein has discussed Milton's creative selection and refashioning of history in the tract ("Areopagitica and the Dynamics of History," 77-93), while Nigel Smith has examined Milton's attempt to reassemble truth from such diverse components as natural law, public debate, censorship, Italian perceptions of the English, speech in Parliament, ideology, and audience (103-04). The various "mistakes" which Milton makes throughout Areopagitica seem all the more deliberate because of his likely close involvement with the publication of the work. Stephen B. Dobranski has argued that because "no serious revision seems to occur in the variants, careful correcting presumably took place earlier" ("Letter and Spirit," 138).
    Milton's rhetorical strategy makes it difficult for the reader to follow his argument, so that the experience of reading Areopagitica becomes a search for truth and-unity, much as Isis tries to reconstruct Osiris.(FN15) In his preface he says that he will first overview the history of licensing, "the inventors of it to bee those whom ye will be loath to own" (CPW, 2:491); "next what is to be thought in generall of reading, what ever sort the Books be; and that this Order avails nothing to the suppressing of scandalous, seditious, and libellous Books, which were mainly intended to be supprest" (CPW, 2:491); and "Last, that it will be primely to the discouragement of all learning, and the stop of Truth, not only by disexercising and blunting our abilities in what we know already, but by hindring and cropping the discovery that might bee yet further made both in religious and civill Wisdome" (CPW, 2:491-92). But rather than begin with the history of licensing, he digresses by arguing that "hee who destroyes a good Booke, kills reason it selfe, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye" (CPW, 2:492); and that "a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a life beyond life" (CPW, 2:493). After this brief discussion he offers his historical survey of licensing (CPW, 2:494-507). He then remarks: "But I have first to finish, as was propounded, what is to be thought in generall of reading Books, what ever sort they be, and whether be more the benefit, or the harm that thence proceeds?" (CPW, 2:507). Though he asserts that the reading of books is the subject of his discourse, he shifts his argument to a consideration of virtue as a defense against immoral texts and turns his attention from books to readers. As part of his discussion he says that Dionysius Alexandrinus, as recorded by Eusebius, claimed to have had a vision from God, in which he was told, "Read any books what ever come to thy hands, for thou art sufficient both to judge aright, and to examine each matter" (CPW, 2:511). Though Milton argues that impure books pose no danger to a pure reader, he then complicates his argument by saying that "we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather" (CPW, 2:515). Impurity, in turn, is corrected by trial: "that which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary" (CPW, 2:515). Because licensing would prohibit such purification by preventing the exercise of judgment, it is not effective in promoting virtue.
    Milton reaches his conclusion in an erratic, meandering way. He repeatedly leads the reader to hasty judgments, only to challenge those judgments with additional arguments and information. A close look at his reference to Dionysius Alexandrinus sheds light on his method. The account is questionable to begin with, since it is Eusebius's version of Dionysius's claim. Moreover, if Eusebius is to be believed, Dionysius is skeptical of his own divine inspiration. But Milton says that according to Eusebius, Dionysius "assented the sooner, as he confesses, because it was answerable to that of the Apostle to the Thessalonians, Prove all things, hold fast that which is good" (CPW, 2:511-12). In recording this statement, however, Milton makes another one of his "mistakes." Sirluck observes that Milton's quotation of 1 Thess. 5:21 ("Prove all things, hold fast that which is good") is actually a substitute for what Eusebius reports, "Approve yourselves bankers of repute" (CPW, 2:512nS0). Milton's revision of Eusebius is more likely deliberate than an error. Though rejected as apocryphal long before the seventeenth century and no longer appearing in scripture, the quotation actually reported by Eusebius was linked with 1 Thess. 5:21 in the story of the Appolinarii found in the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus (CPW, 2:512n90). Because Milton cites the story of the Appolinarii shortly before his reworking of Eusebius (CPW, 2:509), he would have remembered Socrates's quotation of 1 Thess. 5:21. In addition, he cites in his Commonplace Book entry "Of the Knowledge of Literature" both Socrates Scholasticus and Eusebius's account of Dionysius Alexandrinus (CPW, 1:376-77). But to affirm the propriety of Dionysius's position as reported by Eusebius, Milton introduces his own scriptural support: "And he might have added another remarkable saying of the same Author; To the pure all things are pure, not only meats and drinks, but all kinde of knowledge whether of good or evill; the knowledge cannot defile, nor consequently the books, if the will and conscience be not defil'd" (CPW, 2:512).
    Milton's comments on purification through trial are the larger context for his references to Spenser and Guyon. And as Milton explores the quest for truth in a wandering way inAreopagitica, Spenser examines truth in The Faerie Queene. The central episode of the first canto of book 1 of Spenser's epic is the Redcrosse Knight's battle against Error. The Knight and Una wander into the woods and become lost:

Led with delight, they thus beguile the way,
 Vntill the blustring storme is ouerblowne;
 When weening to returne, whence they did stray,
 They cannot finde that path, which first was showne,
 But wander too and fro in waies vnknowne,
 Furthest from end then, when they neerest weene,
 That makes them doubt, their wits be not their owne:
 So many pathes, so many turnings seene,
That which of them to take, in diuerse doubt they been. (FQ, 1.1.10)

    In an attempt to find their way out of the confusing maze, they decide to take the most travelled path: "That path they take, that beaten seemd most bare" (FQ, 1.1.11.3). Instead, the path leads them directly to Error's cave: "This is the wandring wood, this Errours den,/A monster vile, whom God and man does hate" (FQ, 1.1.13.6-7). The Redcrosse Knight then engages in combat against Error. When he becomes dangerously entangled "in Errours endlesse traine" (FQ, 1.1.18.9), Una tells him, "Add faith vnto your force, and be not faint:/Strangle her, els she sure will strangle thee" (FQ, 1.1.19.3-4). After he defeats the monster, he and Una retrace their path and ride out of the wood (FQ, 1.1.28).
    Milton was strongly influenced by Spenser's account of the Redcrosse Knighf s battle against Error. The description of Error's half-serpent, half-woman body, her poisonous sting, and the monstrous brood of creatures that live within her (FQ, 1.1.14-17) is generally seen as a model for Milton's description of Sin and Death in Paradise Lost 2.648-703.(FN16) But the episode from The Faerie Queene also relates to Areopagitica. Before the Redcrosse Knight does battle against Error, his is a "fugitive and cloister'd vertue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortaU garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat" (CPW, 2:515). Because he is inexperienced and ignorant of the ways of the world, he is seduced by the deceptive beauty of the wood and is "with pleasure forward led" (FQ, 1.1.8.1). But by fighting Error, the knight gains the true virtue that comes only through trial. The multiplicity of paths that wind through the woods are like the many alternative versions of truth discussed in Areopagitica. The path most followed, like the teaching most likely to be advocated by Milton's censors, is the path that leads to the most dangerous error. When the Redcrosse Knight fights Error, she attacks him by vomiting forth books: "Her vomit full of bookes and papers was,/With loathly frogs and toades, which eyes did lacke" (FQ, 1.1.20.6-7). Spenser adds that "Such vgly monstrous shapes elswher may no man reed" (FQ, 1.1.21.9). The monstrous brood, Error's children, is like the books and papers that she vomits forth. Both come out of her body: she expels the texts from her mouth, while she excretes her "cursed spawne of serpents small" (FQ, 1.1.22.6) out of her "hellish sinke" (FQ, 1.1.22.5). Her serpentine children are "blacke as inke" (FQ, 1.1.22.7), a phrase which recalls the books and papers of Error's "horrible and blacke" vomit (FQ, 1.1.20.2). After the knight cuts off Error's head, her offspring "flocked all about her bleeding wound,/And sucked vp their dying mothers blood,/Making her death their life, and eke her hurt their good" (FQ, 1.1.25.7-9). The books that the monster vomits are like the erroneous tracts and ideas that Milton believes must be fought against in the arena of public debate. And Error's serpent children "encumbered sore, but could not hurt at all" the Redcrosse Knight (FQ, 1.1.22.9). Like gnats, they have "feeble stinges" (FQ, 1.1.22.6) and are unlike their full-grown mother/who has a "mortall sting" (FQ, 1.1.15.4). But the tiny offspring of Error, whether snakes or books, have the potential to grow into deadly adversaries. Spenser's account of Error's potentially deadly children brings to mind Milton's description of Error in Prolusion 4 (ca. 1630): "by imperceptible degrees, like Typhon of old or Neptune's son Ephialtes, he has grown to such portentous size that I believe Truth itself to be menaced by him" (CPW, 1:249). For Milton, as for Spenser, falsehood may initially seem harmless, but it grows into a formidable adversary unless vanquished at an early age.
    The description of Error in The Faerie Queene recalls the Renaissance conception of Typhon, whom Milton mentions in prolusion 4. Throughout his description, Spenser employs serpentine imagery. Error is "Halfe like a serpent horribly displaide" (FQ, 1.1.14.7), and "Her huge long taile her den all ouerspred" (FQ, 1.1.15.2). When she battles the knight, she expels her brood of serpents (FQ, 1.1.22.5-6). In the Nativity Ode, Milton likewise mentions "Typhon huge ending in snaky twine" (line 226). The Redcrosse Knight's slaying of Error is an act of dismemberment, for he severs the monster's head from her body: "from her body full of filthie sin/He raft her hatefull head without remorse" (FQ, 1.1.24.7-8). The monsters that dwell within Error are her offspring and are thus a part of her. But with her death, these creatures become scattered:

Her scattred brood, soone as their Parent deare
 They saw so rudely falling to the ground,
 Groning full deadly, all with troublous feare,
 Gathred themselues about her body round. (FQ, 1.1.25.1-4)

    The scattering of Error's offspring recalls the dispersal of the limbs of Osiris, or Truth, in the myth repeated in Areopagitica. Error's serpentine children have the potential to become dangerous dragons. While they are not exactly "limbs" of Error, they are an extension of her. Their mother propagates herself through the young snakes and acts through them. So too, Spenser equates the serpents with the books vomited by Error. Those books, in turn, are metaphoric limbs of falsehood. When they are circulated and read, they extend Error's reach and carry out her fallacious intentions. Just as Milton says that the limbs of Truth will be brought together at Christ's second coming (CPW, 2:549), the "limbs" of Error gather themselves to feed off of her corpse. But the blood of Error can lead only to destruction:

Hauing all satisfide their bloudy thurst,
 Their bellies swolne he saw with fulnesse burst,
 And bowels gushing forth: well worthy end
 Of such as drunke her life, the which them nurst. (FQ, 1.1.26.4-7)

    In contrast, when Christ will gather together the limbs of Truth, he "shall mould them into animmortall feature" (CPW, 2:549).
    In Areopagitica, Milton entices his readers to do the best they can to imitate Isis and attempt to piece together the limbs of truth, though the task is a never-ending process. His handling of The Faerie Queene is one example of how he encourages the pursuit of veracity. Milton does not forget the text of The Faerie Queene, as Sirluck, Bloom, and others have argued. His acknowledgement of Spenser's authority as a poet, his use of Mammon's cave in Paradise Lost, his intricate intertextual references to The Faerie Queene throughout Areopagitica, andhis overall rhetorical strategy make such a view unlikely. Nor does he unconsciously seek to distance himself from Spenser, as Bloom maintains. On the contrary, his discussion of The Faerie Queene, his praise of Spenser as a poet, and his mingling of Spenser and Plutarch in the myth of Isis and Osiris show that he was trying to associate himself more closely with his predecessor. Contrary to Bloom, his deliberate handling of Spenser's text is not evidence of the anxiety of influence. In his summary of The Faerie Queene, Milton offers a plausible but unconventional reading of Spenser's poem, and he expresses that reading in a way that prompts the scrutiny of readers of Areopagitica. But Milton's retelling of The Faerie Queene is really the speech of his persona, who perhaps is making a mistake, or perhaps is not. Thus immediately after summarizing the legend of Guyon, Milton asserts that "the scanning of error" is necessary "to the confirmation of truth" (CPW, 2:516), though truth cannot be unquestionably reconstructed. In pointing to Milton's "mistake," critics of Areopagitica have been drawn into the arena of open debate much as Milton had hoped they would. Milton's reading of The Faerie Queene is but one of several ways to interpret the "truth" of Spenser's poem, and the critics' readings of Areopagitica show the multiplicity of ways to interpret the meaning of Milton's political tract. By catching the reader in his game, Milton demonstrates the danger of relying on any single authorized interpretation and thus exposes the dangers of censorship. His rhetorical use of error for didactic purposes imitates the poetic style of Spenser, whom he praises in his work. In Areopagitica, then, Milton is a much more careful reader of Spenser than has generally been acknowledged. And as his "error" paradoxically demonstrates, he is a much more careful writer as well.
ADDED MATERIAL
    George F. Butler
    Faihfield, Connecticut

FOOTNOTES
1. Bloom, Map, 127-28. See also Bloom, Anxiety, in which he presents his views on poetic precursors and successors.
2. The passage is further explicated by Sirluck in "Milton Revises The Faerie Queene."
3. See the discussions in Guillory, Poetic Authority, 135; and Kolbrenner, 21-22.
4. Hunter, 8:34; Guillory, 473; Treip, 134-37; Parker, 1:584,1:635; Lewalski, 446, 508; Dryden, preface, sig. *A, qtd. Lewalski, 508.
5. Hieatt offers a valuable discussion of Spenser's influence on Milton, including the significance of Guyon's encounter with Mammon to Paradise Lost (215-45).
6. Guillory, Poetic Authority, discusses the parallel accounts of rnining and smelting in The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost (136-39).
7. These errors are also discussed by Sirluck, "Milton's Critical Use of Historical Sources," 226-31. Dowling, Polite Wisdom, notes that several of Milton's errors occur in close proximity to his remark about Spenser (30).
8. Blum observes that the printed letters of "Speech" on the title page of Areopagitica are darker and larger than the other letters and that they draw attention to the printed form of Milton's oration (80-81). Blum holds that Milton at least had something to do with the arrangement of the title page. But Dobranski, Milton, Authorship, and the Book Trade, 109, argues that Blum overstates the case for Milton's authorial autonomy.
9. For similarities between Milton's Areopagitica and Isocrates's Areopagiticus, see Dowling, Polite Wisdom, 1-18; Dowling, "Areopagitica and Areopagiticus," 49-69; and Wittreich, "Milton's Areopagitica," 101-15. Nelson argues that in the seventeenth century Isocrates's Areopagiticus was not read as a defense of censorship and that it was considered a classical model for ideal republican government (201-21).
10. For the background of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, see Patterson, "Milton, Marriage and Divorce," 279-93.
11. Nohrnberg discusses Spenser's allusion to the Chair of Forgetfulness (342-43). The chair is mentioned by Apollodorus (1:152-53, epitome 1.24). In his edition of Apollodorus, Frazer observes that "No ancient author, however, except Apollodorus in the present passage, expressly mentions the Chair of Forgetfulness, though Horace seems to allude to it (Odes, iv.7.27 sq.)" (153n4). But in his account of the underworld, Virgil likewise says that "hapless Theseus sits and evermore shall sit" (Am., 6.617-18).
12. See also Dowling, "Scholastick Grosnesse," 70; and Medine, 98-100.
13. For a brief look at Spenser's sources and use of the myth, see Hieatt, 135-45.
14. Milton also alludes to the myth in prolusion 4, in which he compares Error to Typhon: "This much, however, is clear to the least observant, that by imperceptible degrees, like Typhon of old or Neptune's son Ephialtes, he has grown to such portentous size that I believe Truth itself to be menaced by him" (CPW, 1:249).
15. For discussions of the structure and style of Areopagitica and the experience of reading the pamphlet, see Smallenburg, 169-84; and Fish, 234-54.
16. Quilligan offers an extended discussion of the similarities between Spenser's characterization of Error and Milton's depiction of Sin and Death (79-128). See also Treip, 136-37; Ferry, 122-25; DuRocher, 138-39; Patrick, 39-40; Steadman, 168-69, 175-79; and Butler, 19-37.

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