Milton at Monticello: Thomas Jefferson’s Reading of John Milton

By Kemmer Anderson

Milton at Monticello focuses on how Thomas Jefferson read John Milton’s political tracts, Paradise Lost, and Samson Agonistes. While examining Jefferson’s “Thoughts on English Prosody” and entries from his Literary Commonplace Book, I listened for echoes between Jefferson and Milton. Through the lens of Lycidas and Sonnet 23, I probe how Jefferson lived with grief. With the intuition of a poet, I approached these icons of Liberty and Reason with an imaginative ear for the making and keeping of a Republic.

In his work Kemmer Anderson shines a light on the subtle kinship of these two great figures, who with their powers shouldered not only their own times, but considerable futures. He offers the reader a thoughtful nexus for the spirit of their gifts. Lawrence Mathis, poet & architect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796065893

Kemmer Anderson

Kemmer Anderson, a graduate of Davidson College, has for years taught Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad at McCallie School, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 1991 while studying for a M.A. at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, he learned about Palamedes from Plato’s dialogues. Since that time he and his wife Martha have wandered through Greece in pursuit of his story. The author of 2 poetry books, Wing Shadows Over Walden Ridge and Songs of Bethlehem: Nativity Poems, he continues to work on series of essays: Milton at Monticello.

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Copyright © 2019 by Kemmer Anderson.

ISBN:       Softcover       978-1-7960-6590-9

                 eBook             978-1-7960-6589-3

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Rev. date: 10/14/2019

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Reading Milton at Monticello

Martha moves along the garden paths at

Monticello with a bending eye for rose,

Lavender, hollyhocks, blue bells that clothe

The earth with a colored petal palette.

Brushed with seeds from Jefferson’s planter’s hand

The tilled ground grows with his natural dream

Copied through this landscape art from a scheme

Drawn for this untamed mountain land.

Apple trees designed the text read in lines

Measured across this Eden where we bite

Into the poem brewing in this orchard.

Peach, nectarine, and plum bear with grape vines

Planted, trained, pruned, dressed and picked for taste, right

In tune with lyre strings plucked from Freedom’s bard.

Kemmer Anderson

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Prelude: Anecdotes and Echoes

Chapter 1: The Bill of Religious Freedom

Chapter 2: Those Tenured Tyrants: How Milton’s Tenure of Kings and Magistrates Influenced Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence

Chapter 3: If Not All Equal – The Problem of Equality in Milton and Jefferson

Chapter 4: Gardening by the Book: The Rural Seat at Monticello

Illustration: Title page of Paradise Lost: Notes by Thomas Newton, 1750, Second Edition

Chapter 5: Listening to Milton: Jefferson’s Thoughts on English Prosody

Chapter 6: Lycidas: How Jefferson Might Read Milton’s Poem

Chapter 7: Martha Jefferson, My Late Espoused Saint: Sonnet 23, the Widower’s Psalm

Chapter 8: Thomas Jefferson: Much like thy Riddle Samson (SA, 1016)

Chapter 9: Richard Wilbur’s Miltonic Sonnet

Epilogue: Poetry & Politics

Conclusion: Poems and Elegies

Works Cited

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Cover Design: Webbco Graphics, Signal Mountain, Tennessee: Terry Brown & Britt Dolan

Illustration: Paradise Lost, 1750 edition from the personal library of Kemmer Anderson

McCallie School Faculty Development Fund, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Those Tenured Tyrants: How Milton’s Tenure of Kings and Magistrates Influenced Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Milton in France. Editor: Chrsitophe Tournu.

Reading Milton at Monticello. Iodine Poetry Journal.

Poems & Elegies, Chapbook: Milton Travels by Kemmer Anderson

National Endowment for the Humanities: Summer Seminars for Secondary School Teachers:

1985 – Classical & Christian Tradition in Milton’s Poetry: Stanford University

2004 – Milton Institute: University of Arizona

Conferences on John Milton at Middle Tennessee University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee

2005 – Eighth International Milton Symposium at Grenoble, France

2008 – Ninth International Milton Symposium at London, England

PRELUDE:

Anecdotes and Echoes

During lunch at the University of Arizona NEH Institute, Joe Wittreich told a story of how John Milton brought together his passion for poetry and politics. In 1964 his aunt took him to the Democratic convention in Atlantic City with the hope that Joe would become a politician. While he was waiting for his aunt, he spotted Adlai Stevenson. He went up to former UN Ambassador and asked if this is the reception for the Ohio delegation. Adlai told him that he was an hour early. Why don’t you come with me to meet the delegation from foreign countries who are observing the convention? Joe sat in the back of the room and listened to Stevenson explain the nominating process to the visitors. A Pakistani asked a question about the use of strength. Without missing a beat, according to Joe, Stevenson quoted from Samson Agonistes: But what is Strength without a doubles Share / Of Wisdom, (53-54). Suddenly at the moment Joe Wittreich realized: I could have it all – the politics and poetry as a professor.

Later I found the quote that Joe heard listed as number 325 in Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book. This Samson Agonistes quote provided a piece of concrete evidence connecting Milton and Jefferson. Apocryphal as this story sounds, the pebble dropped. In this case, the eye of Jefferson that dropped on the line from Milton’s Samson, now resonated in present time. The power of Milton on Jefferson and the Founders provides a ready and easy way to see why Milton matters and how his words yet once more might inspire a nation. Perhaps a woman or man who has read Paradise Lost will keep and restore the Republic. Once again we will regain that wisdom we have thrown away through countless idolatries committed against the environment, the culture, and the human soul.

The Muse of the Republic takes many forms and rests on how we read the Founders, Franklin, Washington, Adams, Madison, and Jefferson. But John Milton and Thomas Jefferson are two seeds in the cross pollination of liberty between England and America. As a young man Thomas Jefferson planted in his commonplace book the lines of Milton’s Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes. Later Milton sowed the ideas of religious freedom and civil liberty through Jefferson’s reading of the prose tracts. By focusing on these two writers working with words during a revolution, we teachers have a syllabus designed to track liberty back to Athens and forward to our classrooms to offer students a vision of political beauty.

At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Dr. Paul Ramsey guided conversations during an independent study on Milton’s poetry as I prepared essays on Lycidas and Paradise Lost. After an archeological dig in the Negev Desert in 1983, I became enamored with Paradise Regained because of the desert landscape. I wrote a long master’s thesis: What Manner of Man is This: The Son in Paradise Regained. Dr. Ramsey urged me to write Stella Revard for her essay about dialogue between Satan and the Son. Stella sent me her essay on The Gospel of John and Paradise Regained: Jesus as True Light. Later, her example inspired me to pursue Greek in a class at McCallie School.

The study of Milton allowed me to put together the scrambled Bible classes at Davidson College and short tours at seminaries in Richmond Virginia and Sewanee, Tennessee. At Wardlaw School, Gale Hoffman rigorously lectured on Cromwell and the English Civil War before we studied the American Civil War.

During a N.E.H. Seminar at Stanford with Martin Evans, I met Emeritus Professor George Sensabaugh. I discovered that his grandfather, a Methodist circuit rider, had followed a route along the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee. Professor Sensabaugh’s grandfather would stop at Grassy Cove, a pastoral land sown with fescue, cattle, and Kemmers Since that meeting I have felt a kinship and common call to follow that trail through Grassy Cove to the Eden of Paradise Lost and arrive at Monticello to pursue Things unattempted yet in Prose and Rime (1:16). Milton at Monticello will attempt to build on the scholarship and wonder of Martin Evans and George Sensabaugh as I focus on how Thomas Jefferson might have read Milton. With the intuition of a poet, I approached these icons of Liberty and Reason with an imaginative ear for the making and keeping of a Republic found between the lines of a Miltonic moment at Monticello.

In a Thomas Jefferson course at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, I wrote an essay on Milton’s influence on the Bill of Religious Freedom. Professor David Carrithers’ encouragement during the writing process allowed for a detailed analysis of the connection between Milton’s prose and Jefferson’s Notes on Episcopacy.

While Kris Pruitt and Charley Durham opened their arms to this high school teacher, the Milton Conferences at Murfreesboro allowed me to renew my friendship with Martin Evans. I listened to papers by professors from universities and colleges from across the country and Canada. During these times over meals, John Shawcross and Richard DuRocher encouraged me to keep working on this project. These conversations continued in Beaufort, South Carolina, York, England, Pittsburgh, London, and Grenoble.

I was privileged to begin a correspondence with poet Richard Wilbur, who claimed Milton was his hero. For me Milton was a hero because of the way he wove politics and poetry in the service of his country. For Wilbur, Milton was his hero because of the music in his poetry. From that point on, I have tried to listen to the measures and music in Milton’s poetry. Through studying Richard Wilbur’s Miltonic Sonnet, I learned how to write a political sonnet.

In Arizona, Peter Medine, Kris Pruit, and Wendy Furman-Adams guided our discussions during a N.E.H. Institute. Because of the desert heat, the university library provided hours for the pursuit of my questions concerning the connection between Milton and Jefferson. Michael Leib encouraged me to pursue the project. The informal conversations with Joe Wittreich and other participants allowed me to realize how much Milton mattered to an American high school curriculum.

My friend Peter Hatch, the Director of Gardens, allowed me to roam the orchards and gardens of Monticello. His treasure trove of leather-bound horticulture books created a phenomenological connection to Jefferson’s Garden Book. These moments of wonder at Monticello provided the intuitive grounding for listening to the echoes of Paradise Lost at Jefferson’s Eden.

The Miltonic seeds, however, were planted on Missionary Ridge at McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. George Hazard, who taught the John Milton elective for seniors, set the standard for a classical education. Even McCallie graduate, Jon Meacham in his book, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, reminded me of a key Samson allusion in Jefferson’s letter to Phillip Mazzei. While driving retired teacher, Chalmers McIlwaine to a funeral at Sewanee, he asked what I was studying. I said Milton. Then Mr. McIlwaine, a math teacher for 50 years at the school, recited from memory the introduction to Paradise Lost as we rounded Moccasin Bend and headed for the mountain. I knew then that the epic poetry of Milton and Homer would be a light burning in my classroom.

Without my wife Martha whose keen editing eye for meaning and translating my leaps of metaphor into concise sentence structure, none of these essays would have found a voice in the Milton community.

THE BILL OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

The Church that survived in Virginia was a carefully molded reflection of society. This established Church had been set apart by the State to guide