ABSTRACT
My reader is reminded that Burton died in 1640, the opening year of the so-called Puritan Revolution. I suspect that Oliver Cromwell-and even his pamphleteering sidekick John Milton (a.k.a. his Latin secretary)-could not have had any real use for him, despite Burton’s belligerent volubility. His views were sharp and radical, if a wee bit overstated, and his temperament openly enthusiastic. But he was constantly warning his readers that his was “an unconstant, unsettled mind.” Gods as well as demons were always failing him; his critico-melancholic spirit was not entirely reliable. Propagandists for a new and better society’s “Good Cause” need to be of sterner stuff.
