ABSTRACT
Thomas Keightley (1789-1872), who compiled or edited many historical and literary texts during his long life, among them a stilluseful edition of Milton (1859), published in 1855 An Account of the Life, Opinions, and Writings of John Milton, with an Introduction to Paradise Lost. George Eliot reviewed the book twice, first in the Leader, then in the Westminster, LXIV (October, 1855), 602-604. In the Westminster she chose Milton's plan of education—calling it a 'magnificent impossibility'—for particular discussion; in the Leader review she dwells on Milton's doctrine of divorce. Thornton Hunt, the man with whom Lewes was associated in the founding of the Leader, and who was responsible for breaking up Lewes's marriage, was then still with the paper, though what effect George Eliot may have designed her remarks to have on him it is difficult to conceive.
