842 Reviews Any serious account of censorship in this period must, of course, give due attention toAreopagitica (1644). In the following chapter Robertson duly obliges with an innovative slant on the linguistic volatility ofMilton's hymn to press free dom. Robertson's central argument is that the copious anti-popery inAreopagitica fuelled a subversively sceptical iconoclasm. ForMilton, revolutions can be sparked and survive only when their governing ideologies are subjected to theheat of scep tical and free discourse. But while the pretended infallibility of state censors could usefully be exposed by this combustible compound of scepticism and anti-popery, the concept, espoused byMilton, of all worldly authorities being infallible had, as the author shows, even more profound implications for government tolerance of philosophical and religious thought, informing post-Restoration debates on athe ism and, ultimately, Enlightenment polemic. The chronological sweep of the book iswide?other chapters shed new light on the censorship battles faced by, among others,William Prynne and Jonathan Swift; though with a title spanning the entire Stuart dynasty the absence of a chapter dedicated to Jacobean press control and itsevasion?of which there remains much untapped evidence?is a touch anomalous. That minor quibble aside, this is a carefully researched and imaginatively constructed book on a topic of perennial importance. Itwill be of considerable interest to scholars across a range of discip lines. Birkbeck, University of London Philip Major The Discontented Cavalier: The Work of Sir John Suckling in its Social, Religious, Political, and Literary Contexts. By Robert Wilcher. Newark: University of Delaware Press. 2007. 445 pp. ?71.50. ISBN 978-0-87413-996-9. One of the chief virtues of TheDiscontented Cavalier is the earnestness with which it treats Suckling and his works. Robert Wilcher is intenton approaching Suckling as an individual author, rather than seeing him as a poet representative of his age. What that entails,Wilcher argues, is a recovery of the specific cultural networks within which Suckling operated, and he identifies in admirable detail various of the circles towhich, or inwhich, Suckling wrote?those being the social, religious, political, and literary contexts of the title. This, in itself, offers a great deal of interesting literary (and cultural) history, but the larger hope is that such a focus will produce a more nuanced picture of thewriter, and a richer understanding of his poetry, plays, and letters.Wilcher, although he isoftenwilling to take Sucklings omissions as commissions (the failure towrite a poem on the death of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, for example, is taken to be a principled refusal), is generally successful in the firstof these; the Suckling that emerges from his book is, ifnot quite different from the Suckling we know, certainly seenmore distinctly.He is a figureof increased cultural status?not simply one of the Cavalier poets, but of central importance to the construction of the notion of the Cavalier poet, both in its negative aspects, as used by the MLR, 105.3, 2010 843 parliamentary faction, and in its positive (and often retrospective) aspects, as a Royalist ideal and figure symbolic of a world lost. This Suckling is also a more intelligent reader of his own culture?less of the tribe of Ben and more of a tribe of one, responding oppositionally, and often subtly, to the intellectual and political currents of his time. This poet, in the period from 1632 to 1637, can be seen to be writing against particular aspects of theNeoplatonizing and devoutly religious culture of theCaro line court. During this period Wilcher does not see Suckling as aspirant courtier; such an attempt to be a part of the court occurs later, and is part of a conscious decision to try to influence, in literary alliance with Davenant, the policies of the king as he dealt with thevarious political crises thatwould in short time lead to the Civil War. Such serious political engagement, Wilcher argues, was not new; prior to 1632, Suckling had taken part inmilitary actions and had been a diplomatic messenger, andWilcher looks to draw our attention both to the sharpness of the analysis of political matters in Suckling's letters from that time, and to a growing dissatisfaction during it with politics and the vagaries of...