Milton strained to redefine marriage as the friendship Socrates recommended — an erotics beyond the sexual. As a result, his notion of marriage sometimes looks a lot like a heteroerotic paederasty, with Adam as the paederast and Eve the philerast destined never to outgrow the role of student and beloved.

He […] put me in imminent danger of my life, by telling the natives that I was a Caffer, and not a Mussulman.

A buckboard with a patient flop-eared bay between shafts stood in front of ROOMS & EATS.

Then he warmed to it, and smoothly set out all his shifts, malices, and treacheries, his extreme boldnesses (he was desperate bold); his retreats, shufflings, and counterfeitings (he was also inconceivably a coward) […]