Francis Bacon, John Milton, and Samuel Butler are three writers generally thought to have little in common. Yet, as Alvin Snider argues, all participated in the seventeenth-century discourse on origins. They believed that the truth of an idea could be determined by enquiry into its genesis, and looked for authority in rudimentary and incorrupt principles. Bacon wanted to rebuild knowledge from its foundations; Milton invoked a distant past to secure a base for the present; and Butler expressed intense nostalgia for a fixed truth associated with origins. Focusing on writings by these three...