The Tonsons were the pre-eminent literary publishers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It is difficult to estimate their contribution to the formation of English literature accurately. Nevertheless, it is clear that they carried Shakespeare into the eighteenth century and started the practice of modern editing of him. Without Rowe's life and without the Pope-Theobald controversy, the history of Shakespeare studies would have been different, perhaps much less illustrious. The same is true of Milton, a figure who through his political sympathies was in disrepute, but on...