FOR DECADES, EARLY modernists and early medievalists alike have speculated about possible connections between the Old English poems of Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11 concerning Satan and the Fall, and John Milton's epic treating the same topic. Paradise Lost and Genesis B, in particular, have several intriguing parallels. Could Milton have learned Old English, or had an amanuensis who did, and used Junius's edition

of the poems as a source for his work? The answer is almost certainly no. However, as an epilogue to my discussion of early medieval studies in early modern England, I argue that this recognition need not close off side-by-side examination of Milton's works and the Old English poems, which were available in print to the scholarly reading public by 1655. Pre-Conquest literature and culture resonated with that of the seventeenth century, and we need not limit ourselves to source studies to examine how early medieval texts could contribute to wider discourses on the topics of law or religion, and shape individual responses to crisis. Rather than focus on what one writer might or might not have known, we can choose instead to focus on potential readers of both texts and inquire how such readers might have perceived points in common. As a case study, I will consider together Milton's later work, Paradise Regained (1671), and Christ and Satan, the final poem in the Junius manuscript. Both poems describe the fall of the rebel angels and the Temptation of Christ in the desert. In their depiction of these events, both differentiate between good and bad kings, both frame this understanding in the legal discourse of their contemporary culture, and both explore the difference between literal and spiritual understanding. Seventeenth-century readers sensitive to these topics could have found the two poems constantly in dialogue.

Milton's attitude toward early medieval English culture remained negative, which is one reason to doubt that he made the effort to learn Old English. He believed that the introduction of bishops into the Christian religion was one of its greatest errors, and his anti-episcopal sentiment spilled into his attitude toward pre-Conquest England.