Miltonistn.

1649 C. Wase in tr. Sophocles Electra 3 While like the froward Miltonist, We our old Nuptiall knot untwist: And with the hands, late faith did joyn, This Bill of plain Divorce now signe.

1806 C. Symmons Life Milton (1810) 250 A party, distinguished by the name of Miltonists, attested the power of his pen, and gave consequence to his pleading for divorce.

1836 R. Southey Cowper III. 81 Hayley..had reasons for being what in the days of the Commonwealth was called a Miltonist.

1873 D. Masson Life of Milton III. iii. iii. 434 He [sc. Milton] was an Independent, with the added peculiarity of being the head of the Sect of Miltonists or Divorcers.

1830 R. Sharp Diary 23 Oct. (1997) 282 When I first read Paradise Lost which was when I was about 13 years of age, I was enraptured with it, not so much perhaps for the Languages as the incidents it contained, I was in strict fact a Miltonist.

1938 ELH 5 238 Perhaps the majority of Wordsworthians..were also to some degree Miltonists.

1940 L. P. Smith Milton & Mod. Critics i. 4 All the Miltonists seem to take for granted, not only Milton's importance as a world poet, but the greatness and nobility of his character as well.

1975 H. Bloom Map of Misreading i. iv. 67 As a poet he was a fierce Miltonist, and as much a son of himself as God.

1991 Raritan Summer 132 I will feel confident in writing and submitting for publication a brief note on the Petrarchan backdrop to the fame passage in ‘Lycidas’. Some portion of the three hundred or so Miltonists in this country..might read this note.