Milton Regained: A Helluva Party

John Milton won’t turn 400 until Dec. 9, but a number of institutions have already jumped the gun on celebrating his quadricentenary. The New York Public Library, for example, gave him a show that opened in March, the Morgan Library & Museum opens its exhibition in October, and there has been a yearlong program of lectures, exhibitions and performances at Christ’s College, Cambridge — Milton’s alma mater and an institution for which he had no great fondness.

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It’s hard to know what he would have made of the Grand Paradise Lost Costume Ball that the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center in Brooklyn is holding on Saturday evening.

The show has been lovingly put together by Yuko Nii, the founder, and Terrance Lindall, the executive director, of the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, who have turned its headquarters, an 1860 bank building next to the Williamsburg Bridge, into a Miltonian jumble, an earthbound pandemonium.

On the first floor there’s Japanese porcelain, some 17th- and 19th-century illustrated editions of “Paradise Lost,” a 17th-century Torah opened to Genesis, a portrait of Disraeli and a case containing a 19th-century British colonel’s uniform, complete with regimental pouch and ceremonial sword. “Paradise Lost,” for all its capaciousness, doesn’t exactly mention either Disraeli or the British Army, but these exhibits are in honor, Mr. Lindall said, of the people who gave us English, the language Milton wrote in.

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In a room at the back are some of the Bosch-like illustrations Mr. Lindall painted for his own prose synopsis of “Paradise Lost.” A couple of them have also been used in textbooks or in contemporary editions of Milton.