Evelyn retains this and similar material, apparently never suspecting that the Turks may well have been hesitant from real fear; but the burden of his emphasis is more overtly political and religious. Evelyn is less than ingenuous, perhaps, in associating Sevi with Peter Serini's fake brother, or even with Mahomed Bei--another of the "late famous impostors." But the connection does have the effect of putting Sevi in an imaginary world where all masks will be discovered and the truth known. Ultimately, Evelyn's Jews, like Dryden's and Milton's, are English--"_our_ modern Enthusiasts and other prodigious Sects amongst us, who Dreame of the like Carnal Expectations, and a Temporal Monarchy" (sig. A8; italics mine). One hardly needs to fill out the reading. With a traditional reminder that "the Time is not yet Accomplished," Evelyn warns English sectarians to beware of misleading fictions--"to weigh how nearly their Characters approach the Style and Design of those deluded wretches."
Evelyn's words here suggest something of the wider interest of the _Pretended Messiah_. For in threatening the modern enthusiasts, as it were, with the status of comic fiction, he also hinted at the literal immediacy of such explicitly imaginative works as _Absalom and Achitophel_, _Paradise Regained_, and _Samson Agonistes_. What Evelyn's _Pretended Messiah_ helps to reveal, then, is not only the potential metaphoric value of news itself, but also the peculiar proximity of poetry to "history" in a period when historical thought was inseparable from apocalyptic myth.[7]
[1] Michael Fixler, _Milton and the Kingdoms of God_ (London, 1964), p. 244.
[2] Joseph Kastein, _The Messiah of Ismir_, trans. Huntley Paterson (New York, 1931), p. 323.
[3] For an account of the events leading to the extra-judicial opinion of Glyn and Steele, see Samuel R. Gardiner, _History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660_, III (London, 1901), 216-222.
[4] _Milton and the Kingdoms of God_ (London, 1964), especially pp. 237-249.
[5] Heinrich Graetz, _History of the Jews_, V (Philadelphia, 1895), 118-167. See also Henry Malter, "Shabetai Zebi B. Mordecai," _The Jewish Encyclopedia_, X (1905).
[7] For a provocative study of apocalypse in fiction, see Frank Kermode, _The Sense of An Ending_ (Oxford, 1966).