(1) Surveys the different ways in which, based on references or parallels in Burns's poems and letters, Burns scholars have studied and discussed his reading of Milton, (2) notes the marginalization of Burns in most accounts of Romantic-era response to Milton, (3) looks at the evidence on his access in his earlier years to Milton's poetry, based on books he owned and recent scholarship in Scottish book history, and (4) suggests that Burns's first book, Poems Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (Kilmarnock: Wilson, 1786) might be read as a typographic allusion, or "visual echo," of an earlier Scottish Milton edition.