It was fitting that writer and critic Alexander Cockburn’s funeral should include a passage from Milton. For more than 50 years, Cockburn combined polished, erudite writing with fierce political insight in the tradition of the great 17^th-century English polemicist. Cockburn died July 20^th in Germany at age 71, following a two-year struggle with cancer. He was buried July 28^th in his beloved Petrolia, California.