For this exercise using the tool Gabe discovered, I topic modeled the text of Milton's prose tract Areopagitica. As Goldstone and Underwood put it, a topic is "neither more nor less than a pattern of co-occurring words."  The co-occurrences of words like "plato, "sects, "fool, "corruption," and "god" in topic #2, for instance, make for an intriguing word cluster.

List of Topics

What's useful is the output html file that the topic modeling tool takes you to. Once you open in a separate browser window the output html file of the topic modeling exercise you implemented, you'll see the list of topics above, and each topic is a link leading you to another list of "top-ranked docs in this topic (#words in doc assigned to this topic)." Below is the link to the webpage that leads from topic #1:

TOPIC : licencing left doe good sin set labour fear chief abroad ...

top-ranked docs in this topic (#words in doc assigned to this topic)

Then I could go to the link for #17 on the list, or doc.#5, leading me to this:

DOC : doc 5

If ye be thus resolv'd, as it were injury to think ye were not; I know not what should withhold me from presenting ye with fit instance wherein to shew both that love of truth which ye eminently professe, and that uprightnesse of your judgement which is not wont to be partiall to your selves; by judging over again that Order which ye have ordain'd to regulate Printing, That no Book, pamphlet, or paper shall be henceforth Printed, unlesse the same be first approv'd and licenc't by such, or at lea...

Top topics in this doc (% words in doc assigned to this topic)

I was quite surprised to find that the modeling program generated these different percentages, which indicate how much of these words pertain to a particular topic. It is odd though that these percentages do not add up to 100. Is the program unable to account for the remaining 37%? What would do the insignificance or unaccountability of these words mean? In spite of these gaps, the significance of the counted probabilities with respect to Milton's text is still a mystery to me, yet these measurements certainly are novel ways of approaching and grappling with this already complex literary work.