John Milton & Seventeenth- Century
Culture
ARCHIVED ONLINE EXHIBIT
Originally exhibited at the Thomas Cooper Library, University of South Carolina
Based on an exhibit by Patrick Scott
Archived November 4, 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Archived Online Exhibit ................................................................................................................................. 1
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2
Early Years ..................................................................................................................................................... 4
Italy & the 1640’s ........................................................................................................................................ 11
Civil War ...................................................................................................................................................... 19
Paradise Lost etc. ........................................................................................................................................ 25
Milton’s Reputation .................................................................................................................................... 31
Further References ..................................................................................................................................... 36
INTRODUCTION
Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life. . .
they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that
bred them . . . a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit.John
Milton, Areopagitica (1644)
John Milton (1608-1674) was not only among the most influential of British poets. He was
the most directly involved of any British poet in the centres of political power and in the
great historical events of the English Revolution. He was also arguably the most learned,
indeed the most bookish, of the great British poets, even in a learned and bookish century.
This exhibit, drawn from the collections of Thomas Cooper Library, includes the first edition
of Milton's first prose work Of Reformation (1641), the first edition of Milton's great defense
of a free press Areopagitica(1644), and the first edition of his first volume of poetry Poems,
English and Latin (1645, purchased by the Thomas Cooper Society in 1996). For Milton's
most famous work, his epic Paradise Lost, first issued in 1667, the exhibit includes
examples of the first edition in ten books (with 1669 prelims), the second edition in twelve
books (1674), the third edition (1678), and the fourth edition (1688), the first with
illustrations. Among Milton's later works, there are first and second editions of his
volume Paradise Regain'd . . . To which is added Samson Agonistes (1671). In all, the
exhibit includes twenty-three seventeenth-century Milton editions, along with important early
editions of other writers, including Spenser, Shakespeare, Ariosto, Tasso, Hobbes, and
Clarendon. The library has acquired these volumes over the years item by item, not from a
single donor; several bear the stamp of the original South Carolina College library, while
others come from the libraries of Charles Pinckney (author of the Pinckney draft of the
Constitution), James Henley Hammond (through the gift of John Shaw Billings), Yates
Snowden, the Presbyterian College for Women, Alfred Chapin Rogers, the Ewelme
Collection of Robert Bridges, and others.
Complementing the books on display are contemporary engravings of English and Italian
cities where Milton lived, studied and visited, from the John Osman Collection of Braun &
Hogenberg City Views, presented to the library by Mrs. Mary Osman in 1989, and a 1647
engraving of the Parliamentary and Royalist armies at the Battle of Naseby, presented to
the University by A.F. McKissick in 1937.
The exhibit was mounted to coincide with the fifty-seventh annual meeting of the
Southeastern Renaissance Conference, held at the University on April 14th-15th, 2000. I
am indebted to the pesident and secretary of the Conference, Professors Emmanuel Seko
and Gerald Snare, and the organizers, Professors Philip Rollinson and Andrew Shifflett, for
their interest and encourage-ment; to Professor Rollinbson, for reviewing a draft of this
catalogue; and to my co-workers in the Department of Rare Books & Special Collections,
Paul Schultz, Mary Anyomi, and Sallie Ruff, for their assistance while it was in preparation.
EARLY YEARS
1
London; Cambridge and Horton
Viewing the Renaissance City: the Osman Collection of Braun & Hogenberg
Georg Braun, 1541-1622, and Franz Hogenberg, c.1536-1588,
title-page from Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Liber Primus
Frankfurt: Braun and Hogenberg, [1572]. John Osman Collection of Braun & Hogenberg.
Most of the illustrative items in the upright cases are drawn from Thomas Cooper
Library's John Osman Collection. The Osman Collection, donated by to the
University by Mrs. Mary C. Osman, includes more than four hundred copperplate
engraved maps and views of European cities, issued by the Dutch engravers Braun
and Hogenberg in six volumes over the years 1572 to 1618.
Milton's London
Georg Braun, 1541-1622, and Franz Hogenberg, c.1536-1588,
"Londinum Feracissimi Angliae Regni Metropolis,"
from Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Liber I
Frankfurt: Braun and Hogenberg, [1572]. John Osman Collection of Braun & Hogenberg.
"I was born," Milton wrote, "at London, of an honest family; my father was
distinguished by the undeviating integrity of his life; my mother, by the esteem in
which she was held, and the alms which she bestowed." His actual birth day was
December 9th, 1608, at the sign of the Spread Eagle, Bread Street,
London.
Milton's autobiography
John Milton,1608-1674,
from "The Second Defence of the People of England against an
Anomymous Libel [1654]," translated from the Latin by Robert Fellowes
in Charles Symmons., ed., The Prose Works of John Milton.
7 vols. London: for J. Johnson et al., 1806. Vol. VII.
Milton was among the first English authors to leave an extended first-person account
of his own early life, in Latin, defending his moral character against pro-monarchist
attacks in the fierce disputes of the Commonwealth period. This passage from
Milton's Defensio Secunda (1654) gives a gripping and coherent account of Milton's
young adulthood and developing commitments in the 1630s and 1640s. Many of the
annotations to later items in this exhibition are taken from this source. The translator,
Robert Fellowes (1771-1847), an Oxford-educated clergyman who became editor of
the Critical Review, was an active advocate of political reform and devoted a
substantial inheritance to progressive causes such as the Benthamite non-sectarian
University College, London. Though this is the longest and best-known of Milton's
autobiographical accounts, there are also shorter passages in other prose works and
in his poem Ad Patrem.
A London school in the early seventeenth century
Samuel Knight, 1675-1746.
The life of Dr. John Colet, dean of St. Paul's in the reigns of K. Henry VII
and K. Henry VIII and founder of St. Paul's school: with an appendix,
containing some account of the masters and more eminent scholars of the
foundation, and several original papers.
New ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1823.
Milton's father, also John Milton, a scrivener (a legal agent and often financial agent
as well), was alert to the education of his son. "I had," Milton wrote, " from my first
yeeres . . . bin exercis'd to the tongues and some sciences, as my age would suffer,
by sundry masters," and from the age of seven or so he attended the nearby St.
Paul's School. Shown here is the brief entry on him as one of the "more eminent
scholars," from the biography of the school's founder.
A center of Renaissance humanism
"To the Reader,"
in William Lily, 1468?-1522; John Colet, 1467?-1519; Thomas Robertson,
1521-1561.
[Latin grammar]
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1821. Contemporary sheep.
St. Paul's had a pivotal role in the development and dissemination of Renaissance
classicism in Britain. The standard school texts in both Greek and Latin originated
with Colet's St. Paul's, the Greek by the Dutch exile Desiderius Erasmus and the
Latin (shown here in one of its innumerable later reprints) by the English scholar
William Lily. When Milton came to write his own Latin grammar-book (published in
1669 as Accedence Commenc't Grammar, but probably written in the 1640s), he
borrowed some 330 of his 530 illustrative quotations from Lily.
Alexander Gill: the political perils of Puritan pedagogy
William Douglas Hamilton, d. 1894, ed.
Original papers illustrative of the life and writings of John Milton including
sixteen letters of state written by him, now first published from mss. in the State
paper office. With an appendix of documents relating to his connection with the
Powell family. . . with the permission of the Master of the Rolls.
Works of the Camden Society; no. 75. [Westminster]: Printed for the Camden Society,
1859.
Milton's headmaster at St. Paul's was Alexander Gill (1564-1635), and his son
Alexander Gill the younger (1597-1644), already a published poet, taught at the
school. As these documents from official papers show, the younger Gill was an
outspoken political critic, and in 1628 he ran into serious trouble with the authorities
for criticism of the King's favorite, the Duke of Buckingham.
Milton, Spenser, and the British epic
Edmund Spenser, 1552?-1599.
The faerie queene, disposed into XII. bookes. fashioning twelue morall
vertues.
London: Printed by H.L. For Mathew Lownes, 1609. Speckled calf binding with banded
spine.
"My father," Milton stated, "destined me from a child to the pursuits of literature," and
his schoolmaster Alexander Gill the elder described Edmund Spenser as the Homer
of the English language. In the preface to his Poems (1645), Milton's publisher
asserted he had "brought into the Light as true a birth, as the Muses have brought
forth since the famous Spencer wrote." Certainly, Spenser's great Protestant
epic The Faerie Queene was among the continuing influences in Milton's poetic
ambition. Shown here is the opening of Spenser's Book II, Canto X, where Spenser
invokes the difficulty of his chosen task of chronicling the history of the British kings
from Arthur to Gloriana.
Milton's reading of Shakespeare
John Milton,
"On the Admirable Dramatick Poet, William Shakespear,"
in William Shakespeare, 1564-1616. Mr. William Shakespear's comedies,
histories, and tragedies. Published according to the true original copies. Unto
which is added, seven plays, never before printed in folio. The fourth edition.
London: Printed for H. Herringman, E. Brewster, and R. Bentley. . ., 1685.
Diced calf binding. Gold decorated spine with red label lettered in gold.
--Milton's tribute to Shakespeare's influence, first published anonymously in 1630 in
the second folio alongside verses by Ben Jonson and others, was his first published
poem, written while he was still a student at Cambridge:
. . . each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took.
The poem is shown here from the fourth folio, because in Thomas Cooper Library's
second folio, the prelims pages with Milton's epitaph are damaged.
Metrical psalms, I
"Psalm 101"
in George Buchanan, 1506-1582.
Ecphrasis paraphraseos Georgij Buchanani in Psalmos Davidis: ab
Alexandro Iulio Edinburgeno, in adoloescentiae studiosae gratiam
elaborata.
Londini: Excusum apud G. Eld, 1620. Contemporary vellum.
--As the subtitle of this volume shows, a Renaissance education moved easily
between poetry of the classical and Christian traditions. The Scottish humanist
George Buchanan, a fierce protestant who in 1570-78 was tutor to the future King
James the VI and I, was recognized by contemporaries as facile princeps among
Renaissance Scottish poets; indeed J.C.Scaliger judged Buchanan the greatest
European Latin poet of the age. Alongside his original Latin poetry and (Latin)
Biblical dramas, Baptistes andJeptha (a model for Milton's own Samson Agonistes),
Bucahanan translated Euripides from Greek to Latin. His Latin version of the psalms
(first published in the 1560s) was widely used as a school text.
Metrical psalms, II
The Psalmes of David in prose and meeter. With their whole tunes in foure
or mo parts, and some psalmes in reports. Whereunto is added many godly
prayers, and an exact kalendar for XXV. yeeres to come.
Edinburgh: Heires of Andrevv Hart, 1635. Modern brown morocco, gilt.
Bookplate of Allan D. Macdonald.
--In both England and Scotland, as also in Geneva, the congregational singing of
metrical psalms became central to protestant church services. From the Reformation
till the 19th century, Calvinists sang only the metrical psalms or scriptural
paraphrases, not man-made hymns, and sang them unaccompanied, being opposed
to instrumental church music. By the time this Scottish psalter was published, the
repertory included over 200 pieces. The title-page reference to "Psalmes in reports"
indicates that the tune was arranged in three, four or five parts in "imitative
counterpoint.
Metrical psalms, III
John Milton,
"Psalm 114," and "Psalm 136 ['Let us with a gladsome mind'],"
in Paradise regain'd : a poem in four books: to which is added, Samson
Agonistes and Poems upon several occasions.
Edinburgh: Printed by A. Donaldson and J. Reid for Alexander Donaldson, 1762.
Signature of Charles Pinckney. Contemporary mottled calf.
--At St. Paul's, alongside verse-translations from Horace, Milton also produced these
metrical psalms. The defects of the established English metrical version by
Sternhold and Hopkins, from the Prayer Book, were widely recognized, and many
Renaissance writers tried their hand at psalm-versification. When he included these
efforts in his 1645 Poems, he noted that they had been written when he was only
fifteen years old.
Milton's Cambridge
Georg Braun, 1541-1622, and Franz Hogenberg, c.1536-1588,
"Cantebrigia,"
from Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Liber II
Frankfurt: Braun and Hogenberg, [1575]. John Osman Collection of Braun
& Hogenberg.
--From 1625-1632, with one brief interval, Milton was a student at Christ's College,
Cambridge. In retrospect, in his poem Lycidas, he would idealize the tranquility of
academic life:
. . . we were nurst upon the self-same hill,
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill. . . .
Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth.
Milton graduated B.A. in March 1629 and M.A. in July 1632.
Milton at Christ's College
John Le Keux, 1783-1846,
"Christ's College,"
in Thomas Wright, 1810-1877; H.L. Jones, 1806-1870, Memorials of
Cambridge: a series of views of the colleges, halls, and public buildings, with
historical and descriptive accounts.
London: David Bogue, 1845.
--The main front of Christ's remained essentially unchanged between Milton's time
and this early Victorian engraving.
Cambridge and Milton's early poetry
John Milton,
on Thomas Hobson the University Carrier, and "L'Allegro,"
in The poetical works of Milton : with prefatory characters of the several
pieces, the life of Milton, a glossary, and an index.
2 vols. Edinburgh: Printed by A. Donaldson, 1767. Signature of Charles
Pinckney, junior, in each
volume. Contemporary calf.
--Milton's elegy on Thomas Hobson illustrates the playfulness of his Cambridge
verse, while the more substantial "L'Allegro" and its pair "Il Penseroso" show the
continuing influence on Milton of the formal debate structure used in the Cambridge
public exercises or disputations. Thomas Hobson (from whose monopoly of
Cambridge transport comes the phrase "Hobson's Choice") had died in 1631,
leaving a substantial endowment to maintain the Cambridge water-conduit which still
bears his name.
Country retreat: Middlesex in the early 17th century
William Camden, 1551-1623.
Britain : or, A chorographicall description of the most flourishing kingdomes,
England, Scotland written first in Latine by W. Camden; translated newly
into English by Philemon Holland.
London: Georgii Bishop & Ioannis Norton, 1610. Early nineteenth century tree calf.
--Milton spent the six years following his graduation from Cambridge living in the
country outside London, first at Hammersmith, and then at Horton, about a mile from
Colnbroke, on the west side of Middlesex. He looked back on the period with
gratitude: "I enjoyed," he wrote, "an interval of uninterrupted leisure, which I entirely
devoted to the perusal of the Greek and Latin classics." The great British antiquarian
William Camden had, like Milton himself, been educated at St. Paul's School.
Milton's Oxford
Georg Braun, 1541-1622, and Franz Hogenberg, c.1536-1588,
"Oxonium," and "Windsorium,"
from Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Liber II
Frankfurt: Braun and Hogenberg, [1575]. John Osman Collection of Braun
& Hogenberg.
--The Braun and Hogenberg series include not only city maps, but also external
views that show the close interrelation of the urban and the rural in the seventeenthcentury. One of Milton's epic similes drew on just this contrast:
As one who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight,
The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine,
Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound.
Paradise Lost, Book IX
Though Oxford would later be a Royalist stronghold, in contrast to the Puritan
leanings of its rival Cambridge, Milton's father had received his musical education in
the choir at Christ Church, Oxford, and Milton himself incorporated as an Oxford
M.A. in 1634, perhaps to get access to the Bodleian library.
From Milton's poetic notebook: the Trinity Manuscript
John Milton,
"Arcades," and "Sonnet VII: How soon hath time,"
from the Trinity manuscript,
in Samuel Leigh Sotheby, 1805-1861, Ramblings in the elucidation of the autograph of
Milton.
London: Printed for the author by T. Richards, 1861.
How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career
But my late spring no bud or blossom show'th.
Milton's growth as a poet during the 1630s is documented in two extraordinary
surviving manuscripts, his poetic notebook (the Trinity manuscript, from which this
page has been engraved) and his notes from extensive reading (the Commonplace
Book). The lines headed "Arcades" were from a masque performed at Harefield
House, in honor of the Dowager Countess of Derby; soon after leaving Cambridge,
Milton was asked to contribute verses for the masque (probably by the musician
Henry Lawes, 1596-1662, a friend of Milton's father). The well-known sonnet on the
passing of time, and of his youth, gives a more personal glimpse of him as he
determined to spend further years of study in pursuit of his poetic ambitions.
Renaissance patronage: Milton and the masque
John Milton, adapted by George Colman, 1732-1794.
Comus: a masque, in two acts by John Milton.
London: J. Cumberland, [ca. 1834]
--in 1634, Milton was again asked by Lawes to collaborate on a masque, for
the same aristocratic patrons. Milton was the junior partner in this collaboration, and in a
sonnet to Lawes expressed great regard for the musician
. . . whose tuneful and well-measured song
First taught our English music how to span
Words with just note and accent . . .
Thou honour'st verse, and verse must lend her wing
To honour thee, the priest of Phoebus' quire
The new masque was Comus, an allegory of the struggle between chaste
temperance and riotous intemperance, written for the installation of the Countess's
stepson, the Earl of Bridgwater, as Lord President of the Council of Wales, and first
performed with his children in the leading roles at Ludlow Castle on September 29th
1634. Colman's 18th century stage adaptation of Comus incorporated music by Dr.
Thomas Arne, who also composed the tune of "Rule Britannia."
Poetic ambition and the deferral of fame
John Milton,
"Lycidas,"
in The poetical works of John Milton.
Aldine edition of the British poets.
3 vols. London: William Pickering, 1851. Original blue-green cloth with paper label.
--Milton's Lycidas, an elegy for his Cambridge contemporary Edward King first
published in 1638, allowed Milton to mark the increasing contrast between the
pastoral idyl of student life and the growing political tensions of the 1630s; it also
incorporated reflections on his own situation in deferring a career through his
twenties while he pursued his poetic ambitions, asking
Alas, what boots it with incessant care
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse!
Though he rebutted his doubts firmly enough in this poem, the question is significant
in pointing ahead to his non-poetic activity in the next two decades.
ITALY & THE 1640’S
Italy, European Intellectual Life, and the
Pamphlet Wars of the 1640s
Hugo Grotius, 1583-1645; Willem de Groot, 1597-1662, ed.
Hug. Grotii Poemata, per Guil. Grotium denuo edita, aucta, & emendata.
Lugduni Batav.: apud Hieronymum de Vogel, 1639. Contemporary red morocco,
gilt.
Milton concluded his six years of quiet study with a remarkable eighteen-month tour
to various centers of European antiquity and intellectual life, notably Italy. Early in his
tour, in Paris in April 1638, he was able to meet one of his great intellectual heroes,
the Dutch legal theorist Hugo Grotius, exiled from Holland but then serving as the
Swedish ambassador to France. Among Grotius's Latin writings were two significant
for Milton's own later poetry, the drama Adamus Exsul (1601) and the poem Christus
patiens (published 1619). (The library's earliest edition of Milton's third great neoLatin poetic influence, with Buchanan and Grotius, Marco Girolamo Vida's Christiad,
first published in 1535, dates only from 1731, and was not included in this
exhibit.)
Milton's Florence
Georg Braun, 1541-1622, and Franz Hogenberg, c.1536-1588,
"Florentia,"
from Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Liber I
Frankfurt: Braun and Hogenberg, [1572]. John Osman Collection of Braun &
Hogenberg.
Milton's first prolonged stay in Italy was in Florence, which he reached in late
summer 1638. It was a city, he recalled, "which I have always more particularly
esteemed for the elegance of its dialect, its genius, and its taste." There he met the
poets of the Svogliati Academy, and visited the blind, elderly Galileo, at his villa
south of the city. He returned to Florence on his way back north in February 1639.
Eighteen miles from Florence lay the thick "autumnal leaves that strow the brooks/Of
Vallombrosa."
Milton's Rome
Georg Braun, 1541-1622, and Franz Hogenberg, c.1536-1588, "Roma,"
from Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Liber I
Frankfurt: Braun and Hogenberg, [1572]. John Osman Collection of Braun &
Hogenberg.
During the late fall of 1638, Milton spent two months in Rome, "viewing the
antiquities of that renowned city."
. . . an imperial city stood,
With towers and temples proudly elevate
On seven small hills, with palaces adorned,
Porches and theatres, baths, aueducts,
Statues and trophies, and triumphal arcs,
Gardens and groves . . .
The Renaissance basilica of St. Peter's, Rome, to which Milton alludes in the
Pandemonium scene ofParadise Lost, had recently been completed, in the years
since this late sixteenth-century city view was printed, and he was also able to see
the classical manuscripts of the Vatican library. He returned to Rome at the very end
of 1638, for a further two months, before moving north, by way of Venice, towards
home.
Milton's Naples
Georg Braun, 1541-1622, and Franz Hogenberg, c.1536-1588,
"Neapolis,"
from Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Liber I
Frankfurt: Braun and Hogenberg, [1572]. John Osman Collection of Braun &
Hogenberg.
In November 1638, Milton pushed south to Naples, where he was befriended by
Giovanni Manso, Marquis de Villa, to whom he addressed a Latin verse-epistle, later
printed in his first volume of verse,Poems English and Latin (1645). "During my
stay," Milton recalled, Manso "gave me singular proofs of his regard; he himself
conducted me round the city, and to the palace of the viceroy; and more than once
paid me a visit at my lodgings." Naples was the southernmost point of Milton's
journey; in late December, "melancholy intelligence . . . of civil commotions in
England" led Milton to curtail his original plans and turn back north. "I thought it
base," he wrote, "to be traveling for amusement abroad, while my fellow-citizens
were fighting for liberty at home."
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso
Lodovico Ariosto, 1474-1533.
Orlando furioso di M. Lodovico Ariosto, tutto ricorretto, & di nuove figure
adornato.
Edited by Girolamo Ruscelli and with a life by Giovan Battista Pigna.
In Venezia: heirs of Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1580. Modern vellum, gilt.
Two of Milton's great heroes as modern epic poets were Italian, Ariosto and Tasso,
and Milton's commonplace notebook includes reference to Ariosto's Orlando
Furioso, and he quoted (in his own translation) from the poem in his own first prose
work Of Reformation (1641). On his Italian journey, Milton passed through the
northern city of Ferrara, where Ariosto had enjoyed the Duke's patronage.
Tasso's Gierusalemme Liberata, I
Torquato Tasso, 1544-1595.
La Giervsalemme liberata di Torqvato Tasso. Con le figure di Bernardo
Castello, e le annotationi di Scipio Gentili, e di Giulio Gvastavini.
Genova: [G. Bartoli] 1590. Engraved title page and plates by Agostino Carracci and
Giacomo
Franco. Old citron morocco binding, paned sides, and gilt leaves.
In Naples, Milton found a more direct and personal link to his other Italian poetic
hero, Tasso, through his contact with the now-elderly Manso, who had been Tasso's
patron and to whom Tasso had addressed his Discourse on Friendship.
Tasso's Gierusalemme Liberata, II
Torquato Tasso
Goffredo, overo Gierusalemme liberata, poema heroico del S.Torquato Tasso,
nel quale sono state aggiunte molte stanze leuate, con le varie lettioni; &
postiui gli argomenti, & allegorie a ciascun canto d'incerto auttore. Con
l'aggiunta de' cinque canti del sig. Camillo Camilli, & I loro argomenti, del sig.
Franceso Melchiori opitergino.
In Vinegia: heirs of Francesco de' Franceschi, 1600. Disbound; bookplate of James H.
Hammond. Gift of John Shaw Billings.
In his The Reason of Church Government (1641), Milton would list Tasso with
Homer, Virgil and the Book of Job among his models in epic poetry. Milton's
epigraph from Tasso's Gierusalemme liberata in his tribute to Manso (published in
his 1645 Poems) was a graceful allusion to Manso's earlier patronage of Tasso as
Milton sought similar patronage for himself.
Galileo and Freedom of Thought
Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642; Carlo Manolessi, fl. 1659, ed..
Opere di Galileo Galilei . . . In questa nuoua editione insieme raccolte, e di varij
trattati dell' istesso autore non più stampati accresciute.
19 pts. 2 vols. Bologna: per gli hh del Dozza, 1655-56 [v.1, 1656]. Contemporary
calf.
Bookplates of Edward Lord Suffield and Thomas Clifford Allbutt.
Among the most moving incidents of Milton's Italian journey was his visit in Florence
to the great astronomer Galileo, now blind and still living under restrictions for (in
Milton's acerbic summary fromAreopagitica, 1644) "thinking in Astronomy otherwise
than the Franciscan and Dominican licencers thought." Milton refers to one of
Galileo's hand-made telescopes in Paradise Lost, Book I, when he describes the
"moon, whose orb/Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views/At ev'ning from the
top of Fiesole."
Milton and the Phlegraean Fields
Georg Hofnagel,
"Oriens Mirabilium Sulphureorum Motum apud Puteolos (Campos Flegreos .
. . Neapolitanae),"
[heading on verso: "Forum Vulcani, vulgo Solfataria" ]
from Braun and Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Liber Tertius
Frankfurt: Braun and Hogenberg, [1581]. John Osman Collection of Braun & Hogenberg.
Seest you yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,
The seat of desolation, void of light,
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames
Casts pale and dreadful. . .
Paradise Lost, Book I
As the figures in this engraving suggest, the Phlegraean Fields, a few miles south of
Naples, where sulphurous smoke spurted from the hot earth, awed Renaissance
travelers to Italy, and the scene has been suggested as influencing Milton's depiction
of Hell.
Visiting the Sibyl's Cave
Georg Hofnagel,
"Antrum Sybyllae Cumanae,"
from Braun and Hogenberg, Civitates Orbis Terrarum, Liber Tertius
Frankfurt: Braun and Hogenberg, [1581]. John Osman Collection of Braun &
Hogenberg.
. . . once it was my dismal hap to hear
A Sybil old, bow-bent with crooked age,
That far events full wisely could presage,
And in Times long and dark Prospective Glass
Fore-saw what future dayes should bring to pass.
Milton, At a Vacation Exercise.
The Sybil's cave at Cumae, near Naples, in Campania, the farthest outpost of Greek
settlement in mainland Italy, is described in Vergil's Aeneid, Book VI. Hofnagel's
engraving, based on his visit to Italy in 1577-78, nicely captures the classical allure
that sites such as this held for Renaissance travelers.
The young Milton as a European poet
John Milton,
Poems of Mr. John Milton: both English and Latin, compos'd at several times
Printed by his true copies. The songs were set in musick by Mr. Henry Lawes . .
. Printed and publish'd according to order.
London: Printed by Ruth Raworth for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at
the signe of the Princes Arms in Pauls Church-yard, 1645. First edition. Lacking
portrait. Purchased for the library by the Thomas Cooper Society, 1996.
It was just a few years after his Italian journey, in the middle of the English Civil War
of the 1640s, that Milton published his first volume of poetry. While the volume is
now treasured for such English works as "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity,"
"L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," Comus and Lycidas, the separate title-page shown
here for the second section of Latin poems, Joannis Miltoni Londinensis Poemata ...
nunc primum edita, is also significant in indicating Milton's ambition for a European,
not merely an English, poetic readership.
Religious controversy, I: Milton's first published prose work
John Milton,
Of reformation touching church-discipline in England: and the causes that
hither-to have hindered it; two bookes written to a friend.
[London]: Printed for Thomas Underhill, 1641. Bookplate of F.E. Smith,
Viscount Birkenhead.
The political tensions in the 1640s and the breakdown of Royal authority brought a
new cultural significance to the printing press as an agent of public debate. Milton's
own publisher commented that "the slightest pamphlet is nowadayes more vendible
then the Works of learnedest men." Milton himself commented: "Liberty of speech
was no longer subject to control . . . I saw that a way was opening for the
establishment of real liberty . . . I therefore determined to relinqish the other pursuits
in which I was engaged, and to transfer the whole of my talents and industry to this
one important object." Milton's first published prose work, designed "To vindicate the
spotless truth from an ignominious bondage," was a plea for the Reformation of the
English church to be carried through more fully, rejecting the conservative
countermovement towards episcopal authority under Archbishop
Laud.
Religious controversy, II: the debate over episcopacy
[John Milton],
"Poscript,"
in Smectymnuus redivivus: being an answer to a book, entituled An humble remonstrance,
in which the original of liturgy, episcopacy is discussed: and quaeries propounded
concerning both: the parity of bishops and presbyters in Scripture demonstrated, the
occasion of the imparity in antiquity discovered, the disparity of the ancient and our modern
bishops manifested, the antiquity of ruling elders in the church vindicated, the prelatical
church bounded composed by five learned and orthodox divines.
London: John Rothwell, 1660. Later three-quarter calf. Bookplate of Moses H. Grossman.
First published 1641, under the title: An answer to a booke entituled An humble
remonstrance to the high court of Parliament. The proepiscopalian Remonstrance had been published the previous year by the bishop and
poet Joseph Hall (1574-1656). The five authors of this composite riposte were
Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and
William Spurstowe, the initial letters of whose names make up the pseudonym
"Smectymnvvs." Thomas Young had been Milton's tutor when he was a child and
remained a friend. The "Poscript" (p. 68-[73]) has been attributed to Milton himself
(see Masson, Life of John Milton; Coleridge, 267).
Religious controversy, III
A directory for the publique worship of God, throughout the three kingdoms
of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Together with an ordinance of Parliament
for the taking away of the Book of common-prayer: and for establishing and
observing of this present directory throughout the kingdom of England, and the dominion of
Wales. Die jovis, 13. martii, 1644.
London: printed for E. Tyler [etc.] 1644 [1645]
bound with: An ordinance of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament for the more
effectuall puting in execution the Directory for publique worship: in all parish churches and
chappells within the kingdome of England and dominion of Wales.
[London]: Printed by T. W. for Ed. Husband, Printer for the Honourable House of Commons,
1645.
Contemporary brown calf. Label of Hannah Gosling and signature of Maud Downing, 1919.
The Westminster Assembly of Divines, first proposed in Parliament in 1642, was
charged with the revision of the Church's articles of belief, prayer book, and method
of church government. This Directory was the first product of the Assembly to be
completed, with the credal standards of the better-known Westminster Confession
following only at the end of 1646. The Directory preface noted that "long and sad
Experience hath made it manifest, that the Leiturgie used in the Church of England,
(notwithstanding all the pains and Religious intentions of the Compilers of it) hath
proved an offence, not only to the Godly at home; but also to the Reformed
Churches abroad." The accompanying ordinance prescribed a fine of five pounds for
a first offence in using the old Prayer Book in public worship, or even in a private
house, with increased fines and up to a year's imprisonment for repeat offenders.
Milton had briefly supported the Presyterian reformers of the Westminster Assembly,
but he soon became alienated from the "Enforcers of Conscience," denouncing
"New Presbyter" as "but Old Priest writ large."
Political controversy, I
Leycesters Common-wealth: Conceived, Spoken And published with most
earnest protestation of all dutifull good will and affection towards this Realme;
For whose good onely it is made common to many.
N.p.: n.p., 1641. First published in 1584, with title: The copie of a leter, vryten by
a master of arte of Cambridge, to his friend in London. Engraved portrait of
Leicester. Alfred Chapin Rogers Collection.
The new political atmosphere signalled by the first recalling of the English Parliament
for over a decade, in November 1640, brought renewed interest in early writings
suggesting limits on the Royal prerogatives. Among them was this influential fiftyyear-old pamphlet about Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, that depicts Queen
Elizabeth and her favorite Dudley as abusing their power by having Dudley's wife
murdered. This significantly-timed republication was ordered to be suppressed as
seditious in October 1641.
Political controversy, II
William Prynne, attrib., 1600-1669,
Tom-Tell-Troth, or A free discourse tovching the murmurs of the times,
directed to His Majesty, by way of humble advertisement.
London: printed in the yeere 1642. Wing T 1786. Later tree-calf.
One of a small collection of pamphlets from the 1640s, which also includes
Prynne's Romes master-peece. Or, The grand conspiracy of the pope and his
Iesuited instruments, . . . Revealed out of conscience . . . by an agent sent from
Rome, London: Michael Sparke, Senior, 1643. In 1637, with two Puritan allies,
Prynne was sentenced by the notorious royal court, the Star Chamber, to have his
ears cut off (a second such mutilation for Prynne), to be branded, and to be
imprisoned without any outside contact. In November 1640, the new Parliament
ordered the three men released, and Prynne became a focal point of political
dissatisfaction, first against the King and then against parliament.
Domestic controversy, I
John Milton,
The doctrine and discipline of divorce : restor'd to the good of both sexes, from
the bondage of canon law, and other mistakes, to the true meaning of Scripture
in the law and gospel
compar'd: wherein also are set down the bad consequences of abolishing or
condemning of sin, that which the law of God allows, and Christ abolish not: now the
second time revis'd, and much augmented, in two books: to the Parliament of England, with
the Assembly.
London : [n.p.], Imprinted in the year 1645.
Among the topics to which Milton directed his polemic was the episcopal control over
marriage law, through the church courts. His sudden marriage in June 1642, when
he was thirty-three, to the seventeen-year-old Mary Powell, did not start well, and the
two were separated for the first three years of the Civil War, though subsequently
reconciled. Milton asserted that:
Love in marriage cannot live or subsist unless it be mutual; and where love
cannot be, there can be left of Wedlock nothing, but the empty husk of an
outside
Matrimony, as unpleasing to God, as any other kind of hypocrisy. . . . it is less
a
breach of Wedlock to part with wise and quiet consent betimes, than still to
soil
and profane that mystery of joy and union with a polluting sadness and
perpetual
distemper. . . . for wherein can God delight, wherein be worshipped, wherein
be
glorified by the forcible continuance of an improper and ill-yoked couple.
Milton's radical protestant arguments for divorce on grounds of incompatibility were
more idealistic than licentious, but to many contemporaries his tract seemed a
shocking indicator of just where radicalism would lead.
Domestic controversy, II
Daniel Featley, 1582-1645.
"The Epistle Dedicatory,"
in his The dippers dipt. Or, The Anabaptists duck'd and plung'd over head
and eares, at a disputation in Southwark. . . . a large and full discourse . . . with an
application to these times.
London: Nicholas Bourne and Richard Royston, 1645. Contemporary calf.
Featley had been briefly Rector of All Hallows, Bread Street, London, near Milton's
home, from 1626-28, before moving to the rectory of Acton. In the body of his book
(p. 29), Featley refers only in general terms among the "errors of the Anabaptists" to
the teaching that "a man may put away his wife," but in the dedication he makes
specific reference to Milton, citing among recent Anabaptist publications "a Tractate
on Divorce" that would allow "putting away wives for many other causes than that
which our Saviour only approveth."
The transatlantic links of English Puritanism
John Cotton, 1584-1652.
The way of the churches of Christ in New England. Or the way of churches
walking in brotherly equality, or co-ordination, without subjection of one
church to another. Measured and examined by the Golden Reed of Sanctuary. Containing a
full declaration of the church-way in all particulars.
London: Printed by M. Simmons, 1645.
The Cambridge-educated Cotton, the Puritan rector of the main church in Boston,
Lincolnshire, had emigrated to Boston, Massachussetts in 1633. Significantly, this
influential argument for the congregational church polity was printed by one of
Milton's own London publishers.
The 1640s and the English radical tradition
John Reeve, 1608-1658, and Lodowick Muggleton, 1609-1698,
A remonstrance from the eternal God: declaring several spiritual transactions
unto the Parliament, and commonwealth of England, unto . . . Lord General Cromwell, the
council of state, the council of war and to all that love the Second Appearing. . . . Printed in
the Year, 1653. And Re-Printed.
[London]: 1719.
The continuing underground influence of 1640s radicalism is shown in the strange
survival of one of its most radical religio-political sects. Muggletonianism, which after
a contentious start (its founders had a habit of cursing blasphemers with fatal results,
and were imprisoned under Cromwell) survived for over three hundred years, with a
substantial resurgence in the Romantic era. In the 1970s, the British marxist
historian E.P.Thompson made contact with the last surviving Muggletonian, and the
accumulated stock of Muggletonian publications (in storage in apple boxes since
World War II) was sold up, with Thomas Cooper Library acquiring a good selection,
especially of the early nineteenth-century reprintings.
The pamphlet wars and the freedom of the press
John Milton,
Areopagitica; A Speech of Mr. John Milton For the Liberty of Unlicenc'd
Printing, To the Parlement of England.
London: Printed in the Yeare, 1644. First edition. Modern marbled calf, gilt.
The power of Milton as a prose-writer is most fully deployed in this still-influential
argument for the freedom of the press, published during a divisive civil war, when the
Puritan and parliamentary authorities sought to impose on public debate similar
controls to those formerly exerted by the Crown and Bishops. England was
changing, he told Parliament: "Methinks I see in my mind a mighty and puissant
Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks.
. . . You cannot make us now lesse capable, lesse knowing, lesse eagerly pursuing
of the truth."
CIVIL WAR
Fairfax and the Battle of Naseby, 1645
Joshua Sprigg, 1618-1684.
Anglia rediviva; England's recovery: being the history of the motions, actions, and
successes of the army under the immediate conduct of his excellency Sr. Thomas Fairfax . .
. Compiled for the publique good.
London: Printed by R. W. for John Partridge, 1647. Rebound.
The conflict between King Charles I and Parliament broke into open warfare in
August 1642, with the Royalist forces centred on Oxford and the Parliament strength
centred in London. The turning point for the eventual triumph of the Parliament's
New Model army came with the Battle of Naseby on June 14th, 1645, under the
leadership of Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612-1671). Of especial interest in this adulatory
contemporary account is the fold-out "Table of the Motion and Action of the Army . . .
April 1645-August 1646," detailing each engagement. Milton addressed a sonnet to
Fairfax in 1648:
Fairfax, whose name in arms through Europe rings . . .
Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings
Victory home, though new rebellions raise. . .
The Battle of Naseby, June 14th, 1645
"The Description of the Armies of Horse and Foot of His Majesties, and Sir
Thomas Fairfax his Excellency . . . at the Battayle of Nasebye,"
Printed for John Partridge. "Place this map between fol. 32 & 33." Mounted
on linen.
Detached from Joshua Sprigg, Anglia rediviva, London: R. W. for John Partridge, 1647.
Presented by A. F. McKissick, per J. Rion McKissick, 1939.
The Battle of Naseby was a turning-point in the English Civil War of the 1640s. This
contemporary engraving shows the disposition of the Parliamentary New Model
Army, under Fairfax, Oliver Cromwell (on the right of the map), and Henry Ireton (on
the left), and their Royalist opponents commanded by King Charles (centre top) and
Prince Rupert (on the Royalist right wing, off the left top of the map as displayed).
Naseby was an overwhelming victory for Fairfax and the New Model Army, who
captured over a thousand Royalist prisoners and most of the Royalist
artillery.
The rule of the Saints
Richard Vines, 1600?-1656.
The happinesse of Israel. As it was set forth in a sermon preached to both . . . Houses of
Parliament . . . upon a solemne day of thanksgiving, March 12th 1644.
London: Printed by G. M. for A. Roper, 1645.
Milton was not directly involved in the War. He spent the war years in the
Parliamentary stronghold of London, aware that the war could quickly turn to affect
non-combatants as well as soldiers. He wrote to a friend in the Parliamentary forces:
Captain, or colonel, or knight in arms,
Whose chance on these defenceless doors may seize,
If deed of honour did thee ever please,
Guard them, and him within protect from harms.
This sermon evokes the relief with which Londoners viewed any Parliamentary
victory. Vines, Cambridge-educated and episcopally-ordained, was nonetheless a
member of the Westminster Assembly and closely involved in the 1640s in
Parliamentary plans for church reformation. Later, he would be one of the Puritan
clergy assigned to persuade King Charles to accept reform, and in 1649 he was
ejected from the mastership of Pembroke College, Cambridge, for refusing
allegiance to the new Commonwealth, but nonetheless permitted to become minister
of a London parish. This copy of Vines's sermon bears on the first leaf the
autograph signature of Oliver Cromwell.
The trial and execution of the king, 1649
from John Rushworth, 1612?-1690.
Historical collections. The Fourth and Last Part, containing the Principal Matters which
happened from the Beginning of the Year 1645, to the Death of King Charles the First 1648
. . . Impartially Related. Setting forth only Matter of Fact in Order of Time, without
Observation or Reflection. Volume VII.
Second edition. London: for J. Walthoe and others, 1721.
King Charles I was taken prisoner in 1647. Following Colonel Pride's purge of
moderates from Parliament, Charles was put on trial for treason on January 20th,
1649, before a special court of Judicial Commissioners," condemned after seven
brief days of hearings, and beheaded at Whitehall three days later, on January 30th,
1649. His last speech proclaiming his innocence and declaring himself "the martyr of
the people" became the basis of underground resistance to Parliamentary rule and
the seed of the eventual cult of him as an Anglican quasi-saint, the Blessed Charles
King and Martyr.
From Commonwealth to Protectorate
A declaration of the Parliament of England, in vindication of their
proceedings, and discovering the dangerous practices of several interests
against the present government, and peace of the commonwealth, together
with the resolutions of the Parliament thereupon.
London: Printed by John Field for Edward Husband, Printer to the Parliament of England,
1649.
With the triumph of Parliament, and the King's execution, England became a
republican Commonwealth, under a Council of State, until in a bloodless coup in
1653 the toughest of the Parliamentary military leaders, Oliver Cromwell, dissolved
Parliament and took over as Lord Protector. This pamphlet, threatening death to
anyone suspected of resistance to the new government, illustrates its increasing
repressiveness as Parliament and the Puritan clergy struggled to control the
lingering pockets of Royalists and growing numbers of radical sectaries.
The Image of the (Martyred) King, I
Charles, I, King of England, 1600-1649 [John Gauden, 1605-1662, attrib.],
Eikon basilike, the pourtraicture of His Sacred Maiestie in his solitudes and
sufferings.
[N. p.: n.p.], 1648.
First edition. Bookplate of Joseph Halle Schaffner. Morocco gold decorated binding by
Riviere.
This little book of saintly meditations, published only ten days after the King's
execution, was accepted at the time as being by Charles himself, though in fact it
had been ghosted by Gauden. It was an instant success in establishing the image of
the King as a religious martyr, going through a reputed forty-seven editions.
The Image of the King, II
J. Phinn, engrv.,
"Carolus I,"
frontispiece in The works of that great monarch, and glorious martyr, King
Charles I.
Aberdeen: printed by J. Chalmers for William Coke, 1766. Vol. II. From the library of Yates
Snowden.
This eighteenth-century fold-out, typical of Stuart iconography, shows the martyrking kneeling at prayer, while in the background is the tempest-tossed ship of state.
The Royal Image Smashed
John Milton,
Eikonoklastes, in answer to a book intitl'd Eikon basilike, the portrature of His
sacred Majesty in his solitudes and sufferings. The author I. M.
London: Printed by M. Simmons, 1649.
First edition. "Published by authority." Bookplate of Rev. H. Randolph. Contemporary
sprinkled
calf.
With the Parliamentary victory, Milton recognized that "The truth, which had been
defended by arms, should also be defended by reason." He had already written one
pamphlet, his Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, asserting the power of Parliament
"to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked KING, and after due conviction, to depose,
and put him to death." In March 1649 he had been appointed Latin Secretary to the
Council of State, and one of his first tasks was to write this rebuttal to the
popular Eikon basilike. In his words, "A book appeared soon after, which was
ascribed to the king, and contained the most invidious charges against the
parliament. I was ordered to answer it . . . .I did not insult over fallen majesty, as is
pretended; I only preferred queen Truth to king Charles."
European criticism of the new English republic
Claudius Salmasius, 1588-1653,
Defensio Regia pro Carolo I ad Serenissimum Magna Britannia Regem
Carolum II. Filium natu majorem, Heredum & Successorum legitimum.
[Lugduni Batavorum: B. & A. Elzevirius] 1649. Vellum, with later stamping from the
SouthCarolina College Library.
Exiled to Holland, Charles's heir, the future King Charles II, commissioned a leading
French scholar (who was then a professor at Leyden) to write this attack on the
legitimacy of the new English commonwealth, with a defense of his father's rule.
Milton's Defense of the English People
John Milton,
Ioannis Miltoni Angli Pro populo anglicano defensio, contra Claudii anonymi,
alias Salmasii, Defensionem regiam.
Londini: Typis Du Gardianis, 1650. Contemporary calf.
Milton was again commissioned to write an answer on behalf of the English
government, and his Latin response to Salmasius was (at least during his life-time)
the most frequently-reprinted of all his works. Though he was writing as a
government agent, he strongly rebutted the inevitable accusation that he was simply
a paid propagandist like Salmasius: "I was publicly solicited to write a reply to the
Defense of the royal cause. . . .Nor was I ever prompted to such exertions by the
influence of ambition, by the lust of lucre or of praise; it was only by the conviction of
duty and the feeling of patriotism, a disinterested passion for the extension of civil
and religious liberty." The dispute became bitterly personal; Salmasius asserted that
Milton's blindness was divine retribution for his attack on kingship, while on
Salmasius's death in mid-controversy Milton asserted a similar divine punishment for
his opponent's resistance to republicanism. Bound with Milton's Defensio here are
his follow-up, Defensio secunda pro populo, Hagæ-Comitum, 1654 (important for the
long autobiographical section in which Milton defended his own integrity), and his
further self-justification, Pro se defensio contra Alexandrum Morum, HagæeComitum, 1655. Thomas Cooper Library also has editions of Pro populo
anglicano from 1651 and 1652. This 1650's edition is actually a contemporary
pirated reprint, which used the earlier date in error because publication was at the
break between years in the old-style calendar.
John Milton,
A defence of the people of England, by John Milton: in answer to Salmasius's
Defence of the king.
[Amsterdam?] 1692. Morocco binding with gold lettering on spine.
This English translation of Milton's Defense, by Joseph Washington, appeared
significantly soon after the Revolution of 1688 had again asserted the right of
Parliament to depose an unacceptable King.
The English political scene in the 1650s
Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679,
Leviathan; or, The matter, forme, and power of a common-wealth,
ecclesiasticall and civill.
London: Printed for A. Ckooke, 1651. Contemporary blind-tooled calf.
The displacement of the radical enthusiasm of the 1640s by a sterner, more realistic
political scepticism is perhaps best exemplified by the Baconian political philosopher
Thomas Hobbes. Displayed here is Hobbes's bitter assessment that, without
government, "the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." The two men
were poles apart politically. Milton thought Hobbes "a man of great parts, a learned
man," but "did not like him at all," while Hobbes would write in his Behemoth (1679)
of Milton'sDefensio that it was "very good Latin" but "very ill reasoning." In addition to
the "Bear" edition ofLeviathan shown here, Thomas Cooper Library also has a copy
of the "ornaments" edition, from the library of Alfred Chapin Rogers.
The perspective of the Restoration, I
Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, 1609-1674.
The history of the rebellion and Civil Wars in England, begun in the year
1641. With the precedent passages, and actions, that contributed thereunto,
and the happy end, and conclusion thereof by the king's blessed restoration,
and return upon the 29th of May, in the year 1660.
First edition, 3 vols. Oxford, Printed at the Theater, 1702-1704.
The new English constitutional experiment did not long outlast the death of Cromwell
in 1659. Though Milton himself published further pamphlets advocating republican
government and church reform, the political void left by Cromwell was filled by the
return of Charles II from exile and the restoration of both monarchy and episcopacy.
Clarendon was Charles's Lord Chancellor, both in exile and on his return, though he
fell from favor in 1667. His manuscript history, begun in exile, and presented to the
University of Oxford after his death, was a resounding success, and the profits
established the university press that still bears his name.
The perspective of the Restoration, II
Thomas Skinner, 1629?-1679.
The life of General Monk: duke of Albemarle, containing, I. A faithful account of
his unparallel'd conduct. II. A particular relation of that most memorable march
from Coldstream to London. III. Many mistakes committed by our historians
Particularly the Earl of Clarendon) rectified.
Second edition. London: for J. Graves, 1724. Contemporary panelled calf.
The major role in bringing back the monarchy had been played by a Parliamentary
general, George Monck (1608-1670), soon ennobled as Duke of Albemarle. Monck's
brother-in-law and the Puritan poet Andrew Marvell were among the members of
parliament who intervened to protect Milton after the Restoration. Interestingly, both
Clarendon and Albemarle were rewarded with royal grants as two of the original
Lords Proprietors of South Carolina.
The perspective of the Restoration, III
The Book of common prayer.
London: printed by John Bill, & Christopher Barker [1662]. Engraved title-page
with undated imprint, by David Loggan. Contemporary red morocco by Samuel
Mearne , for Charles II, and bearing his royal cypher.
The return of Charles II restored not only the monarchy, but also the Prayer Book,
which now prescribed special services of national repentance each January 30th,
lamenting how "our late martyred Sovereign . . . had fallen "into the hands of violent
and blood-thirsty men, . . . barbarously to be murthered by them." The pages are
shown here from Thomas Cooper Library's fine folio 1662 Common Prayer, with the
Loggan title-page, bound in red morocco by Samuel Mearnes for Charles II and
bearing his cypher.
PARADISE LOST ETC.
Paradise Lost and Later Years
Milton's contract with his publisher for Paradise Lost
from The works of John Milton, in verse and prose, printed from the original
editions with a life of the author by the Rev. John Mitford.
8 vols. London: William Pickering, 1851. Volume III.
At the Restoration, Milton's writings against monarchy left him in at least potential
danger of the dreadful penalties of disembowelling, death and dismemberment
exacted against seventeenth-century traitors and actually carried through against the
Regicides who signed the King's death warrant. In his words, "though I did not
participate in the toils or dangers of the war, yet I was at the same time engaged in a
service not less hazardous to myself." In the event, influential friends protected him,
though some of his political writings were suppressed. Now totally blind, he seemed
to accept his reverses philosophically, as in his sonnet "To Mr. Cyriack Skinner upon
his Blindness":
. . . I argue not
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward.
Indeed, he could even find comfort in his enforced withdrawal from public affairs: "in
my blindness, I enjoy in no inconsiderable degree the favour of the Deity, who
regards me with more tenderness and compassion in proportion as I am able to
behold nothing but himself."
He had already been engaged on his great epic poem, "of man's first disobedience,"
and he completed it in manuscript by 1665, meekly submitting it to the official
licenser for clearance. Under this contract, signed on April 27th, 1667, Samuel
Simmons (d. 1687), the son of his former publisher Matthew Simmons (d. 1654),
was to pay Milton just five pounds for the right to publish one of the great works of
Western literature, "things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme."
The first edition of Paradise Lost
John Milton,
Paradise lost. A Poem in Ten Books.
London: Printed by S. Simmons, and are to be sold by T. Helder at the Angel in
Little Brittain. 1669.
First edition, seventh issue. Morocco binding. Bookplates of Arthur B. Spingarn
and Roger H. West.
Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world . . . .
Sing heav'nly Muse . . .
. . . what in me is dark
Illumine; what is low, raise and support;
That, to the height of this great argument,
I may assert Eternal Providence
And justify the ways of God to men.
Paradise Lost, Book I.
While Simmons printed some 1300 copies of the ten-book first edition, and had them
ready for sale by August 1667, he issued them gradually over the next two years or
so, with differently dated title-pages and varying preliminary matter. This copy has
the fifth of the six variant title-pages (as in Coleridge,Descriptive Catalogue,
reproduction 43), with the address "The Printer to the Reader," signed S. Simmons,
in three lines.
The revised, second edition of Paradise Lost
John Milton,
Paradise lost : a poem in twelve books.
Second edition, revised and augmented by the same author.
London: S. Simmons, 1674. Signature, bookplate and stamp of Charles Wotton.
Bookplate of William Melin Roscoe. Nineteenth century panelled calf.
For this edition, Milton broke his original ten books into twelve, on the model of Virgil.
The new edition added Marvell's verse tribute to Milton, as well as the frontispiece
engraving from the portrait by William Dolle, as well as Marvell's verse tribute to
Milton's blank verse. The younger poet Marvell, M.P. for Hull, befriended Milton in
the 1660s. Milton's unrhymed blank verse had seemed sufficiently strange on first
publication for the publisher to add a defensive preface and for Dryden to offer to
turn it into rhyme.
The third edition of Paradise Lost
John Milton,
Paradise lost. A poem in twelve books.
The third edition, revised and augmented by the same author.
London: Printed by S. Simmons, 1678. Nineteenth century calf binding.
This third edition, while not uncommon, is in relative terms the rarest of the early
editions of Milton's major work.
The fourth edition of Paradise Lost
John Milton,
Paradise lost. A poem in twelve books.
The fourth edition, adorn'd with sculptures.
London: Printed by Miles Flesher, for Richard Bently and Jacob Tonson,
1688. Calf with banded
spine.
This was the first illustrated edition, with twenty full-page engravings by Robert White
(1645-1703), who also reengraved the frontispiece portrait. The verses below the
portrait, linking Milton with Homer and Vergil, were by John Dryden, the poet
laureate, signalling the way that Milton's achievement overcame the political stigma
still attached to his prose writing:
Three Poets, in three distant Ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The First in loftiness of thought surpass'd;
The Next in Majesty; in both the Last.
The force of Nature cou'd no farther goe:
To make a s she joynd the former two.
With this, it has been estimated, some 4000 copies of the poem had reached print.
The first edition of Paradise Regained
John Milton,
Paradise regain'd : a poem in IV books to which is added Samson Agonistes.
London: Printed by J.M. for John Starkey, 1671.
First edition. Black morocco binding by Riviere. Bookplate of Roger H. West.
I, who ere while the happy garden sung
By one man's disobedience lost, now sing
Recover'd Paradise to all mankind,
By one man's firm obedience fully tried
Through all temptation, and the tempter foil'd
In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed
Paradise Regain'd, Book I
Milton's Quaker friend Thomas Elwood recounted that, when he returned to the
manuscript of Paradise Lost, he had asked the poet, "Thou hast said much of
paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of paradise found?" Milton followed up his
version of the fall of Adam and Eve with this complementary though much shorter
epic poem on Christ's resistance in the wilderness to Satan's temptings, among
them the temptation to worldly power, which Christ must reject.
Samson Agonistes, shown from the second edition
John Milton,
Paradise regain'd. A poem. In IV books. To which is added Samson
Agonistes.
London: Printed for John Starkey, 1680.
Second edition. Calf binding with restored spine.
The second major item in Milton's 1671 volume was his Biblical tragedy Samson
Agonistes. Though some scholars have argued that Milton had written the play much
earlier, in the late 1640s, most readers immediately identify the situation of the nowblind and powerless Samson, "eyeless in Gaza, grinding at the mill with slaves," as
at least in part autobiographical, reflecting Milton's own blindness and his frustration
as the once-free English submitted again to the Philistian yoke of the restored
monarchy.
The second edition of Milton's shorter poems
John Milton,
Poems, &c. Upon Several Occasions. By Mr. John Milton: Both English and
Latin, &c. Composed at several times. With a small Tractate of Education to Mr. Hartlib.
London: printed for Thomas Dring at the White Lion next Chancery Lane End, in Fleetstreet, 1673.Purchased for the library by the Thomas Cooper Society.
The reputation of Paradise Lost encouraged a new edition of Milton's Poems,
English and Latin, and Milton took the opportunity to include both a number of the
sonnets and other shorter poems that he had written since 1645, and his prose
essay On Education, originally been published in 1644, when he had been running
his own small school. Shown here is one of the new poems, his sonnet on his
blindness, written in the mid 1650s, but here published for the first time.
Milton's contemporary fame
Edward Phillips, 1630-1696?
"John Milton,"
in his Theatrum poetarum, or A compleat collection of the poets, especially
the most eminent, of all ages. The antients distinguish't from the moderns in their several
alphabets. With some observations and reflections upon many of them, particularly those of
our own nation.
2 vols. in 1. London, Printed for Charles Smith, at the Angel near the Inner Temple-Gate in
Fleet-street. Anno Dom. 1675.
The author of this pioneering mini-dictionary of literary biography, curiously
alphabetized by first rather than last name, was not only Milton's nephew, but also
his former pupil. Phillips is suitably reticent about over-praising his famous uncle,
but his comment on Milton's contemporary fame ("sufficiently known to all the
Learned of Europe") is clear. The Theatrum's entry on Shakespeare has traditionally
been attributed to Milton himself.
Milton as historian
Milton, John, 1608-1674.
The History of Britain, That part especially now call'd England. From the first
Traditional Beginning, continu'd to the Norman Conquest. Collected out of the antientest
and best Authours thereof.
London: printed by J.M. for James Allestry, at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Churchyeard, 1670. First edition, first issue, with errata leaf but lacking portrait. Purchased for the
library by the Thomas Cooper Society.
In addition to the poetry on which his fame rests, during the last decade of his life
Milton completed and took to press a number of works written or begun years before
that for one reason or another had lingered unpublished. As a young man, he had
projected a national epic based on the history of King Arthur, and he had started this
prose history of early Britain in the 1640s, completing four books before becoming
Latin Secretary, and writing a further two in the 1650s.
The North of England in the seventeenth-century
Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg,
"Yorke, Shrowesbury, Lancaster, Richmont,"
from Theatrum Praecipuarum Totius Mundi Urbium, Liber Sixtus.
Frankfurt: Hierat and Hogenberg, 1618. John Osman Collection.
The course of the English civil war pivoted, not just on London and Oxford, but on
provincial county towns such as these. As the two sample 1663 issues of Newes
Published for Satisfaction and Information of the People (donated by William M.
Jordan) show, even after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, there were
continuing rumours of plots and rebellions, especially in these provincial centers.
The historical figures on the right of the Braun & Hogenberg engraving closely
parallel the periods covered in Milton's History of Britain (1670), while those on the
right illustrate the social hierarchy that, especially in the late 1640s, seemed to be
breaking apart.
Government control in the late 17th century
The two issues displayed here from the official London Gazette, in June
1684 and May 1687, illustrate both the complex European diplomatic context in which
seventeenth-century governments had to operate and (in the petition of the Anabaptists in
1687) the way in which, to the end of Milton's life, the restored monarchy continued to
identify religious difference with a renewed political threat.
The pirated republication of Milton's republican past
John Milton.
Literæ pseudo-senatûs anglicani, Cromwellii, reliquorumque perduellium
nomine ac jussu / conscriptae a Joanne Miltono.
[London: printed by Blaeu for Moses Pitt?,] Impressæ anno 1676.
Contemporary mottled calf. Shown with: John Milton,
Literæ pseudo-senatus anglicani, Cromwellii, reliquorumque perduellium nomine ac jussu
conscriptæ a Joanne Miltono.
[Brussels]: [E. Fricx], Impressæ anno 1676. Title-page inscription: R. Ward. Trin: Coll:
Alumn:." Modern brown calf.
The eddies and cross-currents of English politics in the later 17th century regularly
rekindled interest in Milton's republican writings. In 1676, the first, "fruit," edition
shown here of this surreptitious republication of Milton's dispatches as Latin
secretary (printed abroad for the London bookseller) (Coleridge 29) was intriguing
enough to attract a rival piracy (the second, "face" edition, Coleridge 30, also printed
abroad).
Milton as contemporary geographer
John Milton,.
A brief history of Moscovia: and other less-known countries lying eastward of
Russia as far as Cathay. Gathered from the writings of several eye-
witnesses.
London: Printed by M. Flesher, for Brabazon Aylmer, 1682. Contemporary calf, rebacked.
Like his History of Britain, Milton's compilation from travelers to Russia had been
written in the late 1640s, though it remained unpublished till after his death.
Milton's textbook of Ramist logic
John Milton,
"Artis Logicae Plenior Instituto, Ad Petri Rami Methodum concinnata. Adjecta
est Praxis Analytica & Petri Rami Vita,"
in Joannis Miltoni Opera Omnia Latina. . . . Nunc primum junctim edita.
Amstelodami [London]: 1698
The new anti-scholastic logic or "method" of the French scholar Peter Ramus was
particularly influential among his fellow-protestants. Milton had written this Ramistic
logic text in the 1640s, and first published it in 1672. Interestingly, the life of Ramus
appended to Milton's Logic included a letter from Ramus to Milton's old schoolmaster
at St. Paul's Alexander Gill. It is shown here from the first collected edition of Milton's
prose, A complete collection of the historical, political, and miscellaneous works of
John Milton, both English and Latin. With som papers never before publish'd, edited
by the Irish-born freethinker John Toland (1670-1722).
Milton as radical theologian
John Milton,
Joannis Miltoni Angli De doctrina christiana: libri duo posthumi, quos ex
schedis manuscriptis deprompsit, et typis mandari primus curavit Carolus Ricardus Sumner.
Cantabrigiae: Typis Academicis, excudit Joannes Smith, 1825. Bookplate of Conyngham.
Modern dark blue half calf.
One work that Milton himself never published was his Latin manuscript on Christian
doctrine, first discovered in 1823. Milton probably wrote it in the 1650s, and
completed it by 1661. While Milton compiled his argument entirely on the basis of
Scriptural texts, he built from them a broad, liberal theology that even in the 1820s
was widely condemned as shocking and heretical.
MILTON’S REPUTATION
Milton's Posthumous Reputation
and Later Responses
The first Latin Paradise Lost
William Hogg, b. ca. 1652, transl.,
Paraphrasis poetica in tria Johannis Miltoni . . . poemata, viz. Paradisum
amissum, Paradisum recuperatum, et Samsonem Agonisten.
Londini: typis Johannis Darby, 1690. Later blind-tooled calf.
This first translation of Milton's English poems for the fast-diminishing international
community of neo-Latinists is actually rarer than any of the early English editions
of Paradise Lost. Hogg, a Scot from Gowrie in Perthshire, based his translation on the
original ten-book version, not the twelve-book revision. The volume remains fascinating
evidence of the learned context within which Milton's reputation was achieved.
Milton's earliest biographers
Edward Phillips,
"The Life of Milton [1694],"
in William Godwin, 1756-1836, Lives of Edward and John Philips, nephews
and pupils of Milton. Including various particulars of the literary and political history of their
times.
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1815. From the library of William
Beckford (1760-1844), with his manuscript notes, and later in the library of Lord Roseberry
(1847-1929).
Along with the contemporary inquiries of the dyspeptic Oxford antiquary John
Aubrey, the accounts of Milton's life by his two nephews provide the fullest early
biographical evidence. John Phillips's life long remained anonymous, but Edward's
was first published as early as 1694, in his edition of his uncle's State Letters. This
life of the Phillips brothers themselves, by Mary Shelley's anarchist father,
exemplifies the post-French Revolution surge of interest in Milton as a harbinger of
literary radicalism.
An early eighteenth-century literary reference book
Giles Jacob, 1686-1744,
"Mr. John Milton,"
in Poetical register: or the Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick
Poets. Volume II.
London: W. Mears, 1724. Contemporary calf.
Jacob, an unsuccessful playwright and poet but an indefatigable compiler of legal
reference texts, was blasted by Pope in the Dunciad as the "Blunderbuss of Law."
This work (the first volume had been differently titled as An historical account of the
lives and writings of our most considerable English poets) is fairly representative of
general 18th century knowledge about Milton and his works. Milton in fact occurs in
both volumes; here Jacob concludes that "He was the fullest and loftiest Poet we
ever had."
Dr. Johnson on Milton, I
Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784,
"Prologue, Spoken by Mr. Garrick, April 5, 1750, before the Masque of
Comus,"
in his Poetical Works.
London: W. Osborne . . . Gainsborough: J. Mozley, 1785.
Johnson's prologue was composed for a special benefit performance at Drury Lane,
on behalf of Milton's granddaughter.
Dr. Johnson on Milton, II
Samuel Johnson,
"Milton,"
in his Lives of the English Poets; and a criticism on their works.
3 vols. Dublin: Whitestone, Williams, Colles, Wilson, 1779-1781. Signatures of
Charles Pinckney, dated April 18, 1791, Charleston, vols. 1 and 3.
In spite of Dr. Johnson's dislike of Milton's politics, and his stringent criticism of such
early poems asLycidas, his life, originally intended simply as the preface to a
bookseller's reprint series, remained among the most widely-disseminated
introductions to Milton well into the next century.
Milton in France, I
Nicolas François Dupré de Saint-Maur, 1695-1774, transl.
Le Paradis perdu de Milton. Poeme heroique, traduit de l'anglois, avec les
remarques de Mr. Addisson.
2 ed., revûe & corrigée. 3 vols. Pari: Cailleau [etc.], 1729. Original rust-coloured, paste
paper boards.
Dupré's was the first French translation, originally published in 1727. Until Dupré,
Addison's essay on Milton had been excluded from French editions of the Spectator,
because there was no French translation of the poetry he was discussing.
Milton in France, II
Voltaire, 1694-1778.
An essay upon the civil wars of France, extracted from curious manuscripts :
And also upon the epick poetry of the European nations from Homer down to
Milton by Mr. de Voltaire, author of the Henriade.
2d ed., corrected by Himself. London : Printed for N. Prevost and Comp., 1728.
This startling French tribute to the stature of Milton as epicist expresses surprise that
an achievement such as Milton's should be possible in English and praises him
particularly, not for his treatment of religious themes but for realism in human
description.
Milton in France, III
John Milton,
Le Paradise perdu: poëme par Milton; édition en anglais et en français;
ornée de douze estampes imprimées en couleur d'après les tableaux de M.
Schall.
2 vols. Pari: Chez Defer de Maisonneuve . . . 1792. Modern brown quarter calf binding,
marbled boards.
Hail, wedded love, mysterious law. . . .
Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets
Paradise Lost, Book IV
Each generation rereads Milton for itself, as this engraving of Eden exemplifies. This
handsome edition is notable not only for its chronological link to the French
revolution, but for having the illustrations colored uniformly from engraved plates
rather than by hand after printing was
completed.
Milton and Romantic literary biography
William Hayley, 1745-1820.
The life of Milton, in three parts. To which are added, Conjectures on the
origin of Paradise lost: with an appendix.. The second ed., considerably
enlarged.
London: T. Cadell, junior [etc.] 1796.
Hayley, a minor poet and the friend and patron of several artists, including Blake,
also wrote an influential biography of William Cowper. His life of Milton was originally
published in 1794 for a new Milton edition, and then expanded for separate
publication two years later. Hayley was concerned especially to move beyond mere
biographical narrative into critical comment and quotation from the poems
themselves.
Illustrating Milton in the 19th century
Richard Westall, 1765-1836.
"L'Allegro,"
Original pencil illustration 1822?]. Signed: R. W. 14 x 12 cm.
This signed pencil illustration does not appear to correspond to any of the
engravings for "L'Allegro" in William Hayley's earlier large-format 3-volume Milton
edition (1794-1797), to which Westall had contributed the illustrations.
The quest for biographical documents
Henry John Todd, 1763-1845.
Some account of the life and writings of John Milton, derived principally from documents in
His Majesty's State-paper office, now first published.
London: C. and J. Rivington [etc.] 1826. Calf: South Carolina College Library Collection.
The attempt to ground Milton biography firmly in original evidence had begun with
the redoubtable Dr. Thomas Birch (1705-1766), who included a new life in his edition
of Milton's prose, 1738, and Francis Peck, who published his New Memoirs in 1740.
Todd, who had published an expanded variorum Milton in 1801, was the first
biographer to make full use of the Trinity Manuscript, as well as of government
documents.
Milton and early Victorian reform
Joseph Ivimey, 1773-1834.
John Milton: his life and times, religious and political opinions: with an
appendix, containing animadversions upon Dr. Johnson's life of Milton, etc.,
etc.
London: Effingham Wilson, 1833. Original cloth, paper spine label.
The subtitle of Ivimey's book indicates the political focus of his interest, as does his
publisher: Effingham Wilson was Shelley's publisher and a strong proponent of
Parliamentary reform.
A pocket Paradise Lost from the 1820s
John Milton,
Paradise lost : a poem in twelve books.
London : Jones & Company, 1829.
Jones's Diamond poets. Original raised ripple grain purple silk, gold printed black
paper lettering-label on spine. Gilt edges.
The greater exactness of printing with the iron press, cheaper thinner papers, and
the development of publisher's cloth bindings combined to make technically feasible
these tiny gift or pocket editions in diamond' type.
Brydges on Milton
Sir Egerton Brydges, 1762-1837.
The life of John Milton.
London: J. Macrone, 1835. Original brown cloth, blind-stamped.
Brydges's numerous literary publications included his revision of Phillips's Theatrum
Poetarum (1800) and his British Bibliographer (1810-1814). This brief life, originally
issued as volume 1 of Brydges's Milton edition, is part of Thomas Cooper Library's
extensive collection of Brydges's writings.
Milton and the Victorian literary pilgrimage
William Howitt, 1792-1879.
Homes and haunts of the most eminent British poets.
The illustrations by W. and G. Measom.
2 vols. London: R. Bentley, 1847. Rebound.
Although a great deal of documentary evidence survives about Milton, because he
was primarily a Londoner, very few of the buildings in which he lived reached even
the Victorian period. The cottage at Chalfont St. Giles, outside London in
Buckinghamshire, to which Milton had moved briefly in 1665 to avoid the Great
Plague, fitted the rather sentimental image mid-Victorians like Howitt preferred for
the poet, but was hardly representative of most of his life.
The phantasmagoric Milton
Gustave Doré, 1832-1883, illus.,
Milton's Paradise lost.
Chicago: Thompson & Thomas, [1880?]. Original maroon pictorial cloth.
Among artists who illustrated Milton, or drew on him for inspiration, most attention
has been paid to William Blake, though other illustrators (Westall, Birket Foster)
were arguably more influential in their time. The French illustrator Gustave Dore
(who also illustrated Dante, Coleridge and Tennyson, as well as producing haunting
images of Victorian city slums) developed a distinctively phantasmagoric take on
Milton's poetry, though his work is often undervalued because of the relatively cheap
materials from which his widely-selling books were manufactured.
Tennyson pays tribute to Milton
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892'
"Milton. Alcaics,"
in Enoch Arden, etc.
London: Edward Moxon, 1864. Original cloth.
Tennyson, like Milton, had been a student at Cambridge, and his greatest poem, In
Memoriam
(1850) consciously echoes Milton's Cambridge elegy Lycidas. In this brief tribute,
Tennyson acknowledges Milton's epic power, the "God-gifted organ voice of
England," but prefers his gentler, more idyllic poetry, in "the bowery loveliness of
Eden."
Robert Bridges on Milton
Robert Seymour Bridges, 1844-1930.
On the prosody of Paradise regained and Samson Agonistes. Being a supplement to the
paper On the elements of Milton's blank verse in Paradise lost, which is printed in the Rev.
H. C. Beeching's edition of Paradise lost, bk. I, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
London: B. H. Blackwell, 1889. Original gray wrappers. Ewelme Collection of Robert
Bridges.
As Gerard Manley Hopkins's correspondent and editor, the future poet laureate
Robert Bridges had a special interest in prosodic analysis. Thomas Cooper
Library's Ewelme Collection contains several forms of this item, of which this is the
earliest.
FURTHER REFERENCES
Additional Resources on Milton
Selected References
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K. A. Coleridge, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Milton Collection in the Alexander
Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the
Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, 1980)
Stephen B. Dobranski, Milton, Authorship, and the Book Trade (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Grolier Club, Catalogue of an Exhibition Commemorative of the Tercentenary of the
Birth of John Milton 1608-1908 (New York: Grolier Club, 1908; repr. Norwood, PA:
Norwood Editions, 1976).
James Holly Hanford, A Milton Handbook, 4th ed. (New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1946).
Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979).
Robert W. Karrow, Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Century (Chicago: Speculum Orbis
Press for the Newberry Library, 1993).
John Milton, "The Second Defence of the People of England against an Anonymous
Libel [1654]," translated by Robert Fellowes, in Charles Symmons., ed., The Prose
Works of John Milton, 7 vols (London: for J. Johnson et al., 1806), VII, 361-447.
D.F. McKenzie, "Milton's Printers: Matthew, Mary and Samuel Simmons," Milton
Quarterly, 14:3 (October 1980), 87-91.
Carl Moreland & David Bannister, Antique Maps, A Collector's Handbook (London:
Longman, 1983).
William Riley Parker, Milton, A Biography, 2 vols., 2nd ed. rev. Gordon Campbell
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
John Peile, C.G. Williamson, and A. H. Sayle, Milton Tercentenary. The Portraits,
Prints and Writings of John Milton. Exhibited at Christ's College, Cambridge (Np.:
n.p., 1908).
Lois Potter, Secret rites and secret writing: royalist literature, 1641-1660 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990).
David A. Randall, An Exhibit of Seventeenth-Century Editions of Writings by John
Milton, preface by William Riley Parker (Bloomington, IN: The Lilly Library, 1969)
John T. Shawcross, ed., Milton 1732-1801, the Critical Heritage (London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1972).
_______________, Milton, a Bibliography for the Years 1624-1700 (Binghamton,
NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1984).
--Addenda and Corrigenda issued from same publisher, 1990.
_______________, The Collection of the Works of John Milton and Miltoniana in the
Margaret I. King Library University of Kentucky, Occasional Papers, no. 8
(Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Libraries, 1985).
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Robin Skelton, introduction, in Georg Braun and Franz Hogenberg, Civitates orbis
terrarum, 1572-1618, 6 pts. in 3 vols. (Amsterdam : Theatrum Orbis Terrarum,
1965).
Don M. Wolfe, Milton and his England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1971).