My friend Mr. Carruthers, of Inverness, has kindly favoured me with some remarks on this Work. As they are corrective of errors into which I had fallen, I lay a part of them before the reader. To Mr. Marsh, of Warrington, I am also indebted for some valuable information and documents. T. K. Page 50. Milton's Letter." This is certainly not in Milton's handwriting: I am as positive of this as of my own existence. It is a fine current clerk-like hand, without interlineation or erasure. Read the letter, and see a distinct allusion by Milton to his blindness. The signature is not unlike Milton's, but appears to be by the same hand as the body of the letter."-C. 66 Page 52.—“ Mrs. Foster was right in saying that Milton's second wife died of a consumption more than three months after her lying-in; the child was baptized October 19, 1657. See Cunningham's Johnson, i. 105, iii. 423."—C. Page 60.-"The date of the marriage license is 11th Feb., 1662 [−3 ?]. -Sir C. Young's Pedigree of the Minshulls in Mitford's Life, prefixed to works, octavo edition.' -C. Page 90.-It appears from the facsimile of the signatures to the receipts published by Mr. Marsh, that Anne Milton could not write, and Mary very badly. There is great mystery about the education that Milton gave his daughters. Page 93.-Phillips says, etc. "You have been misled by Johnson. Phillips does not make this statement."-C. Page 158." In his 'Iconoclastes' he speaks of the infection of Arian and Pelagian heresies, a proof that up to his forty-first year he had not imbibed Arian opinions."- -C. Page 257.-The right date is 1631. The subject of Beaumont's poem, as Mr. Hunter has shown, was Lucy, daughter of the Earl of Exeter she died in 1614. : Pages 267-269.-Donne's 'Divine Sonnets' are formed on the Italian model; but they were not published till 1633.-Ronsard and other French poets of the sixteenth century wrote numerous sonnets.-Among the one thousand sonnets of T. Tasso, there are two of the same form as Milton's three Italian sonnets. Page 383, note .-This was the orthography of the time. men," ed. 1680, and all till 1747. Page 439.-Sirocco is Italian also. "Gods or Page 483.-This is a secondary, not the primary sense of the Hebrew terms. ERRATA. Page 4, last line, for 1642 read 1612. Page 10, line ninth, for he would relish read would retch. Page 28, last but one, for Spenstow read Spurstow. Page 60, last line, for features read fortunes. Page 234, last but two, for We read we. Page 314, seventh from bottom, for 1653 read 1652, dele or early in 1654. Page 315, line twelfth, for 1656, 1657 read 1655, 1656. Page 320, line eighteenth, for potentem read potantem. Page 387, line seventh, for never read seldom. Page 452, line seventh, for external read eternal. LIFE OF MILTON.* FIRST PERIOD. AT SCHOOL AND AT THE UNIVERSITY. A. D. 1608-1632. A. ET. 1-24. FAMILY names, as it is well known, not only in this country, but throughout all Europe, are in numerous instances derived from those of places. In every county of England are still to be found-and the cases were far more numerous in former days-families bearing the same names with its towns, villages, and hamlets. This however gives no indication of their original social position. It only shows that at one time they dwelt in or came from that place, and the name was given alike to the homeless vagrant and the lord of the manor. In the sixteenth century a family which had derived its name of Milton from a town of that namet (the con *See Note A. at the end of this Part. There are at least twenty places of this name in England. Of these, two are in Oxfordshire,-Great Milton, a parish in the hundred of Thame, and Milton, a hamlet in the parish of Adderbury, within a few miles of Banbury. There is also a Milton seven miles south of Abingdon, in the adjoining county of Berks. It is this last that Phillips, the nephew and biographer of Milton, gives as the original seat of B traction of Middleton) in Oxfordshire, was resident in that county. It had formerly, we are told, been of considerable opulence and importance; but having taken the Lancastrian side in the Wars of the Roses, it had shared in the misfortunes of that party, and been shorn of its wealth and consequence, the landed property having been confiscated, and the then proprietor left with nothing but what he held in right of his wife. We hear nothing more of the fortunes of the Milton family till the latter half of the sixteenth century, when we find John Milton holding the office of under-ranger of the royal forest of Shotover, in the vicinity of the city of Oxford.* He was, it appears, a rigid professor of the doctrines of the lately dominant superstition; and when his son, of the same name as himself, whom he had sent to the College of Christ Church in the adjacent University, had there learned and embraced the Reformed doctrines, he disinherited him, and there is no account of his ever having again taken him into favour; nor is the circumstance very likely, such was the spirit of religious rancour, we may add religious fervour and sincerity, which prevailed in those times.† John Milton the younger was thus at an early age thrown, we may suppose, entirely on his own resources. It is not unlikely that the profession of the law had been his original destination; and now, probably seeing these higher prospects blighted, and being a young man of the family; which he said was proved by the monuments to be seen in the church of that place. No such monuments however were to be seen when Newton sought for them. Wood said the family was from Great Milton. * Aubrey says he resided at Holton, which is six miles to the east of Oxford, Shotover lying between them. See Note B. at the end of this Part. |