University of Virginia Library

A Common-place Book of John Milton, ed. A. J. Horwood (1876), facsimile edition, pp. 148, 185, 193, 195 (two entries), 197 (two entries), 198 (three entries), 242 (three entries), 243 (two entries), 245, 246.

PMLA, XXXVI (1921), 281-283.

Studies in Milton (Lund, 1918), p. xviii.

The Rise of Puritanism (1938), p. 316.

The Classical Republicans (1945), p. 98.

MP, XLVII (1950), 217-221.

I suggest the following groups. Group 1: two notes from Discorsi I, 2 and I, 4 on pp. 193, 246 of the Commonplace Book. Group 2: two notes from I, 10 on p. 197. Group 3: two notes from I, 2 and I, 10 on p. 195 and index entry for Group 2 on index page of Commonplace Book. Group 4: two notes from I, 58 and I, 59 on pp. 185, 245, with the difference in appearance of the two notes resulting from the fact that the note on p. 185 has been crowded in between two earlier entries. Group 5: four notes from I, 58, II, 10, and II, 12 on p. 198, 243, 148, 242. Group 6: two notes from II, 18 and II, 19 on pp. 242, 243. Group 7: note from II, 24 on p. 242. Group 8: note from III, 1 on p. 198. Group 9: note from III, 34 on p. 198.

The close similarity of the cancelled note on p. 193 and the recopied form of it on p. 195 offers convincing proof that Groups 1 and 3 are by the same scribe; and a comparison of words and word forms common to these two groups and to Groups 4, 6, and 9 (the citations of Machiavelli, the words for "prince", and inflectional endings, such as "-are" and "-ere") suggests that Groups 4 and 6 are perhaps, and Group 9 very likely, also the work of the Groups 1 and 3 scribe. For a somewhat different, but likewise tentative, grouping, see Hanford, loc. cit.

Both the reading and the dictation of the notes seem for the most part to have been done consecutively. The position of the notes on p. 198 indicates that the entry from I, 58 (Group 5) was made earlier than the entry from III, 1 (Group 8) and III, 34 (Group 9), and the index entry for the two notes from I, 10 on p. 197 (Group 2) was made by the scribe who entered the notes from I, 2 and I, 10 on p. 195 (Group 3). Normally the scribe writing the heading of the new page was responsible also for the index entry in the back of the book; but the Group 2 scribe failed to make this entry, and it was left for the Group 3 amaneunsis to supply this omission later. This fact would seem to establish the priority of Group 2 to Group 3 even though the notes overlap. The two Group 2 notes, which come from Discorsi I, 10, derive from passages printed on pp. 56 and 60 of volume II of the Opere di Niccolò Machiavelli, Milano, 1804, while the note in Group 3 from I, 10 comes from a passage printed on p. 59 of the same volume. The work of the Group 3 scribe seems to have been that of gathering up loose ends: the recopying of the I, 2 note that he had entered on the wrong page while making the Group 1 notes, and the entering of a new note from a chapter already covered by the Group 2 scribe. A similar overlapping is present in Groups 4 and 5. The Group 5 entry from I, 58 on p. 198 of the Commonplace Book derives from earlier pages of the Opere than does the second entry in Group 4, but I have put Group 5 later than Group 4 because the other three entries in Group 5 come much later in the Opere than the second Group 4 entry.

Plate I shows only the first of these two notes, but those who wish to check the similarity of the handwriting found in the two notes may consult the facsimile edition of the Commonplace Book, cited in note 1. Compare, for instance, "Religione" and "esse" as they appear in both entries, and "laudatiores", "Respub:", and "Machiavel. discors l. 1. c. 10" in the first entry with "laudat", "Repub:", and "Machiavellus . . . discors. l. 1. c. 10" in the second. Horwood identified the scribe of these two notes as Daniel Skinner. Hanford, however, rejected this identification and suggested, "though not without hesitation," that the amanuensis was Edward Phillips. As a comparison of Plates I and II shows, Skinner's script is less angular and more ornate than that appearing in the Commonplace Book notes and in the example of Phillips' hand reproduced in Plate II. For further data on the autographs of Skinner and Phillips, see Sotheby, Ramblings in the Elucidation of the Autograph of Milton (1861), pp. 162, Plate XX, 190, Plate XXIV; and Darbishire, The Early Lives of Milton (1932), p. xvi and plate facing p. 12.

XII, 374, 411.

XII, 362, 410.

XII, 348-50, 352-54, 360, 368-70, 408-11.

To this same scribe may also belong a seventh letter, FE., LXV, noted in the Columbia edition, XII, 376, 411-12, preserved as no. 9 under the same Oldenburg pressmark, and dated "Feb. 21mo 1651", that is 1652. In the six Oldenburg letters we have a fairly clear case of a scribe who writes in more than one hand. The hand appearing in FE., L differs considerably from the hand appearing in FE., LV; but the two hands appear juxtaposed in the text of FE., LIIa, which seems to be the work of only one scribe. To my knowledge, none of these letters has been reproduced except the seventh, LXV, which appeared in facsimile in The New York Times, Dec, 31, 1927; but anyone wishing to check my conclusion that these letters are all by the same scribe, who also made the Group 9 entry in the Commonplace Book, should compare the Group 9 entry with "inserere", "dare", "perlegendam", "prolixiorem", "quandoquidem", "rem", and "remittatur" appearing in FE., LV, and "Comitem", "qua", and "rem" in FE., LVII, with "quam" and "res" in FE., LIX.

The two hands may possibly appear singly elsewhere in the Milton manuscripts. Darbishire (The Manuscript of Milton's Paradise Lost Book I, [1931], pp. xx-xxi) suggests that Edward Phillips's hand appears in the corrections of the text found in the manuscript of Book I of Paradise Lost, and the handwriting of the Group 9 scribe is somewhat suggestive of that found in the May 2, 1652 entry in the Milton family Bible and in the transcript of the Vane sonnet in the Trinity College, Cambridge, manuscript, which is to be dated July, 1652 or slightly earlier.