In the Houghton Library at Harvard is a copy of Pindar (Sumner 123)
commonly supposed to have belonged to John Milton. Notice of this volume
first appears in the Sotheby sale catalogue of the library of J. B. Inglis
(1871), where it is described as follows:[1]
1588 MILTON (JOHN). Pindari Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia,
Graecè, Jo. Benedictus innumeris mendis repurgavit, metaphrasi
recognita, latina paraphrasi addita, half russia 4to. Salmurii, 1620.
This most precious and inestimable volume formerly belonged to the
divine Milton. From a note on the title page we learn that he purchased the
volume Novemb. 15, 1629, pret. 9s., and at the end, the dates of the period
he was occupied in reading it, viz. from June 17 to Sept. 28, 1630. The
margins throughout bear his Notes, many of them being very copious, and
at the end he has added an Alphabetical Index, occupying two closely
written pages, of all the Authors cited (except Homer and Pindar), with
references to the different places where they are mentioned in the
Annotations, a work of immense perseverance, and which no one except
with the greatest labour of love would have done.
We cannot speak too highly of this book, nor can we conceive any
thing to be more esteemed or revered than this copy of the works of the
Prince of Lyric Poets annotated throughout by the Author of the Immortal
"Paradise Lost," in his own handwriting.
The sale of this book and the purchaser's authentication of it are
recounted by B. M. Pickering in an autograph note now pasted in before
the front flyleaf of the volume:
This book (Pindar) I purchased at Messrs. Sotheby's Aug 5th 1871
my opponent being Mr. Addington the well known collector of autographs
— Mr. Waller the dealer in autographs told me after the sale that he
had
no
doubt about the notes being Milton's writing. After its purchase I had an
opportunity afforded me of comparing this volume with the Lycophron
bought for Mr. Forster at Lord Charlemont's sale The writing compared
very satisfactorily therewith when the nature of the paper on which the
Lycophron is printed is taken into consideration it being nearly like blotting
paper & very difficult to write upon & in another way this
Lycophron
afforded a strong piece of circumstantial evidence as in this Pindar certain
passages of Lycophron occurring at certain pages are referred to and all
these passages are to be found exactly at the pages as referred to in the MS
notes in this book The date given as the time occupied in the perusal (see
end of book before Errata) viz Jun. 17, 1630 to Sept 28-1630 was part of
a forced interval of leisure which Milton was compelled to take during his
University career owing to the Masters fellows & students all having
fled
from Cambridge during the ravages
of a fearful epidemic from April to end of Nov 1630. Cambridge was
completely deserted (see Massons Life of Milton Vol 1 page 200) I gave at
the sale £41 for the volume Mr. Addington the under-bidder having bid
£40
B M Pickering
London 196 Piccadilly
Nov 11. 1872
Subsequent to this note — as a clipping from a catalogue now
pasted on the front flyleaf indicates — the volume was again offered
for
sale as Milton's copy, and passed into the possession of Senator Charles
Sumner. As a part of his bequest, it was received by Harvard April 28,
1874.
Since that time, students of Milton have unanimously accepted the
claims of the sale catalogue and Pickering. Hanford,[2] for instance, lists the Harvard
Pindar as
one of the eight books that bear Milton's "unquestionably genuine
autograph." The Columbia Milton[3]
pronounces the notes "almost without exception in his own hand," and
prints 122 of them with translations. And two other scholars have used the
annotations to reconstruct Milton's Greek studies at Cambridge,[4] to identify editions of other
classical
authors that he read,[5] and to
question the practice of dating Milton's handwriting on the basis of the
form of e that it contains.[6] Such general acceptance and
confident use
would seem to establish beyond question Milton's ownership of the Harvard
volume; but this ownership is precisely what we propose to
query, and our reasons for doing so — set forth briefly under two
chief
heads of form and content — are as follows.
First, the Harvard Pindar does not contain Milton's signature; and
lacking this, the volume can be safely accepted as Milton's only if the
annotations significantly resemble the notes found in other books
unquestionably owned and annotated by Milton. Six such books are extant:
Milton's Dante-Della Casa-Varchi volume (New York Public Library), his
Aratus (British Museum), his Euripides (Bodleian Library), his Lycophron
(Mr. Adrian van Sinderen), his Dio Chrysostom (Chapter Library, Ely
Cathedral), and his Heraclides (University of Illinois Library).[7] A comparison of these volumes
reveals,
however, that the annotations in the six Milton books consistently resemble
each other, but differ in numerous ways from the notes in the Harvard
Pindar.
A specific example of this similarity and disagreement appears in the
seven records of purchase reproduced in Plate I. In the Pindar, the date and
price appear on the same plane in opposite upper corners of the title page;
in the six authentic volumes, signature, price, and date appear in varying
order one below the other. In the Pindar, the abbreviation of "pretium" is
"pret:"; all six Milton books read "pre:". In the Pindar, the price in even
shillings is emphasized by a dash and a zero in the pence column; this
practice Milton does not follow in the three instances where no pence are
involved.
In the manuscript notes, as Plates II-III illustrate, further differences
exist. As annotation marks, Milton uses either a grave accent, an asterisk,
or a small x, and regularly places these marks on a plane
above,
if not directly over, the handwritten correction or note.[8] In the Pindar, the annotator often
underlines the text, uses no grave accent, and on the occasions that he does
use the asterisk or small x, he tends to place them on the
same
plane as his following note.[9] To call
attention to a passage, Milton employs a large X or a
perpendicular pen mark resembling a large parenthesis;[10] for the same purpose, the Pindar
scribe
uses a number of signs not found in the Milton volumes: #, double π,
two horizontally parallel wavy lines, a pointing hand, three pyramidically
arranged dots or a trefoil above a descending, wavy tail, and two trefoils
joined by a
sublinear loop.[11]
Significant differences also appear in the Greek script. As Plates II-III
show, the γ of the Pindar notes tilts so markedly to the right that on one
occasion the Columbia editors[12]
misread it as a 2; Milton's γ is more perpendicular and often suggests a
large V dropped well below the line.[13] In executing μ, both the Pindar
scribe
and Milton begin by writing a Roman u; but in completing
the
letter, the Pindar scribe uses a descending wiggle, Milton a straight line
generally terminating in a small hook to the left.[14] In the Pindar notes, the β is
the
familiar form resembling a tailed B; in Milton's annotations,
the
letter frequently appears in a cursive form slightly similar to an italicb.[15] Conversely, the
Pindar notes often show a cursive θ that suggests a large 9 tilted to the
right; in Milton's notes, the θ is
the conventional upright oval and bar.[16]
Differences in form, therefore, indicate that the Pindar notes are not
in Milton's autograph; and a second kind of difference — this time
in
content — argues with similar force against attributing the
annotations to
an amanuensis writing at Milton's dictation.
In his annotations of Greek poetry, Milton focusses his attention on
the text, and his studies rarely pass beyond the translation, scholia, and
commentary in the volume before him. Twelve of Milton's thirty-seven
Aratus notes,[17] it is true, derive from
collations of his Morel edition with the de Gabiano and Stephanus texts, and
three others come "ex aliis editionibus", from Stephanus, Thesaurus
Graecae Linguae, and perhaps from Grotius, Syntagma
Arateorum; but in all these fifteen instances, Milton's interest is in
text rather than in commentary — in finding the best or an equally
good
alternative reading; and from this purpose he varies only twice: once to
quote Ovid's tribute to Aratus and once to give a parallel from Lucretius.
Similarly, Milton's annotations of Lycophron contain two references to the
Stephanus Thesaurus
(pp. 21, 60), but here again his interest is textual, and his sixty-three
remaining notes contain only three references to works outside his volume:
to the scholia on the
Argonautica (p. 27), to the
Metamorphoses of Ovid (p. 145), and to the
Ion of
Euripides, (p. 156).
[18] In over 500
annotations of Euripides, Milton's focus is even sharper: except for a single
reference to "Scaliger in prooemio Manilium" (II, 69), his notes fail to
indicate that he went beyond the covers of his Stephanus edition.
[19]
In contrast, the Pindar annotator ranges freely beyond his volume. An
instance of the "hors load of citations" that he deposits at his reader's door
is a cluster of five notes entered on pages 2 and 4 concerning
Olympia I, 6. The text (p. 2) reads ϕίλον
ἦτορ, and the printed commentary (p. 4-5) has a six
line note establishing that ϕίλος in this context is
equivalent to ἵδιος and denotes "one's own." To this
already adequate note, the Pindar annotator adds ten more citations or
quotations from Homer, from Eustathius on Homer, and from a renaissance
elegy that can have no primary authority in a question of Classical usage.
Elsewhere, the Pindar annotator further supplements the printed
commentary on Olympia I with quotations from or references
to Lucian (p. 1), Aristotle (p. 2), Lycophron (pp. 3, 11, 35), Anacreon (p.
7), Horace (pp. 7, 10, 12, 22, 30), Virgil (p. 8), Cerda (p. 8), Tzetes
(pp. 9,23), Cicero (p. 30), and Euripides (p. 35). Thus the manuscript notes
on this single ode cite more works extraneous to the printed edition than we
find in all of Milton's Greek marginalia.
Supplementation of the scholarly apparatus, then, is the primary
purpose of the Pindar annotator. To the printed commentary he adds,
among other things, cross references to other Pindar odes[20] and more precise references to
works
already cited in the notes.[21] He
returns transliterations and scriptural quotations in Latin to the original
Hebrew.[22] He records or summarizes
in the margin the content of the commentary.[23] To the printed index he adds
omitted
items or citations,[24]
and on his own initiative he compiles an "Index omnium authorum qui in
opere citantur, exceptis Homero et Pindari Scholiaste, quos ubique." The
content of the Pindar notes thus suggests a scholar working towards a new
edition or a teacher perfecting his private copy for what he considered the
better instruction of his pupils.
Such, then, are our reasons for questioning Milton's ownership and
annotation of the Harvard Pindar. Nothing now in the volume, printed or
written, indicates that Milton was associated with the volume before the
1871 sale catalogue. Pickering's argument that the notes are Milton's
because the Pindar page references to Lycophron fit Milton's edition offers
nothing conclusive. In fact, it provokes at least two questions that militate
against Milton's authorship of the notes. If, as has been generally accepted,
the Pindar entry on p. 756 (Δοξà τῷ
θεῷ / Jun: 17 1630./ et Sept: 28. 1630.)[25] indicates the period of annotation,
then
how could Milton have referred to his copy of Lycophron, which he did not
purchase until 1634? Or if the Pindar annotations belong to a period after
he procured his Lycophron, then why do not the Pindar references to
Euripides also fit the page numbers of Milton's copy, which he purchased
in
the same year as his Lycophron? Added to these difficulties are the
differences in form and content revealed by comparison of the Pindar notes
with the authentic Milton marginalia. The Pindar notes show different habits
of annotation and handwriting and suggest scholarly interests other than
those of Milton. We are therefore reluctantly forced to conclude that
Milton's ownership of the Harvard Pindar has yet to be demonstrated, and
that available evidence all points to a non-Miltonic origin for the
annotations found therein.
If we are correct in this conclusion, then the results of much
laborious work — particularly by the Columbia editors and Fletcher
—
will have to be discarded. The Pindar annotations should not be included
in future editions of Milton's work. The nature of Milton's Greek studies
at Cambridge and his use of Eustathius's Homer and Vulcanius's
Callimachus will have to be established on evidence other than the Pindar
volume. And scholars working with the Milton manuscripts may continue
to date Milton's handwriting on the basis of the form of e that
it contains; or at least, the Harvard Pindar should not be invoked to
question the validity of that practice.
