The Life of John Milton ...

researches and expositions,-sometimes through the Literature of the period, sometimes through its Civil and Ecclesiastical Politics; but the extent to which I have pursued them, and the space which I have assigned to them, have been determined by my desire to present, by their combination, something like a connected historical view of British thought and British society in general prior to the great Revolution. In this portion of British History,-much less studied, I think, than the Revolution itself, though actually containing its elements,-I have based my narrative on the best materials, printed or documentary, that I could find. The Registers of the Stationers' Company have been among the MS. authorities of greatest service to me in the department of the Literature; and, in all departments alike, the documents in the State Paper Office, both domestic and foreign, have furnished me, here with verifications, there with more exact impressions, and sometimes with facts and

extracts.

The Portrait of Milton as a boy is from a photograph taken, by permission, from the original in the possession of Edgar Disney, Esq., of the Hyde, Ingatestone, Essex; of which, and of the other portrait, engraved after Vertue, accounts are given at p. 50 [66], and pp. 277, 278 [308-310] of the volume. The fac-similes from the Milton MSS. at Cambridge are by the permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON :
December, 1858.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

IN the present edition the arrangement of the matter into Books and Chapters has been made symmetrical with that adopted in the succeeding volumes. There has also been some verbal revision throughout.

Of greater importance are the changes that have been rendered necessary by information obtained since the appearance of the first edition, a good deal of it the result of inquiries which that edition suggested or promoted. Where such new information consists of mere particles of additional

fact, it has been incorporated easily enough by slight corrections or extensions of the previous text. In several places, however, more has been required. The first chapter of Book I, treating of the ancestry and kindred of the Poet, has been recast, enlarged, and in great part rewritten, the subject having been much investigated of late, and certainty on some points having been substituted for former conjecture. In the third chapter of the same Book there will be found additional information respecting Milton's first tutor, Thomas Young, and also respecting the family of his friend Charles Diodati. In Book II, treating of the period of Milton's University life at Cambridge, I have thought it worth while to give, under the year 1628, a fuller and more exact account of the perilous escapade of Milton's friend and correspondent, Alexander Gill the younger, just after the assassination of the Duke of Buckingham, and in connexion with that event; and in the third chapter of the same Book, reviewing Milton's academic studies and performances, a recently recovered Rhetorical Essay of his takes a small but appropriate place beside the seven Prolusiones Oratorice acknowledged and published by himself. The first chapter of Book III, explaining Milton's hesitations about a profession before dedicating himself wholly to a literary life, has been modified with a view to increased distinctness on that subject; and in the fourth chapter of the same Book, treating of the important six years between 1632 and 1638, which were spent by Milton at Horton, there will be found, besides some changes in the chronology of the smaller poems of this period, a completely new story of incidents and circumstances in the Horton household through the last two years of the period. It is the story, told in detail between p. 627 and p. 661, of a lawsuit against the Poet's father, the trouble of which was at its height just at the time of the severer family affliction of the illness and death of the Poet's mother. În Book IV, devoted to Milton's Continental Journey of 1638-39, there is due mention of certain recently-discovered documentary traces of his preparations for the journey and of his movements in Florence and in Rome.-As these references will suggest, the additions occasioned by new information have been chiefly in the biographical portions of the volume. The revision, however, has extended also to the historical portions. In the second chapter of Book III the list of the English Privy Council from 1628 to 1632, with other statistics of the kind, has been made, I hope, more exact; and in the fifth chapter of the same Book, treating of the

Reign of Thorough in the three kingdoms from 1632 to 1638, I have thought it due to historical proportion, in view of the succeeding volumes, to bestow some further pains on the narrative of the Scottish Religious Troubles, and especially on the account of the nature and circumstances of the Scottish National Covenant.-Whether in the biography or in the historical chapters, acknowledgment has been scrupulously studied, in the text or in footnotes, of my authorities and obligations for such portions of the new matter as do not belong properly to myself. At various points I have had to acknowledge my special obligations to Colonel J. L. Chester, but most conspicuously of all in the first chapter, where, by the kindness of repeated private communications from him, I have had the full, and I may say the first, use of his important recent researches into the vexed question of the maternal pedigree of the Poet. In the Horton chapter the story of the lawsuit against the Poet's father would have been less complete than it is but for similar trouble generously taken in my behalf by Mr. T. C. Noble.

As has been stated in the original preface, it was part of my purpose to bring forward Milton's early Latin poems into that place of importance in his biography from which the accident of their being in Latin had too long excluded them. Having observed that this object had hardly been attained by the prose translations and abstracts of the Latin poems given in the first edition of the present volume, and that a metrical version of the Epitaphium Damonis on which I ventured in Vol. II seemed to answer the purpose much better, I have taken the hint, and have substituted in this edition, in certain selected cases, metrical versions for the former prose translations and abstracts. The pieces so treated are the Elegia Prima of 1626, the extraordinary Gunpowder Plot poem or In Quintum Novembris of 1626, the academic verses Naturam non pati senium of 1628, the verses De Idea Platonicâ, the fine poem Ad Patrem of 1632 or 1633, and the poem Ad Mansum of 1638. For similar reasons there are metrical renderings of Francini's Italian Ode to Milton and Milton's Italian Sonnets and Canzone.

CONTENTS.

CHAP.

BOOK I.

1608 1625.

I. MILTON'S ANCESTRY and Kindred.

II. THE SPREAD EAGLE, BREAD STREET, OLD LONDON.

III. EDUCATION AT HOME AND AT ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL.

I. Date and Place of the Poet's Birth: The Scrivener's House and

Shop in Bread Street: The Milton Family Arms: Milton an

old name in various parts of England.- -THE PATERNAL

PEDIGREE-Accounts by Aubrey, Wood, and Phillips: The

Oxfordshire Miltons: Immediate ancestry of the Poet in the

cluster of parishes about Shotover, close to Oxford: Henry

Milton and Agnes Milton of Stanton St. John's, the Poet's

great-grandfather and great-grandmother: Their Wills: Their

Son, Richard Milton of Stanton St. John's, yeoman, the Poet's

grandfather: His Obstinate Roman Catholic Recusancy: Tra-

dition that his wife, the Poet's grandmother, was a Haughton :

Uncertainty of the Tradition: John Milton, the Poet's father,

torn not later than 1563 Cast off by his father for turning

Protestant in his youth: Few traces of him till his thirty-

seventh or thirty-eighth year, when he became a London

Scrivener Was settled in the house and shop in Bread Street

in 1600, and then married: The Company of Scriveners and

Nature of a Scrivener's Business.- -THE MATERNAL PEDI-

GREE:-Conflicting accounts as to the maiden name of the

Poet's mother: General preference till of late for Aubrey's

tradition that she was a Bradshaw: No place found for her in

any of the known Bradshaw pedigrees: Colonel Chester's Recent

Researches and their Results: The Jeffreys of Essex and their

branches: One of these Essex Jeffreys a Paul Jeffrey, of St.

Swithin's, London, merchant-taylor, who was dead before 1583,

leaving a widow, Ellen Jeffrey, and two daughters, Sarah and

Margaret Proofs that this Sarah Jeffrey was the Poet's

mother. - Family of the Scrivener and his wife: Three

survivors of this family: viz., a daughter named Anne, the

Poet, and his younger brother Christopher

II. The present Bread Street: The same street within recollection:
Havoc of the old Bread Street by the Great Fire of 1666:
Tradition of the Black Spread Eagle Court long after the
Great Fire Site of this Court and of the house in which

PAGE

CHAP.

Milton was born: The poet essentially a Londoner: Old
Bread Street and its Inns and Curiosities: The famous
Mermaid Tavern: Old Cheapside and its Monuments: Other
Neighbouring Streets: Old St. Paul's: Old London generally:
The Home in Bread Street: The Scrivener's musical celebrity:
Known musical compositions of his Early musical training
of the Poet: The Rev. Richard Stocke, minister of Allhallows,
Bread Street: Humphrey Lownes, the printer: John Lane,
the "fine old Queen Elizabeth gentleman," and his poetry:
His compliment in one of his poems to the Scrivener's musical
ability: Sonnet by the Scrivener in compliment to Lane:
Public events of the Poet's Childhood: Reorganization of the
Scriveners' Company: Increasing business of the Poet's father:
Relatives of the Milton Family: Aunt Truelove and her
children in 1618