“Between Private Walls” 1645–1649As Milton negotiated his move, the tide had turned against the king. The Battle
of Naseby, June 14, 1645, was the beginning of the end. In Scotland the royalist
troops under the Earl of Montrose and major general Alexander Macdonald
MacColkittoch had taken much of the country, but on September 13 the Scots
Presbyterian forces decisively defeated the royalists at Philiphaugh. Parliament’s
forces won a succession of victories in the North, and by the middle of October the
New Model Army under Fairfax and Cromwell had forced what remained of the
royalist troops in the West and Southwest into Devon and Cornwall. The king
returned to Oxford on November 5 and during the winter could observe his en-
emies gradually closing in on him.
Even before moving house Milton probably began to arrange for the publication
of his poems, and on October 6 the bookseller Humphrey Moseley registered the
volume with the Stationers.^7 Moseley’s preface to Milton’s Poems declares his in-
tention to publish belles lettres rather than the more popular and “more vendible”
political pamphlets, in an effort to “renew the wonted honour and esteem of our
English tongue.” He states that he sought out these poems: “The Authors more
peculiar excellency in these [poetic] studies, was too well known to conceal his
Papers, or to keep me from attempting to sollicit them from him.”^8 He may have
done so, encouraged as he claimed to be by the “courteous” reception given to
“Mr. Wallers late choice Peeces” which he had published a few months earlier.
Milton was no doubt pleased to find a publisher committed to poetry, and he
apparently saw the war’s hopeful turn as a proper moment to publish. Moseley did
not yet, but soon would, have a list dominated by royalist and Cavalier verse.^9 He
underscores Waller’s court connections but the title he supplied, Poems, &c. Written
by Mr. Ed. Waller... lately a Member of the Honourable House of Commons, presents
him as the parliament supporter he was before he was mixed up in a royalist plot.^10
Over the next two months Milton made corrections, read proofs, and had his por-
trait engraved by William Marshall for the frontispiece. It was not flattering, and
Milton registered his displeasure in a satiric epigram under it, as well as a comment
in the Pro Se Defensio (1655) stating that he had bowed to “the suggestion and
solicitation of a bookseller” and allowed himself “to be crudely engraved by an
unskillful engraver because there was no other in the city at that time.”^11 Moseley’s
preface, the portrait, and the title page with its emphasis on Milton’s connection
with Henry Lawes, “Gentleman of the Kings Chappel, and one of his Maiesties
Private Musick,” are at some odds with the reformed poetics and politics conveyed
by Milton’s organization and emphases in the volume. The complex gestures of
self-representation in Milton’s first formal presentation of himself to his country-
men as a poet are analyzed on pages 226–8.
It is likely that Milton sent Henry Lawes a presentation copy of the Poems, along
with his sonnet to Lawes dated February 9, 1645 (1646) and titled in the Trinity
manuscript “To my freind Mr. Hen. Laws.”^12 By that title and style of address –
“Harry,” not Lawes or even Henry – Milton claimed the status of familiar friend.