Notes to Chapter 1occupied by the Miltons (pulled down at the end of the eighteenth century) as well as
the church and the dovecote, placing them at Colnbrook, not Horton.
53 Wood, Fasti Oxonienses, I, 880. The official register does not mention this incorpora-
tion, but Wood cites Milton’s report of it to “my friend” (probably Aubrey), and points
out (Fasti, I, 865) that the then Registrar, John French, regularly omitted to note the
incorporation of Cambridge graduates.
54 Bernardo Giustiniani, De Origine Urbis Venetiarum (Venice, 1492); there were Italian
translations in 1545 and 1608.
55 LR I, 292, 296, 304. The copy of Ames, De Conscientia et eius jure, vel casibus (Amster-
dam, 1635) in the Princeton Library is inscribed Ex libriis Johannis Miltonii; it may or
may not be his, but Edward Phillips mentions reading Ames with Milton. The
Chrysostom, Orationes LXXX (Paris, 1604), is in the library of Ely Cathedral, and the
Heraclides, Allegoriae in Homeri fabulas de diis (Basel, 1544), is in the University of Illinois
Library. See Jackson C. Boswell, Milton’s Library (New York, 1975).
56 The date Milton began the Commonplace Book (BL Add Ms 36,354) cannot be cer-
tainly determined.
57 For Shawcross’s dating and argument see John Milton: The Self and the World, 76–7 and
279–80.
58 For the order of Milton’s reading see Ruth Mohl’s edition of the Commonplace Book
in CPW I, 362–513, and Mohl, “John Milton and His Commonplace Book (New York,
1969); also James Holly Hanford, “The Chronology of Milton’s Private Studies,” John
Milton Poet and Humanist (Cleveland, 1966), 75–125; and Harris Francis Fletcher, The
Intellectual Development of John Milton [1608–32], 2 vols (Urbana, Ill., 1956–61), vol. 2.
All point to Milton’s change from a Greek “e” to an italic “e” around 1637. But that
change was gradual rather than sudden, and while we can assume that texts using the
Greek “e” exclusively are early, we cannot assume that the presence of the italic “e”
means a text necessarily written after 1637.
59 The Commonplace Book contains 12 references to what Milton calls in one of them an
“Index Theologicus,” but they were all inserted after 1639.
60 Milton evidently read Eusebius (Historia Ecclesiastica and Vita Constantini), Socrates
Scholasticus (Historia Ecclesiastica), and Evagrius Scholasticus (Historia Ecclesiastica) in
Ecclesiasticae Historiae Autores (Paris, 1544).
61 For a full list, see Hanford, “Chronology of Milton’s Private Studies,” 85–6. He read
Sulpicius Severus, Sacrae Historiae Libri Duo and George Cedren’s Compendium
Historiarum. From Tertullian he read De Spectaculis, De Jejuniis, and Apologeticus; from
Clement, Paedagogus and Stromata, and from Justin Martyr, Tryphon and Apologia pro
Christianis. He cited Byzantine history out of Nicophorus Gregoras (Byzantinae Historiae
libri XI) and John Cantacuzenus (Historiarum libri IV), and Western history out of
Paulus Diaconus (Historia Miscella), Sigonius (De Occidentali Imperio and De Regno Italiae),
and Procopius, De Bello Persico (i.e. the first two books of his History of the Wars of
Justinian). For the editions Milton used or may have used, see the bibliography.
62 His edition of Dante, with commentary, was Dante con L’Expositione di M. Bernardino
Daniello (Venice, 1568). His extract from the Convivio was from Canzone IV, on No-
bility.
63 The Horton Parish Registers record the burial date “Sara uxor Johannis Milton generosi
Aprilis 6o... obiit. 3o” (LR I, 321).
Notes to Chapter 3