The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography

Notes to Chapter 1

solus oberro, /... Aut si sors dederit tandem non aspera votis, / Illum inopina dies
qua non speraveris hora / Surripit, aeternum linquens in saecula damnum.”
125 Ll. 125–38: “Quamquam etiam vestri nunquam meminisse pigebit / Pastores Thusci,
Musis operata juventus, / Hic Charis, atque Lepos; & Thuseus tu quoque Damon. /
Antiqua genus unde petis Lucumonis ab urbe. / O ego quantus eram, gelidi cum
stratus ad Arni / Murmura, populeumque nemus, qua mellior herba, / Carpere nunc
violas, nunc summas carpere myrtos, / Et potui Lycidae certantem audire Menalcam. /
Ipse etiam tentare ausus sum, nec puto multum / Displicui, nam sunt & apud me
munera vestra / Fiscellae, calathique, & cerea vincla cicutae. / Quin & nostra suas
docuerunt nomina fagos / Et Datis, & Francinus, erant & vocibus ambo / Et studiis
noti, Lydorum sanguinis ambo.”
126 “Silvae” were poetic sketches or minor poems; in his 1645 Poems Milton titled his
poems in non-elegiac meter, Sylvarum Liber. Milton echoes Virgil’s farewell to the
forests, “concedite silvae,” in Eclogue 10, 63, and also Virgil’s renunciation of pastoral
verse in Eclogue 7, 24, “pendebit fistula pinu.”
127 Ll. 155–72: “Ipse etiam, nam nescio quid mihi grande sonabat / Fistula, ab undecima
jam lux est altera nocte, / Et tum forte novis admoram labra cicutis, / Dissiluere
tamen, rupta compage, nec ultra / Ferre graves potuere sonos; dubito quoque ne sim /
Turgidulus, tamen & referam; vos cedite, silvae. / Ite domum impasti, domino jam
non vacat, agni. / Ipse ego Dardanias Rutupina per aequora puppes / Dicam, et
Pandrasidos regnum vetus Inogeniae, / Brennumque Arviragumque duces, priscumque
Belinum, / Et tandem Armoricos Britonum sub lege colonos; / Tum gravidam Arturo
fatali fraude Jögernen, / Mendaces vultus, assumptaque Görlois arma, / Merlini dolus.
O mihi tum si vita supersit, / Tu procul annosa pendebis fistula pinu / Multum oblita
mihi, aut patriis mutata camoenis / Brittonicum strides, quid enim? omnia non licet
uni / Non sperasse uni licet omnia.”
128 Ll. 180–3: “Haec tibi servabam lenta sub cortice lauri, / Haec, & plura simul, tum
quae mihi pocula Mansus, / Mansus Chalcidicae non ultima gloria ripae / Bina dedit,
mirum artis opus, mirandus & ipse.”
129 Manso’s Poesie Nomiche concludes with the poem “La Fenice” (The Phoenix) and his
Erocallia concerns theories of love. See note 53.

Chapter 5 “All Mouths Were Opened Against... the Bishops” 1639–1642

1 Legislation to this purpose was passed in the Glasgow Assembly, November 21 to

December 20, 1638.

2 For example, Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott

Parsons (New York, 1958); R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New

York, 1926); Samuel R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, 1642–1649 (London,

1886–91); Lawrence Stone, The Causes of the English Revolution, 1629–1642 (London,

1972); Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution, 1603–1714 (New York, 1966),

Puritanism and Revolution (London, 1958), The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas

During the English Revolution (London, 1972).

3 For example, Conrad Russell, The Origins of the English Civil War (New York and

London, 1973), Parliaments and English Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979), and The

Notes to Chapter 4–5