Notes to Chapter 1tain and Colonel,’ ” in Renaissance Genres, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (Cambridge, Mass.,
1986), 213–40. Also see F. T. Prince, The Italian Element in Milton’s Verse (Oxford,
1954).
14 See David Norbrook, Writing the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1999), 127–9.
15 Some poems to women by Jonson and Daniel, as well as some dedicatory sonnets,
provide analogues for Sonnets IX and X.
16 None of the tentative identifications are persuasive. Parker suggests the “Lady” of Comus,
Alice Egerton, aged 23 in 1642 and still unmarried, or else (even less plausibly given the
poem’s terms) that this sonnet is a courtship poem to Mary Powell (II, 875).
17 Holbein’s illustrations of the Table of Cebes shows young people trifling at the foot of
the rugged mountain of Truth, while others struggle up a steep path. Cf. Hesiod, Works
and Days, ll, 287–92 and Plato, Republic 2. 364Sc. (Unless otherwise noted, citations
from classical authors are from the Loeb Classics editions.) Mary chose to sit at Christ’s
feet rather than join in Martha’s busy housewifery (Luke 10:42); Ruth, following her
Hebrew mother-in-law into exile, chose the path of religious truth and duty (Ruth
1:14).
18 Sonnet X was not composed in TM, but copied there in Milton’s hand, as was the title.
It is untitled in both editions of the Poems, presumably to remove the personal refer-
ence. Phillips (EL 64) claims the relationship began soon after Mary’s departure.
19 Margaret was over thirty when she married Hobson on December 30, 1641. Parker (II,
876) argues that the poem predates that marriage because her married name is not used,
but ladies of high rank often retained their titles of birth if they married into a lower
rank. The couple lived in Aldersgate Street at least two or three years; in March 1644
Hobson was assessed for property there. See Fallon, Captain and Colonel, 55–6.
20 James Ley, Earl of Marlborough, had as chief justice presided at Bacon’s trial for corrup-
tion. For an analysis of the conflicting and sometimes disparaging reports on Ley and his
career see Annabel Patterson, “That Old Man Eloquent,” in Literary Milton: Text, Pre-
text, Context, eds. Diana Treviño Benet and Michael Lieb (Pittsburgh, 1994), 36–44,
and Variorum II.2, 383–6.
21 Isocrates was 98 years old in 338 BC, and probably died soon after that conquest from
natural causes. But Milton evidently believed his source, Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
who wrote that Isocrates saw the battle of Chaeronea as a great betrayal – a military
conquest of Athens and Thebes rather than the Panhellenic League headed by Philip
which he had long sought. Milton could thereby see Ley as responding to a comparable
betrayal by Charles. See John Leonard, ed., John Milton: The Complete Poems (London,
1998), 647.
22 That title, naming him a collector of revenues for the king, is used in a letter of Novem-
ber 7, 1644 (LR II, 110–11). He was often fined as a delinquent by the parliament.
23 Skinner states in his biography that Milton taught his nephews from the time “of his
first settling” and “as it happen’d, the Sonn of some friend” (EL 24). Skinner, known to
have been Milton’s pupil, must have come to him at the latest by 1643 when he was 16;
four years later he entered Lincoln’s Inn.
24 The dates of many entries are uncertain, but J. H. Hanford’s informed speculations in
“The Chronology of Milton’s Private Studies,”in John Milton: Poet and Humanist (Cleve-
land, OH, 1966), 88–103, invite this conclusion. A few items postdate 1650 and are in
the hands of various amanuenses. I cite entries from CPW I, 362–508.
Notes to Chapter 6