Notes to Chapter 1fourteen in the Cambridge University Library copy (Add Ms 154). In addition to mis-
prints, the printer failed to follow Milton’s paragraphing, and entirely omitted line 177,
“In the blest Kingdoms meek of joy and love.” A descriptive heading crowded in at the
top of the poem in the Trinity manuscript – “In this Monody the Author bewails a
learned Friend, unfortunately drowned in his passage from Chester on the Irish Seas,
1637” – is not in the memorial volume; it was added to indicate genre and circum-
stance, in preparation for publication in 1645.
75 Of his ten extant Latin poems, seven were written to celebrate the birth of royal chil-
dren: four for Prince Charles and Princess Mary (1631), and one each for Prince James
(1633), Princess Elizabeth (1635), and Princess Anne (1637). Another poem celebrates
the king’s recovery from smallpox in 1632, one gives thanks for his safe return from
Scotland in 1633; and one commends the publication of Hausted’s play (1633). The
1637 poem for Princess Anne also includes a supportive reference to the royal fleet in
the year when John Hampden was tried for refusing to pay shipmoney. Still more
revealing, in 1636 he writes of the Roman church in terms anathema to much of the
nation: “sancta maiestas Cathedrae / Dat placidam Italiae quietem” (the holy sover-
eignty of the Church grants Italy its calm serenity). See Norman Postlethwaite and
Gordon Campbell, “Edward King, Milton’s ‘Lycidas’: Poems and Documents,” MQ
28 (1994), 81–2; and Masson I, 648–9.
76 An example is J. H.’s elegy which includes a descant on cathedrals and their rituals,
terming them “quires of angels in epitome / Maugre the blatant beast who cries them
down / As savoring of superstition,” Justa Edouardo King, p. 17. The author is John
Haywood, Chancellor of Lichfield Cathedral, who also wrote one of the Latin poems.
77 Many of the English elegies show Donne’s influence; R. Brown’s employs some pasto-
ral topoi, but not as a controlling conception. Several Latin elegies have mythological
personages and sea deities as mourners, but not pastoral topoi.
78 C. Hill, Milton and the English Revolution, 49–52.
79 Masson (I, 324), Bush, (“The Date of Milton’s Ad Patrem,” 204–8), and Woodhouse
(“Notes on Milton’s Early Development,” 89–91) argue for 1631–2, before or just after
Milton left Cambridge. Parker in “Notes on the Chronology of Milton’s Latin Poems,”
A Tribute to George Coffin Taylor (Chapel Hill, NC, 1952), 125–8, and Milton, I, 125–8;
II, 788–9, argues for 1634. Shawcross in “The Date of Ad Patrem,” Notes and Queries
204 (1959), 358–60, and Sirluck, “Milton’s Idle Right Hand,” 784–5, argue for 1637
or early 1638. H. A. Barnett, “A Time of the Year for Milton’s ‘Ad Patrem,’ ” Modern
Language Notes 73 (1958), 82–3, argues for spring, 1638. Harris Francis Fletcher, ed.,
John Milton’s Complete Poetical Works, reproduced in Photographic Facsimile, 4 vols (Urbana,
Ill., 1943–8), 524, thought the poem could be as late as 1645.
80 Ll. 17, 56, 67–8: “Nec tu vatis opus divinum despice carmen”; “Nec tu perge precor
sacras contemnere Musas”; “Tu tamen ut simules teneras odisse camoenas, / Non odisse
reor, neque enim, pater, ire jubebas.” All citations from “Ad Patrem” are from the 1645
Poems; translations and line numbers are from Hughes.
81 Ll. 24–34: “Carmine sepositi retegunt arcana futuri / Phoebades, & tremulae pallentes
ora Sibyllae; / Carmina sacrificus sollennes pangit ad aras /... Nos etiam patrium tunc
cum repetemus Olympum, / Aeternaeque morae stabunt immobilis aevi, / Ibimus
auratis per caeli templa coronis, / Dulcia suaviloquo sociantes carmina plectro, / Astra
quibus, geminique poli convexa sonabunt.”
Notes to Chapter 3