Notes to Chapter 1ing the accord signed with the Scots on June 24, 1639 that ended the First Bishops’
War. Rhetorically, this move telescopes the intervening months and makes a smooth
segue to Milton’s account of his response to the national crisis.
100 Poemata, p. 77, in Poems, 1645 : “Thyrsis & Damon eiusdem viciniae Pastores, eadem
studia sequuti a pueritia amici erant, ut qui plurimum... Damonis autem sub persona
hic intelligitur Carolus Deodatus ex urbe Hetruriae Luca paterno genere oriundus,
caetera Anglus; ingenio, doctrina, clarissimisque caeteris virtutibus, dum viveret, juvenis
egregius.”
101 “Quod tibi purpureus pudor, & sine labe juventus / Grata fuit, quod nulla tori libata
voluptas, / En etiam tibi virginei servantur honores; / Ipse caput nitidum cinctus
rutilante corona, / Letaque frondentis gestans umbracula palmae / Aeternum perages
immortales hymenaeos; / Cantus ubi, choreisque furit lyra mista beatis, / Festa Sionaeo
bacchantur & Orgia Thyrso.” Translation, Carey.
102 The relevant verses are Revelation 7:4: “Lo, a great multitude, which no man could
number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne,
and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands.” Revelation
14:3: “And they sung as it were a new song before the throne.... These are they
which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow
the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.” Revelation 19:7–8: “The marriage of the Lamb is
come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted that she should be
arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.”
103 Lines 9–13 of the poem suggest that two harvests have passed since Diodati’s death,
August, 1638. An apparently unique copy of the private printing is in the British
Library (C 57.d.48). It is in four leaves, undated, without author’s or printer’s names.
104 There is a one-day discrepancy between the manuscript (the letter sent to Dati) dated
April 20, and the printed letter in the Epistolarum Familiarium (1674), dated April 21.
As with his letter to Holste (see note 61) it seems that Milton made a copy of the letter
for himself the day after he wrote the original, and so dated it.
105 See chapter 3, p. 69.
106 Dati’s reply of November 1, 1647 includes, in the spirit of the academy exchanges, a
long excursus on the usage of “rapidus,” taking off from a tercet of Petrarch. See CPW
II, 766–73.
107 Anthony Low, “Mansus: In Its Context,” Urbane Milton, eds. Freeman and Low, 108.
For Mansus’s distich, see above, p. 98.
108 Giovanni Battista Manso, Poesie Nomiche (Venice, 1635). Encomia from Manso’s fel-
low academicians and others were appended under the title Poesie Diversi a Gio. Battista
Manso, Marchese di Villa, 225–326. See Haan, From Academia to Amicitia, 137–48, and
Stella P. Revard, Milton and the Tangles of Neaera’s Hair: The Making of the 1645 Poems
(Columbia, Mo., 1997), 215–24.
109 Ll. 7–10, 25. All translations of Mansus are from Hughes.
110 Ll. 25–35, 38. “Manse pater, jubeo longum salvere per aevum / Missus Hyperboreo
juvenis peregrinus ab axe. / Nec tu longinquam bonus aspernabere Musam, / Quae
nuper gelida vix enutrita sub Arcto / Imprudens Italas ausa est volitare per urbes. /
Nos etiam in nostro modulantes flumine cygnos / Credimus obscuras noctis sensisse
per umbras, / Qua Thamesis late puris argenteus urnis / Oceani glaucos perfundit
gurgite crines. / Quin & in has quondam pervenit Tityrus oras. /... Nos etiam
Notes to Chapter 4