Notes to Chapter 1French (LR III, 242–3). Du Moulin also admitted authorship in his Replie to a Person of
Honour (Cambridge, 1673), 40. See chapter 14, pp. 496–7.
57 Vlacq’s preface, “Typographus pro se-ipso,” prefixed to his pirated edition of the Defensio
Secunda, sig. x 3v declares: “He [Hartlib] asked me to send him every week the single
sheets thus far fresh from the press. I did so, and only asked that if Milton wished to
reply to it, he would arrange to have a copy sent to me to be printed, if he could
persuade Milton to do so. But he never once wrote to me.... I have often wondered
why Milton did not reply at once to the aforesaid book” (LR III, 245).
58 Pro Se Defensio (c. August 8, 1655), CPW IV.2, 703.
59 Vlacq’s preface states: “I wrote to Hartlib once... who answered me on October 29,
1652, in these words translated from the English: “I am glad that you have written to
me that More is not the author of that most vile and scandalous book” (LR III, 270).
60 Michael Lieb, Milton and the Culture of Violence (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 159–75.
61 Ibid., 175–80.
62 To the Supreame Authoritie the Parliament... The Humble Petiition of the Officers of the
Army (London, 1652, August 12). Other demands included dismissal of disaffected and
scandalous magistrates, an end to tax abuses, sinecures, and monopolies, payment of
soldiers’ arrears and of the Commonwealth’s debts. See Worden, The Rump Parliament,
307–8.
63 Cromwell claimed that some ten or twelve informal meetings between officers and
selected parliament members were held after October 1 (Cromwell, Writings and Speeches
of Oliver Cromwell, ed. W. C. Abbott, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1937) III, 55).
64 Whitelocke, Memorials, III, 548–51. Whitelocke’s rejoinder was a proposal for the re-
call of Charles II, upon conditions.
65 Reports came regularly from the Continent reporting it almost finished or in press. See
LR III, 34, 40–1, 44–7, 173, 248–51. The irrepressible Heinsius and Vossius circulated
other rumors about Milton: that his blindness was a judgment of God, that he was dead.
(LR III, 252, 248).
66 LR III, 316, 321–2. See chapter 4, p. 99.
67 My citations are from the only early version, the 1673 Poems.
68 See Variorum II.2, 442–52. The 1655 date, proposed by Hanford, Woodhouse, Parker
(II, 1,042–3), Shawcross, and others, assumes that the sonnets in the 1673 edition are in
chronological order, so that placement of this sonnet after the Piedmont sonnet (no.
XVIII), April–May, 1655, argues for a date later that year. But there is no reason to
assume strict chronology. As C. J. Morse suggested in “The Dating of Milton’s Sonnet
XIX” (TLS, September 15, 1961), 620, when Milton omitted the Fairfax, Cromwell,
and Vane sonnets from the 1673 Poems, he likely placed the Piedmont sonnet where it
would round off a group of public sonnets, following them with a group on private
themes. Honigmann (Sonnets, 173) argues, implausibly, that “When I consider” is really
about loss of inspiration, not blindness, and dates it from 1644, when “half my days”
would make better literal sense.
69 Parker, II, 1,043. Milton senior’s birthdate is uncertain: he himself referred to several
approximate birthdates between 1562 and 1569 (Parker, II, 684–5). Since John Aubrey
reported that he read without spectacles at age 84 (EL 4–5) he was thought to be at least
84 at the time of death.
70 See chapter 7, p. 228, and below, pp. 311–12.
Notes to Chapter 9