Notes to Chapter 1Discabineted In Political and Polemical Aphorisms, Grounded on Authority, and Experience;
and illustrated with the choicest Examples and Historical Observations. By the Ever-renowned
Knight, Sir Walter Raleigh, Published By John Milton Esq. (London, 1658). Martin
Dzelzainis, “Milton and the Protectorate in 1658,” in Armitage, et al, Milton and
Republicanism, 191–2, identifies the sources as Bodin’s Les six livres de la République,
Machiavelli’s Il Principe and Discorsi, Lipsius’s Politicorum sive Civilis Doctrinae libri sex,
and Francisco Sansovino’s Concetti politici (mostly taken from Machiavelli’s several works
and Guicciardini’s Storia d’Italia).
139 Dzelzainis, “Milton and the Protectorate in 1658,” 181–205.
140 Cited in Dzelzainis, “Milton and the Protectorate in 1658,” 194. See CPW I, 598; III,
465.
141 Cabinet Council, p. 164.
142 There was a good deal of controversy about a paper said to contain his earlier nomina-
tion of Richard, which at the time of Cromwell’s death could not be found. His verbal
statements were attested by Thurloe, Thomas Goodwin, and others of the council.
See the summary in Firth, Last Years of the Protectorate, 298–307.
143 See note 41.
144 Cf. Luke 18:7: “And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night
unto him... ?” Also Psalm 141:7: “Our bones are scattered at the grave’s mouth”;
and Psalm 44:22: “Yea, for thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as
sheep for the slaughter.”
145 Cf. Revelation 20:12: “And another book was opened, which is the book of life; and
the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according
to their works.”
146 See note 49, also chapter 2, pp. 35–7, 48–52.
147 There are echoes, among many others, of Horace’s Odes 1.5, 1.16, 1.9, 2.9, and 2.11.
As is usual with Milton, these sonnets do not rework specific classical poems, but
evoke the spirit of many.
148 In, for example, L’Allegro, Prolusion VII, Reason of Church-governement and Tetrachordon.
See chapter 2, pp. 31, 45, chapter 5, pp. 151–2, and chapter 6, pp. 189–90.
149 See chapter 3, pp. 80–1.
150 Matthew 6:28–9: “Consider the lillies of the field, how they grow; they toil not,
neither do they spin; And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was
not arrayed like one of these.”
151 For the controversy over these lines see Variorum II.2, 474–6. The reading sometimes
advanced – “spare” in the sense of “refrain from” as a counsel to limit such pleasure –
goes against the thrust of this sonnet. Moreover, the specific allusion to the school-
book Catonis Disticha, 3.5, “Interpone tuis interdum gaudia curis: / Ut possis animo
quemvis sufferre laborem” (Interpose now and then enjoyment amidst your care / that
you may be able to bear in your mind whatever toil you find) reinforces the meaning
suggested here.
152 See note 50.
153 Cf. Smart, Sonnets, 125–6, and Leo Spitzer, “Understanding Milton,” Hopkins Review
4 (1950–1), 16–27. Cf. Sidney, Astrophel, no. 38; Desportes, Diane, no. 35; Drayton’s
“The Vision of Matilda,” and also Aeneas’s vision of Creusa in Aeneid 1.789–95.
154 See note 136.
Notes to Chapter 10