Notes to Chapter 1parts (London, 1678), seems to have made (unacknowledged) use of Milton’s work.
But his manuscripts are acknowledged as an independent major source in the Linguae
romanae dictionarium luculentum novum. A new dictionary... The whole completed and
improved from the several works of Stephens, Cooper, Gouldman, Holyoke, Dr. Littleton, a
large manuscript, in three volumes, of Mr. John Milton (London, 1693). The preface
acknowledges large use of Littleton, and also states that “we had by us, and made use
of, a Manuscript collection in three Large Folios digested into Alphabetical order,
which the learned Mr. John Milton had made, out of Tully, Livy, Caesar, Sallust,
Quintus, Curtius, Justin, Plautus, Terence, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, Manelius, Celsus,
Columella, Varro, Cato, Palladius; in short out of all the best and purest Roman Au-
thors” (sig. A2v).
94 A Declaration, Or Letters Patents of the Election of this present King of Poland, John the Third,
Elected on the 22 of May last past, Anno Dom. 1674. Containing the Reasons of this Election,
the great Vertues and Merits of the said Serene Elect... (London, 1674). The Latin origi-
nal, Diploma Electionis S. R. M. Poloniae 1674, was the official announcement of Sobieski’s
election. Conceivably, Aylmer came by the document first and gave it to Milton to
translate, but the political resonance of the work supports the scenario I suggest. It was
first identified as Milton’s in Edward Phillips’s list of his works in his edition of the
Letters of State Written by Mr. John Milton (London, 1694), liii.
95 See Nicholas von Maltzahn, “The Whig Milton, 1667–1700,” in Armitage, et al., eds,
Milton and Republicanism, 231.
96 For the statistics, see Harris Francis Fletcher, ed., John Milton’s Complete Poetical Works,
reproduced in Photographic Facsimile, 4 vols (Urbana, Ill., 1943–8), III, 55, 57.
97 The Monitor, vol 1, no. 17, April 6–10, 1713. The incident is reported more briefly by
Aubrey (EL 7) and by Richardson (EL 296).
98 Paradise Lost, ed. Newton, 1749, I, lvi–lvii.
99 John Dryden, Fables Ancient and Modern (London, 1700), preface, sig. *A.
100 John Dryden, The State of Innocence, and Fall of Man: An Opera Written in Heroique
Verse, and Dedicated to her Royal Highness, the Dutchess ( London, 1677). Dryden’s prefa-
tory “Apology for Heroique Poetry; and Poetique License” declares that he meant to
lay the work “at the feet of so Beautiful and Excellent a Princess,” and that, “at a
Months warning... ’twas wholly Written, and not since Revis’d.” Responding to
the embarrassing hyperbolic praises of one of his commenders who disparages Milton
by contrast, Dryden pointedly disclaims any such judgment, “The Original being un-
doubtedly, one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime POEMS, which either
this Age or Nation has produc’d” (sig. b).
101 Masson, VI, 712–13, speculates that news of the pending Dryden play may have gal-
vanized Simmons to bring out a new edition promptly.
102 Trans. Michael Lieb, “S. B.’s ‘In Paradisum Amissam’: Sublime Commentary,” MQ
19 (1988), 72–8.
103 Marvell alludes to Milton’s reported rejoinder to Dryden when he requested permis-
sion to make an “Opera” of the epic; see p. 508.
104 See Achinstein, “Milton’s Spectre in the Restoration,” 1–29.
105 See, for example, Stanley Fish, “Inaction and Silence: The Reader in Paradise Re-
gained,” in Joseph A. Wittreich, Jr., ed., Calm of Mind: Tercentenary Essays on Paradise
Regained and Samson Agonistes (Cleveland, OH., and London, 1971), 25–47; and Alan
Notes to Chapter 14