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“That Late Villain Milton”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

J. Milton French  and
Maurice Kelley
J. Milton French
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
Maurice Kelley
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

As a supplementary note to the volume of Milton's Letters of State in the Columbia edition of his Works (Volume XIII), as well as an illuminating guide to his reputation immediately subsequent to his death, when Williamson's phrase, “that late Villain Milton,” would have met with nearly unanimous approval, it seems worth while to furnish a summary of information bearing on their publication. The gathering of this material has been in progress now for some time. The principal contributors have been Sumner (in his edition of the Christian Doctrine), Hamilton, Masson, Tanner and Howarth (editors of Pepys), and Hanford. Their contributions being somewhat scattered, I have here brought together the chief items. I am also able to add several new letters which have not previously been published, to correct and clarify certain dates, and, I hope, to arrange the whole in such a way that its story unfolds logically and easily.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , March 1940 , pp. 102 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1940

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References

1 Only when this article had reached galley proof did Professor Maurice Kelley and I discover that we had been independently gathering the same materials. He has kindly consented to add below some later references to Skinner, and to allow me to insert two or three additional items from his collection.—J.M.F.

1 Howarth, Letters and the Second Diary of Samuel Pepys (London, 1933), pp. 97, 114, and Bryant, Samuel Pepys: The Years of Peril (Cambridge, 1935), p. 332, take the Pepys-Howe correspondence of July 8, 1680, and June 15, 1681, to indicate that Daniel voyaged to the Barbadoes; but on what specific evidence I do not know. The restlessness of “Mr. Skinner,” alluded to in the second letter, certainly suggests Daniel.

2 Discovered by A. J. Horwood while he was examining the papers of Sir Frederick Graham of Netherby Hall for the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. Horwood's synopses of these letters, upon which I am dependent, were published in the appendix to the seventh report of that Commission (London, 1879), p. 380.

3 Horwood, A Common-Place Book of John Milton, The Camden Society, n.s. xvi (Westminster, 1876), p. xx, suggests that Lord Preston employed Skinner as a spy because (1) Skinner's second letter contains the impression of a seal that appears likewise on several letters to Lord Preston from a spy in his service; and (2) because elsewhere in Lord Preston's papers is a short, unsigned letter of advice to Lord Preston in what Horwood takes to be Skinner's handwriting.

4 This second letter, according to Horwood, is not in Skinner's hand. I cannot account for the strange forms in presumably a translation or paraphrase.

5 The extent, for instance, of Skinner's intimacy with Milton; Milton's use of him as an amanuensis; the actual whereabouts of the manuscripts of the De doctrina and the Letters of State between November, 1676, and February, 1677; and the manner in which a prospectus of, presumably, Elzevir's contemplated edition of the Letters came into the Public Record Office. For conflicting reports on these matters, see Masson, Life, vi, 720, 791, and Pattison, Milton (London, 1929), p. 154, compared with Hanford, SP., xvii (1920), 319n, and The Works of John Milton (Columbia University Press), xvii, 426; Skinner's letter to Pepys of Nov. 9/19, 1676, and Elzevir's letter to Williamson of Nov. 20, 1676, compared with Elzevir's letter to Daniel Skinner, Sr., of Feb. 9/19, 1677; and Hamilton, Original Papers (Westminster, 1859), p. 32, compared with Smith, The Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys (London, 1841), i, 175n.

6 Facsimile of the Manuscript of Milton's Minor Poems (Cambridge, 1899), p. [1].

7 Gordon Goodwin, DNB., xl, 369, is not convinced that the Newton Puckering donation included the Trinity College manuscript.

8 I quote Howarth's text (op. cit., p. 59). The manuscripts of the De doctrina and of the Letters of State, it should be remembered, were at this time in Holland.

9 Op. cit., p. xix.

10 G. F. Russell Barker and A. H. Stenning, The Record of Old Westminsters (London, 1928), ii, 851.