We are conscious that on the same day that we are delivering our conclusions to the community of British Miltonists, a memorial service is being conducted in Manchester for one of our number. John Stachniewski of the University of Manchester died very recently, aged 42; we should like to dedicate this occasion to his memory.
In August 1991 William Hunter used the occasion of the Fourth International Milton Symposium, in Vancouver, to set out his view that the attribution of De Doctrina Christiana to John Milton was unsafe. Responses by Barbara Lewalski and John Shawcross on the same day initiated a debate to which this report is a contribution. The research group was convened and co-ordinated by Thomas Corns (Bangor), whose expertise is centred on seventeenth-century prose and literary and linguistic computing. The other members of the group are Gordon Campbell (Leicester), who has archival skills and long experience of seventeenth-century theology, John Hale (Otago), a classicist with a unique command of Milton's languages, David Holmes (West of England, Bristol), a stylometrician whose reputation has been built on authorship attribution studies, and Fiona Tweedie (Glasgow), an applied statistician and stylometrist who has undertaken the computer analyses that lie at the heart of this study.
The group has received substantial assistance from Robert Fallon, Jeremy Maule, Paul Sellin, Jonathan Smith, Eva Thury, Roy Flannagan and Linda Jones, and we are grateful for their efforts on our behalf. William Hunter has kindly provided the text of several articles prior to publication. We are especially indebted to Professor Sellin and to the editors of SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 for allowing us to disclose the substance of Professor Sellin's findings in section 8 of this report. (Individual copies of the Winter 1997 issue of SEL (vol. 37), to be published on 14 February 1997 and in which Sellin's article is to appear, may be purchased for $8.00 in US currency by sending cheque and mailing address, including street number and name and nine-digit zip code for US addresses, to SEL, MS 46, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Houston TX 77005-1892, USA.)
This report is the penultimate stage of our contribution to the debate. On 19 March 1994 we presented a preliminary paper, consisting more of questions than of answers, to the British Milton Seminar in Birmingham. Second, we reported on our research in progress at a series of seminars and conference papers in Bangor (July 1995), Santa Barbara (July 1995), Rome (December 1995) and Bergen (June 1996). Third, we have published this electronic report on the home pages of Milton Quarterly, and the School of English, Bangor, and on the same day have presented our findings to the British Milton Seminar. Our fourth and final contribution will be a printed version of this report in Milton Quarterly, perhaps pruned to conform to the constraints of space that govern publication in a printed journal. We regard our conclusions as no less open to further investigation than were the traditional assumptions about Miltonic authorship that Professor Hunter challenged.
We use the abbreviation MS to refer to page numbers of the manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana, and CE to refer to the Columbia edition of Milton's works. In our transcriptions we have retained spelling and punctuation, but we have expanded contractions and abbreviations, lowered superscriptions and modernised i/j and u/v.
The manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana was discovered
in November 1823 by Robert Lemon, Sr., Deputy Keeper of His Majesty's State
Papers, in a "press" (that is, a large cupboard) in the Old State
Paper Office in the Middle Treasury Gallery in Whitehall. Lemon's delight
at the discovery and his sense of his own heroic role are fully apparent
in the manuscript reports which are bound together as Part Four of the
document, all of which is now preserved in the Public Record Office as
SP 9/61. The manuscript was found in a bundle together with a collection
of transcriptions of Milton's State Papers (now SP 9/194), which are in
the same hand as that responsible for the first part of De Doctrina
Christiana. The treatise was wrapped in proof sheets of an Elsevier
Horace and, together with the State Papers, wrapped in a dark paper envelope
addressed "To M
Lemon's initial speculations about the status and origins of the manuscript showed evident and rather self-important enthusiasm but little accuracy. The merchant Skinner he identified as Cyriack, who was in fact not a merchant but a lawyer, and he plunged boldly into identifying the two principal amanuenses: the first part is in "a small beautiful Italian hand . . . supposed to be the writing of Mary . . . the remainder of the Manuscript is in a different hand, entirely being a small, strong, upright, character, much resembling the writings of Phillips, one of Milton's Nephews"; the latter part contains numerous corrections, many in the hand responsible for the first part, and this leads Lemon to the comfortable surmise that it was "revised and corrected by Mary and Deborah Milton, from the dictation of their Father" (SP 9/61/4, fol. 386v-387r). Shortly after the treatise was published in 1825 Lemon and Charles Sumner established that the scribe responsible for the first part of the treatise was not Cyriack Skinner, but rather Daniel Skinner the younger, son of the merchant and not, apparently, related to Cyriack. Lemon's more sentimental conclusions were gradually unpicked during the nineteenth century by Sumner, Douglas Hamilton (1859), Samuel Leigh Sotheby (1861) and David Masson (1877-94), work later supplemented by M. M. Kleerkooper in 1914, by the which time about twenty documents relevant to the transmission of the De Doctrina and State Paper manuscripts had been discovered; several of these have had to be rediscovered for purposes of this study, as their location in the PRO was not always stated in the printed versions, and twentieth-century scholars have not been able to find them. More recently, John Shawcross listed some new documents in his Bibliography, and we have in turn been able to add more; no doubt more documents will eventually be unearthed. This collection of documents that marks the movements of the manuscript from Skinner's desk to Williamson's press has never been brought together in a sustained narrative, and several have never been printed.
What is certainly known is that SP 9/61 and SP 9/194 were placed in the State Papers Office by Sir Joseph Williamson, probably in 1677. The parcel containing the Milton documents was found amongst papers relating to the Popish Plots of 1677 and 1678; on top of the parcel lay the deposition of Titus Oates, signed and attested on 27 September 1678. The list of those implicated by Oates in the Popish Plot of 1678 includes, teasingly, one "Mr Skinner, a Benedictine"; the following year Oates published his True Narrative of the Horrid Plot, in which he alleged that "Milton was a known frequenter of a Popish Club." The Benedictine was yet another Skinner, possibly Cyriack's elder brother, and the Popish Club, if not mere mischief, may confuse Milton with his brother Christopher.
On 2 October 1674 Daniel Skinner had been elected to a minor fellowship at Trinity College Cambridge ("Daniel Skinner juratus et admissus in socium minorum"). Late in 1675, while resident in Cambridge, he passed the manuscripts of De Doctrina Christiana and letters of state to one Symon Heere, presumably a Dutch skipper, who delivered them to Daniel Elsevier, scion of the Elsevier publishing house and the firm's principal link with English authors and booksellers (see van Eeghen). Elsevier decided to send the theological treatise to a reader, Phillippus van Limborch (i.e., Limborchus), who was then professor at the Remonstrant College in Amsterdam. Many years later, on 3 March 1711, the elderly van Limborch explained to the German traveller Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach
. . . das ihme ein Buchho/oondler ein Systema TheologiÊ von Milton zu untersuchen gegeben, ob er es drucken solle. Er habe es ihm aber wiederrathen, weil der Arrianismus durch und durch auf das heftigste darinnen zu finden gewesen. Wo das Manuscript hergekommen, wisse er nicht.
[ . . . that a publisher had given him a System of Theology by Milton to advise whether he should print it. He [van Limborch] had, however, counselled him against it because the strongest Arianism was to be found throughout it. Where the manuscript had come from he did not know.]
(Uffenbach, III, 584-5)
A Remonstrant reader such as van Limborch would have been sympathetic to the Arminian aspects of the treatise, but Remonstrants were routinely accused of Arianism, and were sensitive about theological opinion that seemed sympathetic to Arian Christology. Elsevier decided to accept the advice of his reader (or, at least, he decided to reject the treatise -- the judgement may as easily have been a commercial one which he chose to represent in more elevated terms), and he wrote to Skinner in Cambridge explaining that he was not prepared to publish either the theological treatise or the letters of state. This letter, which is now lost, did not reach Skinner, because he had already left Cambridge for London, where he had decided to seek the patronage of Samuel Pepys, whom he knew because his sister Mary Skinner was Pepys's resident mistress. Skinner's initial approach to Pepys was a long letter in florid Latin (incipit: Ornatissimo Spectato admodum ac Amplissimo Viro), which Pepys received on 5 July 1676. The Latin text has been printed in full by Hanford (1931) and Howarth (Pepys, 1932, 53-5), and we shall simply offer a précis:
To Master Samuel Pepys, my best wishes for your health and happiness. Because you are an important adviser to the King and hence often pursued with petition, I have plucked up the courage to appeal to you, and hope that I may do so without causing offence. I must first explain my circumstances, my needs. I first experienced your favour through my sister; it is with mixed feelings that I seek it again, but I do need your help.
I was seven years at Westminster School, then six at Cambridge (which was also your cradle), and was elected a fellow of Trinity College. However, that process being still incomplete after about four years, I am approaching all sorts of friends, so far without success. Will you please be my Maecenas?
You know the losses sustained by my father, and his ill health. Help me to help him, by money or by preferment of any sort, so long as it involves writing. I invoke your own love of letters, most talented Sir; I invoke the memory of the Earl of Sandwich and his twin sons, my fellow-debtors; I invoke your generosity and my own indigence; and finally, I invoke the love which on one occasion you professed for my sister. I shall be eternally grateful.
I remain your most dutiful petitioner
Daniel Skinner
PS You can see from the above my thinking about you, but if you will grant me an audience I shall open my mind to you more fully.
(Rawlinson A185 fols. 396-7)
The favour that Skinner initially enjoyed through his sister was a loan of £10 that features in subsequent correspondence. The pact of love for Daniel's sister Mary may refer to her admission to Pepys's household on the death of his wife, but the allusion cannot be interpreted with confidence, because the Latin is imprecise, perhaps deliberately so: the passage reminds Pepys of his involvement with Mary Skinner, and of her parents' mixed feelings about the arrangement, but the extent of the pressure being brought to bear upon Pepys cannot be judged with confidence. In all events, the letter seems to have had the desired effect, because on 24 July Pepys wrote to Sir Leoline Jenkins, the English plenipotentiary at the Congress of Nijmegen, conveying
an humble request on behalf of an ingenious and every way hopeful young gentleman one Mr. Skinner son of a merchant of good quality and name in this City and my worthy friend, who has the ambicion and some encouragement (as I understand) to hope for a dependence on your Lordship in the Service of Mr. Chunley your Secretary: wherein what I have humbly to interpose is the telling your Excellency that being privy to every part of this Gentleman's education, from his Father's house through Westminster School to Trinity College in Cambridge, & the reputacion he has as well as what I personally know of his Sobriety, Parts and Learning, & particularly in his Latin Style, I have not in all my conversacion knowne any person set out better prepared for an admission to publick business, than I think him to be, and as such (as far as your Excellency shall have it before you) I pray he may be honoured with your Excellency's favour to his pretences under this Character, as given by One who would no more bestow it undeserved, than he could deny it where it is soe due, as I think it to be in the Case of this gentleman; on whose behalfe I should with infinite satisfaceon and thankfulness owne any favour he shall be thought worthy of under your Lordship's Patronage.
(National Maritime Museum LBK8, p. 746)
"Mr Chunley" is Thomas Chudleigh, then Secretary to the Embassy (see DNB). The elder Skinner may have been Pepys's "worthy friend", but he is never mentioned in the Diary. The letter of reference is a genre that accommodates exaggeration, but the slips in the Skinner section of the De Doctrina manuscript cast an odd light on Pepys's choice of Skinner's Latin style for particular commendation, because the mistakes, while fairly rare, seem to point to a limited competence in Latin rather than carelessness. Skinner's Latin to Pepys, though florid and ambitious, contains small touches which would have been condemned by Milton or any purist. We return to this issue when we come to consider the Latinity of De Doctrina Christiana. It is not clear how Skinner (and so Pepys) had heard that there was a vacancy in Chudleigh's office, but Chudleigh had written to Williamson on 2/12 August requesting a second clerk to help with the treaty negotiations (SP 84/202, fol. 140). The date of this letter raises the possibility that Chudleigh's letter to Williamson was prompted by his receipt of Pepys's letter, and that the post had in some sense been reserved for Skinner.
Jenkins replied to Pepys from Nijmegen on 9 August 1676 S[tylo]V[etere], saying that he
had rather by effects when Mr Skinner comes, then by promises, lett you see the Regard I will have in every thing within my Power to your Recommending of him.
(Rawlinson A185 fol. 204)
Jenkins or Chudleigh wrote to Skinner offering him a post; the letter is lost, but Skinner recounts in his letter to Pepys of 9/19 November that
Heaven was soe propitious to me to cause a letter to be sent from Nimmeguen, to know whether I would embrace the opportunity of being under Mr Chudleigh secretary to the Embassy.
Skinner was, he assures Pepys, "noe sooner acquainted with this happy news, but I leap't at it." Skinner's expectation of a post was never to be fulfilled, because the ship on which he departed for Nijmegen carried a letter recommending that Skinner not be given the post. This Claudius to Skinner's Hamlet was Sir Joseph Williamson, the Secretary of State, whose ire had been aroused by the publication of Milton's Literae Pseudo-Senatus by Peter and John Blaeu of Amsterdam, from copy supplied by Moses Pitt, the London printer, who had not been prepared to risk printing it in England.
Skinner had not received Elsevier's letter of rejection, so he still believed that Elsevier was planning to publish an edition of the letters of state from the copy that he had supplied, for which the Blaeu edition was an unwelcome competitor. He therefore decided to write to Williamson. Skinner's letter is lost, but he gives a full account of it in his letter to Pepys of 9/19 November:
Your worship may please to remember I once acquainted you with my having the works of Milton which he left behind him to me, which out of pure indiscretion, not dreaming any prejudice might accrue to me, I had agreed with a printer at Amsterdam to have 'um printed, which as good fortune would have it he has not printed one tittle of 'um. About a moneth agoe there creeps out into the world a little imperfect book of Miltons state letters, procur'd to be printed by one Pitts a bookseller in London, which he had bought of a poore fellow that had formerly surreptitiously gott 'um from Milton. These coming out soe slily and quite unknown to me, and when that I had the true more perfect copy, with many other papers, I made my addresses to Sir Joseph Williamson, to acquaint him that there was a book come out against his autority, that if his Honour conniv'd at that, he would please to grant me licence to print mine, if not, that he would either suppress that little book, or give me leave to put in the bottom of the Gazette that they were printing in Holland in a larger more compleat edition. Now Sir little thinking that Sir Joseph was such an enemy to the name of Milton, he told me he could countenance nothing of that mans writings. In his answer I acquiesc'd. a little wile after his Honour sends for me to know what papers I had of Miltons by me, and that I should obleige him if I would permitt 'um to his perusall, which very greedily I did, thinking it might prove advantagious to me. And finding upon this soe great an access to his Honour, I presented him with a Latine petitiory Epistle for some preferment, either under him or by his meanes. His Honour was pleas'd graciously to receive it, and in a most expressive manner to promise me any advancement that might lye in his power. During this, the opportunity of going to Nimmeguen happen'd, and the day before I went out of England I went to his Honour for some recommendations; He return'd me my papers with many thanks, and was pleas'd to give me a great deale of advice not to proceed in the printing of my papers at Amsterdam, that it would be an undoubted rubb in any preferment of mine, and this he said he spoke out of [m]ere kindness and affection to me. I return'd His Honour many humble thanks, and did expressively ensure him that assoone as I gott to Amsterdam (which I took in my way on purpose) I would resume my copyes and suppress 'um for ever which Sir I have done and have followed his Honours advice to every punctilio. yet Notwithstanding this his Honour was pleas'd (whether I shall term it unkindly or unnaturally) to dispatch a letter after me to my Lord Jenkings, to acquaint his Lordship that I was printing Miltons works and wished 'um to have a care of me in the Kings service, which has put a little stop to my being employ'd as yet, till I can write to England, procure soe much interest as to cleare Sir Joseph Williamsons jealousie of my being yet engag'd in the printing of these papers. Though my Lord Jenkings and Mr. Chudleigh are soe well satisfy'd, after my giving them a full account of the business, and bringing my copies with me to Nimmeguen, ready to dispose of 'um where Sir Joseph shall think fitt, that they seem as much concern['d] at Sir Joseph's letter as I doe, and have sent me here to Rotterdam at theire charge (soe kind they are) to remaine here, till I can write to England and they have an answer from Sir Joseph Williamson how that his Honour is satisfy'd, which they don't at all question but he will be, when he shall heare what I have said and done. Now may it please your Worship having given you a full and true account of the whole affaire, seeing the fortune of a young man depends upon this small thing, either perpetuall ruine or a faire and happy way to future advancement, pray give me leave to begg of you, which I most humbly and submissively doe that you would please instantly to repaire to his honour Sir Joseph and acquaint him that I am soe far from printing anything from Miltons now, that I have ad amussim [exactly] followed his Honours advice, and upon due pensitation with my self have null'd and made void my contract with Elsevier at Amsterdam, have resum'd my copies to my self, and am ready to dispose of 'um where his Honour pleases, either into the hands of my Lord Jenkings, or into his own for better satisfaction, and am soe farr from ever procuring a line of Milton [to be] printed, that if his Honour pleases, he shall command my copies and all my other papers to the fire. And though I happen'd to be acquainted with Milton in his lifetime, (which out of mere love to learning I procur'd, and noe other concerns ever pass'd betwixt us but a great desire and ambition of some of his learning,) I am, and ever was soe farr from being in the least tainted with any of his principles, that I may boldly say, none has a greater honour and loyalty for his Majesty, more veneration for the Church of England, and love for his countrey, then I have.
(Bodleian MS Rawlinson A185, fols. 271-4; see Hanford, 1931)
This long excerpt from an even longer letter raises almost as many questions as it answers. Skinner refers to his "having the works of Milton which he left behind him to me," as if he had been some sort of literary executor. A letter now at Longleat, written after Skinner left for Holland early in November 1676 but before Williamson's letter to Meredith of 19 January 1677, provides another perspective on Skinner's status. The letter is neither addressed nor signed, but was found among the papers of Henry Coventry, Williamson's predecessor as Secretary of State for the Northern Department and since 1674 his opposite number in the Southern Department, the post now known as Home Secretary. The letter was written by an anonymous informant and sent either to Coventry or to his secretary, H. F. Thynne:
I am informed that since the death of Mr. Milton his Books have byn lookt over by one Mr. Skinner a scholar and a bold young man who has cull'd out what he thought fitt, & amongst the rest he has taken a manuscript of Mr. Milton's written on the Civil & Ecclesiastical Government of the Kingdom which he is resolved to print and to that purpose is gone into Holland and intends to print it at Leyden (and at this present is either there or at Nemeguen) and then to bring and disperse the copys in England.
(Longleat, Coventry Papers f.60)
In this account, Skinner has simply "cull'd out what he thought fitt." The manuscript on the civil and ecclesiastical government of the kingdom may be the Digression in Milton's History of Britain, later published as Character of the Long Parliament (1681) by Henry Brome of London; on the other hand, the reference may be a garbled reference to the state papers and theological treatise that had been sent to Elsevier.
Skinner's letter describes the plan to print the letters of state, but is silent about the theological treatise that he had sent to Elsevier, admitting only that a Dutch printer had agreed to print works by Milton. Skinner also records that Williamson had asked permission to examine papers of Milton in his possession. Skinner was so flattered by this request that he composed another Latin epistle petitioning for preferment, and presented it to Sir Joseph; it is now lost. In due course Williamson "return'd me my papers with many thanks." What were these papers? They probably included Milton's poetical workbook (still in Trinity College; see Kelley, 1940a) and may have included the Commonplace Book (now in the British Library), the leaf containing "Surge, age surge," "Ignavus satrapam" and the theme on early rising (now in Austin, Texas) and Milton's annotated copy of Euripides's tragedies (now in the Bodleian); these papers may also have included the Digression, though there are two other possibilities with respect to this manuscript: it may have been sent to Elsevier, if this is the work to which the Longleat letter refers, or it may have been retained (or copied) by Williamson, who could have passed it to Roger L'Estrange, who arranged for Brome to print it.
Skinner's letter also raises questions about his honesty. Elsevier's letter to Skinner's father of 9/19 February 1677 (of which more hereafter) makes it clear that the younger Skinner had left for Nijmegen without the manuscripts, but in the letter to Pepys Skinner claims to have carried the papers to Nijmegen. The simplest explanation for this anomaly is that Skinner was lying. Similarly, his Vicar-of-Bray allegiance to king and established church seems to be born of expediency rather than principle. But why had Skinner not collected the manuscripts from Elsevier in Amsterdam? Perhaps he was as devious as Williamson thought him to be, and still entertained plans for publication, if this could be achieved without damaging his own prospects. Perhaps Elsevier had not yet received the manuscript of De Doctrina back from van Limborch, or simply wanted to retain the manuscripts for commercial reasons, in the hope that publication would eventually be possible. Perhaps, as we shall argue below, consideration of security governed the actions of Elsevier and Skinner alike.
It is possible that Skinner was as ingenuous or inept as he seems in his dealing with Williamson. Williamson evidently summoned him, and after interrogation Skinner wrote in his own hand and signed a statement dated 18 October 1676 in a scribal hand:
That Mr Pitts Bookseller in Pauls Churchyard to the best of my remembrance about 4 or 5 moneths agoe told me he had mett withall and bought some of Mr Miltons papers, and that if I would procure an agreement betwixt him And Elseviere at Amsterdam (to whose care I had long before committed the true perfect copy of the state letters to be printed) he would communicate them to my perusall; If I would not, he would proceed his own way and make the best advantage of um; Soe that in all probability I not procuring Elsevieres concurrance with him, and 'tis impossible it should be otherwise, Mr Pitts has been the man by whose meanes this late imperfect surreptitious copy, has been publish't.
I attest This to be truth
Dan: Skinner
Oct. 18th. 1676
(PRO SP 29/386/ fol. 96)
Williamson hoped that he had successfully intimidated Skinner, but he remained preoccupied with the fate of the Miltonic state papers and was uncertain about the extent to which Skinner could be trusted. He seems not to have taken any action against Pitt, who flourished as a bookseller, particularly in the early 1680s. The Blaeu edition had been published without any indication of printer, bookseller or place of publication, and shortly thereafter a similarly anonymous volume had been published by E. Fricx of Brussels. On 23 October/ 2 November John Ellis wrote to Williamson from Nijmegen, enclosing a copy of "these Letters of Milton's being newly come out of the press and printed hard by us" (SP 84/202 fol. 375).
Williamson seems to have promised to extend his patronage to Skinner, but on 31 October he wrote a devastating letter to Jenkins:
I come casually to know that Mr. Chudleigh is takeing one Mr. Skinner, a young man of Cambridge to be his Secretary. The person is a very pretty young man, writes Latin very well, and a fine character. But he is most unfortunately fallen into an ugly business now freshly, he it seems being the party that hath put out Milton's workes to be printed by the Elzevers in Holland, and among other papers his Letters of State written for the Usurpers, as their Latin Secretary. I have told the young man plainely what I thought of his mixeing with that sort of men, and how takeing such Pitch is, and that indeed till he had very well aired himself from such infectious a commerce, as the friendship of Milton is, he could not be at all proper to touch any degree in the King's service. And I pray your Excellency to say so much to Mr. Chudleigh, if you please, to prevent his making so ill a step.
(Rawlinson A352 pp. 277-8; copy in SP 103/88)
Again Skinner is said to write Latin very well, a judgement presumably based on the lost Latin epistle that Skinner composed for Williamson. Skinner had stopped in Amsterdam to see Elsevier before going on to Nijmegen, so Williamson's letter preceded him. One wonders if, on reading it, Jenkins recalled that he had recently presided over the court that had considered Milton's nuncupative will. Whatever he may have thought, he acted resolutely, packing Skinner off to Rotterdam to await the judgement of Williamson. Skinner's interminable letter to Pepys is the product of his enforced idleness in Rotterdam. Jenkins replied to Williamson on 6/16 November:
I have obeyed your orders relating to M. Skinner in the presence of my Lord Ambassador and I doubt not but Mr Chudleigh will himself give you his thanks for your Care of him, and of the Business in his hands.
I was just sending you those unhappy Letters of Milton: but had heard nothing of what you were pleased to say of a new edition of those High Treasons, I will rather call them then works.
If it be so, nothing can be so venemous, nothing so pernicious, for as ill ayre infects as the temper of the Body is more or lesse susceptible: so these works may have a different operation now from the worst they could have had when they first came out for then all mankind had not only a prejudice but a deep abhorrence for any thing that was said, or could be sayd in Defence of that Cause; a few villaines onely excepted that had their hands either in the Bloud of that Blessed Martyr or in the Rapines of those times. And I for my own part may truthfully say, I never read, nay refused to read Milton, when offer'd; and I doe remember 'twas the Abomination I had for the subject matter that would not allow me to satisfie my Curiosity in the Language: this speak[s] abstractedly from the obligation I thought myself under then (though there was none to take accompt of it) to doe by seditious Treasonable writing as the laws of England direct.
I should not have mentioned my self . . . but there is a new generation . . . very well prepared to swallow the impudent assertions of Milton for undoubted History.
I cannot hope of any great effect (as 'tis now with us) from a Proclamation against this book. But I should think there is Law enough . . . soundly at the King's Bench than a proclamation grafted upon such an example in order to warn the subjects might possibly have some good effect.
(SP 84/203, fols. 24-5)
Chudleigh wrote a similar letter on the same day, assuring Williamson that as soon as Skinner
arrives here I will immediately take care to send him back again; and your Honour may be assurd I shall never think of entertayning any one whom I may know not to have your approbation. I had heard onely what was very well of him, and that Mr Secretary Pepys and others had given an extraordinary good character of him, but I had never heard the least syllable of his being guilty of what your Honour finds him or any way else
(SP 84/203, fols. 16-17)
Pepys replied to Skinner on 17 November, addressing his letter to Skinner in Rotterdam. The letter is not in Pepys's hand, but he asks Skinner in a postscript to "excuse me that being at this time a little out of order, I make use of another's hand." Perhaps "feeling out of order" may have sharpened the severe tone of the letter:
I have received your letter of the 9/19 instant, and shall leave to another time what might be reasonable for me to say (notwithstanding the modesty of your excuse for it) touching your leaving England without bidding me Adieu; upon an occacon wherein I had with so much designe of Friendship interested myself on your behalfe to my Lord Ambassador [Sir Leoline Jenkins] to whom I should never have thought it decent either for me or you to have let you gone without some fresh letters from me in acknowledgement of my obligation to him for his answer to my first (which I communicated to you) in your favour. This only I shall take the liberty at present to say, that had you thought fit to have seen me and imparted to me then, what necessity has driven you to doe now, I am apt to believe you would never have needed the asking that Office of Friendship from me now; which I have nevertheless heartily apply'd myselfe to the doing you, though without any present success. Know then that I noe sooner received your letter but in pursuance of the faithful friendship I bear you I betook myselfe to the visiting Sir J[oseph] W[illiamson] from whom I understood several interests to have been made to him, not only from my worthy friend your Father but from My Lady Peterborough [Penelope Mordaunt, Countess of Peterborough], & others on your behalfe: and had alsoe open'd to me by him many aggravating circumstances in your affaire, which you either forgot or thought fit to omit the mentioning to me; And yet I can assure you I do not see that what Sir J.W. has done or saith concerning you in the matter in question hath proceeded from anything else than a just reguard to His Majesty's service, the Duty of his Place, and truely consistent with his utmost professions of kindness towards you, hee at this day expressing to me (with a sincerity which I cannot Doubt) not only a great esteem of your natural abilities and your studied acquirements, but a designe of contributing what his favour could doe towards the rendering the same under his Patronage advantageous to you. But in short I do not see but that notwithstanding what you say and what he has understood from Elzever himselfe to have been done by you towards his satisfaction, such apprehensions do still remain in him of the possible impressions which Mr Milton and his Writings may have wrought in you, as that I do not find him to be to be [sic] prevailed with for the absolving you presently of the crime which this inadvertency of yours has exposed you to the suspicion of; and yet I can as little say that I can find the least cause of charging him with any more unkindness towards you, than upon the like consideracons I think I should myselfe have had towards my owne Brother in the same Case; my opinion alsoe concurring with his that some time must be suffered to pass before you can reasonably look to have this unfortunate concernment of yours with Mr Milton and his Writings forgotten, or your innocence therein so cleared, as that you may recover Sir J.W.'s faire opinion concerning it; wishing only that since you are abroad you could find yourselfe in a condicon of passing so much time there, & in France, as might suffice for the making you Master of the French and Dutch Languages, which are with much more facility to be obtain'd abroad, and without which no man under any publick character can as the World goes support himselfe in any publick charge, either here, or in any Forreign Court; and this I in a special manner doe recommend to you, the rather from the consideracon of the much greater difficulty & dissatisfaction it will be of, for you to have them to learne when you should have them to use. Which from several intimacons which Sir J.W. was pleased to give me I doe in no wise doubt but you may have reasonable hopes of meeting with, so soon as some little time shall have cleared you of this unhappy jealousy & your improvement of the said time shall qualify you by these Languages for those employments, for which your other Learning and endowments have already so far prepared you. In which my endeavours of serving you then will I hope make some amends for that want of success which I have met with in my desires of doing it now. Which (among others) is one of the causes why I forbear at present to send any second Letter to my Lord Embassador touching this Affaire.
(National Maritime Museum LBK 8, p. 755)
This letter makes it clear that Skinner's involvement with Milton's papers raised in Williamson's mind the suspicion that Skinner had committed a crime, in supplying copy for an edition of the state papers -- either the Blaeu edition, with which Skinner had incriminated Pitt, or the edition promised in the mysterious publisher's flyer which we discuss below. Skinner evidently decided not to pursue the matter with Pepys, who when asked about the matter by Jenkins replied with studied equanimity:
As to that which your Lordship is pleased soe generously to revive the mention of to me touching Mr Skinner, neither have I heard more than once from him since his great misadventure; and, to say truth, I am apt to believe the young Gentleman is noe less out of countenance with himself towards me, than I am with myself towards your Lordship for the Trouble I offered at the giving you on his behalf. For which as well as on many other Scores, I am gotten into a lasting Debt to your Excellency . . .
(National Maritime Museum, LBK 8, p. 801)
Skinner could not persuade Pepys to write again to Jenkins, but he did manage to enlist the support of Elsevier, who wrote to Williamson on 10/20 November:
MONSIEUR, -
Il y a environ un an que je suis convenu avec Monsieur Skinner d'imprimer les lettres de Milton et un autre manuscript en Theologie. Mais ayant receu les dits manuscripts, et y ayant trouvé des choses que je jugeois estre plus propres d'estre supprimer que divulger; j'ay pris resolution de n'imprimer n'y l'un n'y l'autre. J'avois escrit pour ce sujet à Monsieur Skinner a Cambridge; mais comm'il n'a pas esté au dit lieu depuis quelque temps, ma lettre ne luy estoit pas parvenue. Sur cela il est arrivé en cette ville, et a esté ravy d'entendre que je n'avois pas commencé d'imprimer les dits Traités, et il a repris ses manuscripts.Il m'a dit que vous avez esté informé Monsieur que je debvois imprimer tous les ouvrages de Milton ensemble. Je vous puis protester de n'y avoir jamais pensé, et que j'aurois horreur d'imprimer les Traités qu'il a fait pour la defense d'une si meschante et abominable cause. Outre qu'il ne seroit pas bien seant au fils de celuy qui a imprimé le premier Salmasii Defensionem Regiam, et qui auroit donné sa vie s'il eust pu sauver le feu Roy de glorieuse memoire, d'imprimer un livre si detesté de tous les honnestes geans. Je suis obligé de vous dire, Monsieur, que le Sieur Skinner me tesmoigna une tres grande joye de ce que je n'avois pas commencé l'impression des dits ouvrages, et me dit qu'il estoit d'intention, qu'en cas que le dit livre eust esté commencé, d'en achepter les feulles pour les supprimer, qu'il avoit pris une ferme resolution d'user en sorte des dits manuscripts qu'ils ne paroitroient jamais; et j'oserois vous en repondre, Monsieur, dans la forte resolution que je l'ay vu d'en user ainsy, et principalement depuis qu'il a eu l'honneur de vous avoir parlé, et que luy avez tesmoigné que ne seriez pas bien aise que les dits manuscripts parussent, et comm' il attend de vous son advancement on ne doibt pas doubter qu'il ne tiene sa parole.
Monsieur je ne puis finir la presente sans tesmoigner ma recognoissence pour les bontés qu'avez eu pour moy, lorsque j'estois à Londres, et je voudrois avoir occasion de vous pouvoir estre utile à quelque chose pour pouvoir montrer avec combien de respect je suis, Monsieur,
Vostre tres humble et tres obeissant serviteur,
Daniel Elsevier.
D'Amsterdam, le 20me Novembre, 1676.
P.S. J'oubliois de vous dire, Monsieur, que le Sieur Skinner ny moy n'avois aucune part à ce qui a paru depuis peu du dit Milton; et que je n'en avois jamais ouy parler que lorsque Monsieur Skinner me le dit icy. Il m'avoit bien mandé par cy devant qu'un certain libraire de Londres avoit eu quelques lettres de quelqu'un, qui les avoit derobé au feu Milton; mais ny luy ny moy n'avois eu aucune part à cette impression, de quoy je vous prie de vouloir estre persuadé.[SIR, -
It is about a year since I agreed with Mr Skinner to print the Letters of Milton and another manuscript on Theology; but, having received the said manuscripts, and having found there things which I judged fitter to be suppressed than published, I resolved to print neither the one nor the other. I wrote to that effect to Mr Skinner at Cambridge; but, as he has not been there for some time, my letter did not reach him. Since then he has been in this town, and was delighted to hear that I have not begun to print the said treatises, and has taken back his papers.He told me that you were informed, Sir, that I was going to print all the works of Milton collectively. I can assure you that I never had such a thought, and that I should have a horror of printing the treatises which he made for the defence of so wicked and abominable a cause, even if it were not independently unbecoming for the son of him who first printed the Defensio Regia of Salmasius, and who would have given his life if he could have saved the late King of glorious memory, to print a book so detested by all honest people. I am bound to tell you, Sir, that Mr Skinner expressed to me very great joy over the fact that I had not begun the printing of the said works, and told me it was his intention, in case the said book had been begun, to buy up the sheets for the purpose of suppressing them, and that he had taken a firm resolution so to dispose of the said manuscripts that they should never appear; and I shall venture to be answerable to you, Sir, for the strong resolution I have seen in him so to dispose of them, and chiefly since he has had the honour to speak with you, and you have shown him that you would not be happy for the said manuscripts to appear; and, as he expects his advancement from you, one need not doubt that he will keep his word. Sir, I cannot conclude without expressing my acknowledgements for your goodness to me when I was in London; and I should desire to have occasion to be able to serve you in anything that would show with how much respect I am, Sir,
Your very humble and very obedient servant,
Daniel Elsevier
P.S. I forgot to say, Sir, that neither Mr Skinner nor I had any part in what has appeared of the said Milton, and that I never heard tell of it till Mr Skinner told me here. He had indeed informed me before that a certain bookseller of London had received some letters from some one who had stolen them from the late Milton; but neither he nor I have had any connection with that publication, of which I pray you will be persuaded.]
(SP 84/203 fols. 106-7)
This letter specifically mentions "un manuscript en Théologie" as well as the letters of state, both of which Elsevier claims to have given to Skinner. Skinner had clearly persuaded Elsevier to endorse the falsehood that the papers had been returned, when in fact Elsevier had retained both manuscripts. Elsevier's reminder that he was the son of the Elsevier who had published Salmasius's Defensio Regia raises the question of the political allegiance of the Elsevier family. If they were indeed Orangists, then Skinner's decision to approach this particular publishing house would seem to have been extraordinarily naive. (There is a further possible discrepancy here in that Daniel was the son of Bonaventura, not Louis, to whom the publication is usually attributed; perhaps he stretches the truth in his grand comment to Williamson, though there are over a dozen early editions of the tract, mostly without the publishers' names, and it is not inconceivable that Bonaventura was associated with one or more of them.)
On 28 November Williamson again wrote to Nijmegen, this time responding to Chudleigh's letter:
I should have been very glad to have had in my eye any young youth, that I could have said had been fitt for you as a secretary. But indeed at present I have none such, I mean not exactly such as I could wish. And surely if the young man we last spoke of, I mean Mr. Skinner had French perfectly, and that he were a little aired from the ill name Mr. Milton's friendship ought to leave upon one, there were not many more hopefull young men to be found of that rank.
(Rawlinson A352 p. 295; copy in SP 103/88)
Williamson had previously praised Skinner's Latin, but this time he slights Skinner's French, and the reminder of the tainting friendship with Milton is presumably a suggestion that Skinner is not yet employable.
On 19 January 1677, Williamson wrote to Roger Meredith, Secretary to the Embassy to the United Provinces, chargé d'affaires during the protracted absences of the Ambassador, and Williamson's principal information-gatherer on Dutch affairs:
His Majestie is informed of a pernicious Booke, of that late Villain Milton's, now about to be printed at Leyden, I am commanded to signify to you, that you immediately apply your selfe, to find out by the best means you may, if there be any such, who is the printer, and by what order he is sett on worke. There is one Skinner a young Scholar of Cambridge, that some time since did owne to have had such a thing in his intentions, but being made sensible, as he seemed to be, of the danger he ranne into, in haveing a hand in any such thing, he promised for ever to lay aside the thoughts of it, and even to give up his Copy. I know not whether this may be the same thing, and whether it came from his hand or some others. But you are to use what means possibly you can to find out, what there is of it true, to the end timely care may be taken for the preventing the thing by seizing the impression or otherwise.
(PRO SP 104/66, fol. 120)
The publisher may well be Elsevier, because, although some Elsevier books (such as the Defensio Regia) were published in Amsterdam, the firm was based in Leiden. But what was the pernicious book? And is it true that the king had taken a view of the matter? Meredith reacted with the urgency that Williamson required of all his subordinates. On 26 January/ 5 February he wrote that
I have also in pursuite of His Majesty's command given to me by Your Honour concerning that book of Milton's which is designed (as His Majesty is informed) to be printed at Leyden, begunne my endeavours to discover ye truth of it, of which I suppose I shall know to some effect by the next post.
(SP 84/204 fols. 97-8)
On 30 January/ 9 February he assured Williamson that
I have as yet no account of the inquiry I have begunne after Milton's book, which I shall pursue with all diligence.
(SP 84/204 fols. 102-3)
On 2/12 February he offered an excuse, blaming his agent:
The person whom I employ at Leyden about Milton's book hath been out of the way so that I have not as yet any account of that inquiry.
(SP 84/204 fols. 108-9)
By 16/26 February Meredith was blaming his bookseller:
I cannot yet gett information of any worke of Milton's about to be printed at Leyden; but I finde the herewith inclosed printed about three months since at Amsterdam, which by an unusuall forgetfullnesse of my bookseller came not till now to my knowledge. By what I could runne over of it this day I cannot judge whether it be the book His Majesty would have prevented, & presuming that since the time it hath been printed, it may have come directly from Amsterdam to your Honour's hands I shall pursue my diligence to finde out whether any other be designed to be printed at Leyden.
(SP 84/204 fols. 140-1)
This curious letter is replete with mysteries. Meredith has forwarded to Williamson a book by Milton printed three months previously in Amsterdam, but has been unable to find one in press in Leiden. He does not know, nor can we, whether this was the book that the king wished to suppress. The Blaeu edition of the letters of state was printed in Amsterdam, but does not admit to its provenance, which only recently has been established (Kelley, 1960). The answer may lie in what seems to be a printer's flyer in the file that contains the Elsevier letters:
Innotescat omnibus cum in Academiis, tum in Londino literatis, Bibliopolis etiam, siqui sint qui praeter solitum Latine sciunt, necnon exteris quibuscunq[ue]; Quod Literae JOANNIS MILTONI, Angli, interregni tempore scriptae, quas Bibliopola quidam Londinensis, secum habita consultatione quantam in rem famamque quantam imperfectissimum quid & indigestum ex operibus tanti Viri sibi pro certo cederet, nuper in lucem irrepi fecit (praeterquam quod a contemptissimo quodam & perobscuro preli quondam Curatore, qui parvam schedarum manum vel emendicaverit olim abs Authore, vel, quod verisimilius est, clam suppilaverit, perexiguo pretio fuerunt emptae) sunt misere mutilae, dimidiatae, deformes ex omni parte ruptoque ordine confusae, praefatiuncula spurca non minus quam infantissima dehonestate, caeterisq[ue]; dein a numerosioribus chartis nequiter arreptae: Quodq[ue]; vera Literarum exemplaria, locupletoria multum & auctiora, composita concinnius & digesta, typis elegantioribus excudenda sunt in Hollandia prelo commissa. Quae una cum Articulis Hispanicis, Portugallicis, Gallicis, Belgicis in ista rerum inclinatione nobiscum initis & percussis, pluribusque chartis Germanicis, Danicis, Suevicis scitissime scriptis, ne ex tam spuriis libri natalitiis, & ex tam vili praefatore laederetur Author, brevi possis, humanissime Lector, expectare.
[Be it known to all the learned whether in the universities or in London, as well as to booksellers, if any there be with an unusually good command of Latin, and also to all foreigners whomsoever,
That the letters of John Milton, Englishman, written at the time of the Interregnum, which a certain London bookseller, who has consulted only himself about how much something from amongst the works of so great a man, however imperfect and crude it might be, could be harvested for his profit and reputation, has lately brought creeping into the light, not to mention the fact that Milton's Letters were bought up dirt cheap from some contemptible obscure fellow, once a press-minder, who got a small handful of pages from the author, either by begging them or more probably by secretly filching them: the pages are wretchedly maimed, halved, out of shape in all directions, and what's more muddled out of their proper sequence, with a short preface that is foul and disgusting; and finally the pages have been criminally snatched out of the much more numerous whole collection of the papers;
[Be it known, thirdly,] That the true copies of Milton's Letters, much more trustworthy and ampler, arranged and edited more appropriately, have been sent to the press and are to be printed in more elegant types in Holland. Soon, most kind Reader, you can expect to see the Letters, along with the Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch treaties which were entered into with us and reached print form during that time of change [the Interregnum]; and along also with numerous German, Danish and Swedish papers, all being documents written with good understanding. This version is being brought out to prevent the Author suffering harm from such spurious birth-rites and such a worthless prefacer.
(SP 84/204 fol. 125)
What is this document, and why is it in the State Papers Holland files? Hamilton (p. 32), who first noticed the document, thought that it might be a copy of Elsevier's prospectus which he had enclosed with his letter of 9/19 February to the elder Skinner (in the present binding it follows Elsevier's letter). Masson (VI, 796) assumed that Skinner had drafted it to be inserted in the London Gazette or sent to Elsevier for publication abroad. The Columbia editors think that it is an advertisement issued by the Elseviers, and "regard the denunciation of the 1676 edition rather as a result of trade rivalry than anything else" (CE, XVIII, 648). The Columbia editors could not have known that neither of the early editions was produced by Elsevier, but they are surely right to see it as a denunciation of a projected edition, but that edition could be Fricx's or a planned Elsevier edition; if it was for Elsevier, the echoes of Skinner's statement to Williamson suggest that Skinner may have been the author. Its presence amongst the state papers may constitute evidence that this was the document that so excited the wrath of both Williamson and the king.
The flyer refers to several treaties that are no longer in the file returned to Williamson. Robert Fallon shrewdly notes that eleven of the thirteen letters missing from Skinner's transcript but printed in Literae were written in 1652, the year in which English diplomats were negotiating treaties with Spain, Portugal, Denmark and the United Netherlands (Fallon, 1993, 225-28). The letters must have disappeared from Milton's papers before Skinner undertook his transcription, but the treaties to which they refer seem to have been removed at a later stage. Milton was certainly involved with the Spanish treaty of November 1652 (see Fallon, 1993, 229-46), the Portuguese treaty negotiated in 1651 and 1652 (eventually ratified in May 1656) and the Dutch treaty published in July 1652 (see Miller, 1995, 196-269). Milton is not known to have worked on the commercial treaty signed with France in 1655, but he may have been involved with the military treaty signed in March 1657. Skinner presumably removed copies of these treaties from Milton's papers and passed them to Elsevier, but either they were not returned by Elsevier or Williamson removed them before the letters of state and the theological treatise were consigned to the cupboard.
Skinner, meanwhile, had moved on to Paris, where he wrote plaintively to Pepys on 28 January/ 7 February:
Since my late and most unfortunate repulse at Nimmegue caus'd by the groundless and severe jealousies of Sir Jos: Williamson (for invocato Deo never had I the least thought of prejudicing either King or State, being infinitly loyall to one and mighty zealous for the other, all the concerns that ever I had for Milton or his works being risen from a foolish yet a plausible ambition to learning) being at Roterdam in expectation of returning into England, my father by his letters commanded me instantly to repaire to France, there to retire privatly and compleat my self in the French tongue. . .
Skinner explains that he hopes rapidly to become proficient in French, and, gushing obsequiously about his desire, on returning to England, that Pepys "be the first person whose hand I shall desire to kiss," undertakes to write to Pepys in French "to give some testimony of my advancements." He hopes
in 6 moneths times to return to England with those advantages that few English Gentlemen here make in twelve, and withall to be more deserving of yours and Sir Jos: Williamsons favours, whom Pray Sir let me beg of you to certifye, that though 'twas his pleasure to shipwrack me in the very port of Nimmegue merely out of jealousye, I hope he will be soe compassionate as to give me another vessell when I come to London. assure him also that as for Milton or his works or papers I have done withall, and indeed never had had to doe with him, had not ambition to good literature made me covet his acquaintance. Pray tell him Sir that all his papers will be very suddenly in his hands assoon as the printer Elsevire at Amsterdam can find an opportunity of sending 'um over, and that I am here indefatigably studying the french tongue only to render my self more capable of serving him and your good self. . . .
(Rawlinson A185, fols. 133-4)
Williamson, meanwhile, was losing his easily-lost patience, and so turned to Dr Isaac Barrow, the Master of Trinity College, from which Skinner had absented himself. On 13 February Barrow wrote to his friend George Seignior in London, enclosing a letter that was to be forwarded to Skinner. Barrow's letter to Skinner is fierce:
SIR,
By order of a meeting you are injoined immediately, without delay upon the receiving this, to repair hither to the College; no further allowance to discontinue being granted to you; This you are to doe upon penalty of the Statute, which is expulsion from the College, if you disobey. We Doe also warn you, that if you shall publish any Writing mischievous to the Church or State, you will thence incurre a forfeiture of your interest here. I hope God will give you the wisedome and grace to take warning. So I rest,
Your loving friend,
Isaac Barrow
Trin. Coll. Feb: 13, 1676-7
(SP 29/390 fols. 282-4)
The covering letter to Seignior apologises "for the miscarriages of that wild young man," Daniel Skinner (SP 29/390 fols. 280-1).
Seignior took the letter for Skinner to Whitehall and gave it to William Bridgeman, Williamson's secretary, who forwarded it to William Perwich, English agent in Paris (and chargé d'affaires in the absence of the ambassador). Perwich presented Barrow's letter to Skinner, and then reported back to Bridgeman:
SIR, -
I have delivered Dr. Barrow's letter to Mr. Skinner before witness, as you desired. I found him much surprised, & yet at the same time slighting any constraining orders from the superior of his College or any benefit he expected thence, but as to Miltons workes he intended to have printed (though he saith that part which he had in MSS. are noe way to be objected against, either with regard to Royalty or Government) he hath desisted from causing them to be printed having left them in Holland; & that he intends notwithstanding the College summons to goe for Italy this summer. . . .
(SP 78/142 fol. 15)
On 2 February Skinner's father had written to Daniel Elsevier. His letter is lost, but Elsevier's reply of 9/19 February survives, and it explicitly mentions the theological treatise:
D'Amsterdam le 19me Febrier 1677.
Monsieur
L'honneur de la vostre du 2me de ce mois m'a esté bien rendue. Il est tres vray que j'ay receu par Symon Heere les deux manuscripts de Milton, à scavoir ses oeuvres en Theologie, et ses lettres ad Principes qui sont encore au mesme estat que je les ay receus, n'ayant pas trouvé a propos de les imprimer. Vous scaurez sans doubte que Monsieur vostre fils m'a fait l'honneur de me venir voir, qui fut fort satisfait quand il vit que je n'avois pas fait imprimer les dites uvres, et me pria de les envoyer par la 1re commodité à Nimwege a Monsieur le Secretaire de l'Ambassade. Mais comme il commença à geler devant que j'ay pu poursuivre ses ordres, et ayant depuis receu ordre de vostre dit fils de Paris, de vous les envoyer par la première commodité de navires; laquelle commission je ne manqueray pas d'effectuer, et les donneray, bien empacquetez, à Jacob Hendrix, qui sera le premier qui partira d'icy pour vostre ville. J'ay esté bien mary de ne pouvoir plutost executer ses ordres; mais la gelée, qui a duré icy plus de 3 mois, a empesché que les navires n'ont pu partir. A la demande de Monsieur vostre fils j'ay escrit une lettre a Monsieur Joseph Williamson, Secretaire d'Estat, par laquelle j'ay asseuré le dit seigneur que les dits livres estoient encore entre mes mains, que je n'avois nul dessein de les imprimer, et que Monsieur vostre fils les remettroit entre ses mains, etc. Ainsy Monsieur que vous n'avez nul sujet de vous mettr' en peine de ce costé-la. Car, en premier lieu je suis seur [sûr] que Monsieur vostre fils n'a nulle intention de les faire imprimer; mais au contraire de les mettre entre les mains du seigneur cy dessus nommé; et que de mon costé, je ne les voudrois pas imprimer quand on me feroit present de 1,000 livres sterlings pour diverses raisons. Je vous prie de croire Monsieur, que les dits livres vous seront envoyez par Jacob Hendrincx, et vous seront addressés en son temps. Je vous offre mon service, et suis, de tout mon coeur,
Monsieur,
Vostre tres humble serviteur,
Daniel Elsevier
Amsterdam, 9/19 February 1677.
[SIR,
The honour of yours of the 2nd of this month has duly reached me. It is very true that I received by Symon Heere the two manuscripts of Milton, to wit his work on Theology and his Letters to Princes, which are still in the same state in which I received them, not having found it convenient to print them. You will know, doubtless, that Monsieur your son did me the honour to come to see me; he was greatly satisfied when he saw that I had not printed the said works, and begged me to send them by the first opportunity to Nimeguen to the Secretary of the Embassy. But it began to freeze before I could carry out his orders, and I have since received your son's order from Paris to send them to you by the first shipping opportunity; which commission I will not fail to execute, and shall give them, well packed, to Jacob Hendrincx, who will be the first to leave here for your city. I have been much vexed at not being able to execute his orders sooner; but the frost, which has lasted here more than three months, has prevented the vessels from leaving. At the request of your son I wrote a letter to Sir Joseph Williamson, Secretary of State, in which I assured that gentleman that the said books were still in my hands, that I had no intention to print them, and that Monsieur your son would place them in his hands. Thus, Sir, you have no cause to trouble yourself on this account; for, in the first place, I am sure that your son has no intention to cause them to be printed, but on the contrary to place them in the hands of the gentleman above named, and, for my own part, I would not print them though one were to make me a present of £1,000 sterling, and this for various reasons. I pray you, Sir, to believe that the said books will be sent to you through Jacob Hendrincx, and will be forwarded to you at his leisure.](SP 84/204 fols. 123-4)
The fragmentary Port Books of the period, some of which are deemed by the PRO to be unfit for inspection, seem not to record Hendrincx's return, but an entry the previous year identifies his ship as the Golden Flounder (E190/63/8 fol. 6). It is odd that Elsevier is prevented by frost from shipping the Milton manuscripts to Nijmegen (only fifty miles away by land) or London, but is able to send a letter, apparently by another hand, presumably one to which he would not entrust the manuscripts. Elsevier seems to have thought that a degree of security was appropriate in handling documents that had so irritated the English government, a government which, as earlier correspondence between Elsevier and Williamson over the importation of volumes of Grotius's De Veritate Religionis Christianae demonstrates, could be helpful or obstructive when book imports were at issue. Elsevier was as good as his word, and on 6/16 March again wrote to Skinner's father. The letter has a hole in the middle of the bottom third of the page, and we have leaned gratefully on Kleerkooper's transcription and reconstruction made at the beginning of the century, when a few more words were visible, though our text differs from his in a few details:
La presente sera pour vous donner advis que la sepmaine passée je vous ay envoyé par Jacob Hendrixen (qui est le premier maitre de Navire qui soit party d'icy pour Londres aprés les gelées) les Manuscripts de Milton, a scavoir ses oevres en Theologie et ses Epistres, qui sont au mesme estat comme je les ay receu de Monsieur vostre fils. Quant Monsieur le secretaire d'Estat prendra la peine de les conferer avec les Epistres qui ont esté imprimer, il remarquera facilement la difference qu'il y a entre le manuscript et l'imprimé: car dans l'imprimé il y [a dive]rses lettres qui ne sont pas dans le [manusc]ript, et dans le manuscript [il y a] diverses qui ne sont pas dans l'impri[mé] . . . que l'ordre de lettres est . . . different. Ce que jay cru ne[cessaire?] . . . vous advertir afin que par . . . [p]uissiez prouver que Monsieur vostre fils en a bien usé et qu'il n'a aucunement contribué a cette edition.
Si vous avez l'honneur de voir Monseign' Williamson je vous supplie de luy offrir mes tres humbles respects et l'asseurer de ma part, que des oevres de Milton qui ont esté entre mes mains il n'en a jamais esté imprimé un Jota: mais que je les ay renvoyé, comme je les ay receus. Je vous baise les mains et suis de tout mon coeur
Monsieur
[Vos]tre tres humble serviteur
Da[niel] Elsevier.
Amsterdam
16me Mars[Sir, - The present will be to give you advice that last week I sent you by Jacob Hendrixen (who is the first skipper to leave from here for London after the frost) the Manuscripts of Milton, namely, his works on Theology and his Epistles, which are in the same state as I received them from Monsieur your son. If Monsieur the Secretary of State will take the trouble to compare them with the Epistles which have been printed, he will easily notice the difference there is between the manuscript and the printed text; for in the printed text there are various letters which are not in the manuscript and in the manuscript [there are] various that are not in the printed text . . . that the order of the letters is . . . different. Which I have thought necessary (?) . . . to warn you so that by . . . [you would be able to] prove that Monsieur your son has made a proper use of them, and that he has not at all contributed to this edition.
If you have the honour of seeing Monseigneur Williamson, I beseech you to offer him my very humble respects, and to assure him on my behalf that of the works of Milton which have been in my hands, never an iota has been printed, that I have sent them back as I received them. I kiss your hands and am heartily, Sir,
Your very humble servant,
Daniel Elsevier]
(SP 84/204 fols. 246-7)
The elder Skinner received the parcel that Elsevier had sent, and promptly took it, still in its wrapper, to Whitehall, where it was deposited in the press in which Lemon found it. Williamson no doubt felt that he had lodged another stake in the wandering spirit of that late villain Milton.
Skinner's problems with Trinity College, however, continued to rumble. On 29 March 1679 the Master and Seniors ordered "that Mr Skinner come home to the College to clear himself from suspicion of being a papist." The usual cause of such suspicion was an unwillingness to sign the oath of supremacy, which was required for the degree of MA that was in turn expected of candidates for a major fellowship, but in Skinner's case he had already received his MA (in 1677) and the puzzle is the delay in the election to a major fellowship. He may have been reluctant to sign the oath that was required for the fellowship, but it is not clear why he would hesitate to do so. Somehow the obstacles were overcome, and Skinner was elected to a major fellowship on 23 May 1679. Major fellows were normally elected annually from amongst the minor fellows, but for some unknown reason no major fellow had been elected since 1676. It is likely that Skinner was elected by a royal mandate organised by Williamson: such patronage is the usual explanation for fellowships conferred in the face of opposition from the Seniority; that said, the documentary evidence does not survive.
Skinner did not stay in Cambridge. On 4 June 1679 he was issued with a passport, which describes him as "Mr Daniel Skinner a protestant" (SP 44/51, p. 252). It seems likely that he is "the young gentleman Mr Skinner" who was in Barbados and Mevis in 1680 and 1681: on 8 July 1680 Pepys added a postscript to a letter to William Howe in Barbados:
This young Man Mr Skinner, comes to look after some occasions of his Father in your Island In which if by your Advice you may bee in anywise aidfull to him, you will very much oblige mee.
(Rawlinson A194 fol. 169v)
If this Mr Skinner is Daniel, it would seem that his father was still trying to save his son from his folly. Howe reported on Skinner's situation to Pepys on 15 June 1681, explaining that he had met Skinner on arrival and taken him to Mr Steed, Agent of the Royal Africa Company and Skinner's prospective employer. Steed, however, was
very unwilling to Concerne himself in it, or to Countenance Young Mr Skinner in any of his ffathers propositions; Upon which I told Mr Stede that If hee had noe Imployment for him that I would take care of him; And in Order to it I placed him with a ffreind of mine an Eminent practioner of the Law Liveing in the bridge towne upon Likeing; and that if hee did not like his residence there, that hee might bee with mee in the Country.
Skinner's legal career did not last long: a week later Steed returned to Bridgetown and discovered that Skinner
was gon to Mevis in a Man of Warr that was bound from hence thither, and that Mr. Stede had taken Care with the Captain for his Passage. . . . I here hee is very well at Mevis and If I Can doe him any Service either here , or where hee is I shall for your sake doe it.
(Rawlinson A183 fols. 201-8)
Young Mr Skinner's Christian name is never mentioned in this exchange of letters, but the description certainly fits Daniel. Whether or not this Skinner was Daniel, Daniel's presence in Paris can be documented in 1682, by the which time he was living in Paris (and claiming long residence in France as well as fluency in French), possibly working as a spy for his fellow Westmonasterian Viscount Preston (Kelley, 1940); the evidence of residence is a pair of letters (in elementary French) in the Preston papers dated 4 February and 19 November 1682 (BL Add MS 63766, fols. 10-11 and 95-6), and the evidence for spying is the seal on the second letter, which appears on other letters in the Preston papers from a spy in Lord Preston's service. Thereafter Skinner disappears from the historical record.
In 1823 the parcel containing the two manuscripts was rediscovered, but the state papers were immediately forgotten, and lay unremarked until Douglas Hamilton printed sixteen of the letters in 1859. De Doctrina Christiana, however, was hailed as a new Miltonic document, the authenticity of which was accepted almost without demur. Thomas Burgess, the bishop of Salisbury, would seem to have been a lone dissenting voice from a scholarly consensus that SP 9/61 was indeed the theological work spoken of by Milton s earliest biographers (Hunter, 1993). On 22 March 1826, shortly after the treatise was published, Lemon wrote to the translator Charles Sumner to communicate in excited tones
a circumstance which I flatter myself will be gratifying to you, as it is to me. This afternoon, Mr. Lechmere, a gentleman in this office, (who is engaged in examining and arranging an immense collection of old miscellaneous papers) brought up to me a document which he had just accidentally found amongst them. It is an original letter from Daniel Elzevir to Sir Joseph Williamson, dated at Amsterdam in November 1676, in which he acquaints Sir Joseph that, about a year before, Mr. Skinner put into his hands a Collection of Letters, and a Treatise on Theology written by the deceased Milton, with directions to print them; but on examining the works, he (Elzevir) found many things in them which, in his opinion, had better be suppressed than divulged; -- that he, in consequence, declined printing them, and that Mr. Skinner had lately been at Amsterdam, and expressed himself highly gratified that Elsevier had not commenced the printing of them -- and then took away the manuscripts.
It is not less singular than gratifying, that the discovery of this letter so completely confirms the conjectures we had previously formed respecting the Doctrina Christiana; and I think you will agree with me in opinion, that this is the only link wanting in the chain of evidence to prove the authenticity of this work, and that Milton was the undoubted author of it.
(Sumner, 1878, IV, p. xxxvii)
Professor Hunter has wondered aloud whether Milton was indeed the undoubted author. This history of the manuscript does not prove Milton's authorship, but it does track the manuscript from its present location in Chancery Lane (and, from December 1996, Kew) back through Whitehall to the Netherlands and thence, ultimately, to Milton's desk.
While there is no doubt that Skinner's hand writes the first 196 pages, it was only in 1923 that Hanford identified the early scribe, primarily responsible for pages 197-735, as Jeremie Picard. His conclusion was based on perceived similarities between this hand and the signature of Jeremie Picard which appears on two legal documents relating to Milton: the Maundy mortgage deed of 14 January 1658 now in the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia (MS 810/25) and the Foxcroft Excise Bond which Milton transferred to Cyriack Skinner on 5 May 1660. This latter document was lost to view after World War II, and emerged again in June 1995, when it was offered for sale by Christie's in London. It failed to sell, but the document is reproduced in the sale catalogue. What Hanford had unaccountably failed to notice was that the entire endorsement of 5 May 1660 is in the hand of the early scribe of De Doctrina Christiana, Jeremie Picard.
A number of other documents have been identified as showing the hand of Picard. His handwriting is identifiable in two entries in Milton's family bible (BL Add MS 32310), two entries in the Commonplace Book (BL Add MS 36354, pp. 188, 195), and the text of "Methought I saw my late espoused saint" in the Trinity Manuscript (Trinity College, Cambridge, Add MS R.5.5, p. 47). Others have been claimed. Masson's identification of the hand in the Christoph Arnold album book, once accepted and then rejected by French, is plainly untenable on ocular inspection (BL Egerton 1324, fol. 85v; French, 1949-58, III, 104; V, 432; Miller, 1990). Picard's hand has been discerned in the paper prepared by William Towerson (21 January 1656/7) on the accounts relating to the relief of the Vaudois (PRO SP 46/112 fol. 46), which would imply that he had been somehow connected with the English government, but we cannot be completely confident that the document is in Picard's hand: there are variations between the hands of the Towerson document and the De Doctrina manuscript, but Picard's hand did vary enormously, and the hand of the Towerson document seems very close indeed to that on the Foxcroft excise bond.
The entries in the Commonplace Book cannot be dated with confidence, though they are clearly late, but the other documents can all be dated in the period 1658 to 1660. The entries on the flyleaf of the family Bible record the death of Milton's wife Katherine on 3 February 1658 and their infant daughter on 17 March 1658. If Milton's "late espoused saint" was Katherine, whose name was "pure as her mind," then the entry in the Trinity Manuscript must have been made in the same period. The Maundy mortgage deed is dated 14 January 1658, and the endorsement on the Foxcroft bond is dated 5 May 1660. All of these dates are consonant with the hypothesis that Picard worked on the manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana between 1658 and 1660.
There are two pieces of evidence that suggest that Picard may have become a patient at Bethlem Hospital long after he left Milton's service. The earliest Admissions Book of Bethlem Hospital, which begins with a census in May 1683, records that a Jeremiah Piskard was admitted on 7 September 1700 and discharged two months later, on 4 November (Admissions Book, 1683-1701, p. 284). Evidence that this "Piskard" was Milton's Picard is contained in an account drafted in 1678 by the German traveller Adam Ebert, who recorded that he had seen "a secretary of the well-known Milton" in Bethlehem Hospital:
Er was darinn ein Secretarius des Bekandten Miltons, so nichts als Stroh aus dem Bette darauff er lag ass; wenn er aber Frembden merckte wiess er jämmerlich mit dem Finger an die Stirne zubezeugen dass er an Vernunfft Mangel hätte; welches dem Peregrinant Wunder nahm dass ein Narr wüsste das er ein Narr wäre. er hätte einsmahls das Fenster eingeschlagen auch nicht eher ruhen gewolt biss man ihm Leim gebracht da er dann mit Papier in welchem er bisshero gelesen die Löcher zugeflicket.
["In it was a secretary of the well-known Milton, who ate nothing but the straw of the bed on which he was lying. But when he noticed a stranger, he pointed miserably with his finger at his forehead in order to show that he lacked reason. It puzzled the traveller that a fool knew that he was a fool. Once he had smashed a window; also he had not been willing to rest until he had been brought glue so that he could patch the holes with the paper which he had been reading."]
(Ebert, p. 69; see Elton)
What evidence there is for Picard's involvement with Milton and his circle suggests that he was employed by the republican state in its closing years and that he was associated with Milton in the late 1650s and early 1660s, after which he disappears from the records that have been discovered until his re-emergence in tragic circumstances at the end of the century. Of course, absence of evidence, in the old formula, is not evidence of absence. It would not be inconceivable, however, that Milton's most active involvement with De Doctrina dated from the late 1650s, when Picard was known to be engaged on other affairs relating to him and to the political organisations with which he was associated. Indeed, at the Restoration, Milton may well have stopped working on the manuscript -- perhaps because possibilities for publication had effectively evaporated, perhaps because of the need to secure his more sensitive papers in a clandestine location. Both state papers and treatise could have been seized if his study had been searched. The state papers would have been confiscated; the treatise could well have substantiated charges of heresy that would have been irresistible in court. It was about this time that his superior in the republican civil service, John Thurloe, was secreting his own papers in the false ceiling of his chambers in Lincoln's Inn. Milton, we know, was trying to transfer and thus save government bonds; to do as much for his working manuscripts would have been a rational response to impending disaster. In the late 1660s and especially in the early 1670s, however, once his personal survival had become fairly certain, such measures could have been reversed.
Skinner in his letters to Pepys represents himself as being in some sense Milton's unofficial literary executor. However, no life record connects him to Milton; we have only his ipse dixit. Moreover, that letter indicates a curious ambivalence about the claimed relationship. Pepys was himself a republican apostate and no doubt recognised the political message when Skinner claimed that learning rather any political sympathy had drawn him to Milton. Besides his letters to his sister's lover, from whom he is scrounging money, there is nothing else to connect him with Milton save the fact that he palpably did have access to at least some of Milton's papers after his death. The evidence has been sympathetically interpreted by Parker, who regards him as indeed Milton's last amanuensis, entrusted with a task beyond his experience and beyond the resources of his moral courage. Yet he could as easily from the evidence be regarded as no more than a tomb-robber who somehow secured access to papers, perhaps too carelessly regarded by Milton's widow. If the latter were the case, it is wholly possible that Skinner would have been in no position to judge authoritatively of the Miltonic provenance of the treatise which, among other documents, he took into his possession. His first scribal involvement with it may have amounted to no more than initiating a fair copy for the press which he abandoned after page 196 in favour of the less laborious process of tidying up the remainder as best he could before sending off the document, 196 pages in his hand, the rest mostly in a sometimes corrected hand of Picard.
Certainly it would be helpful if we were to know more about the history, and especially the early history, of Daniel Skinner. It is often asserted that he was a pupil of Milton, but the nature of his occasional slips in Latin, Greek and Hebrew renders this assumption suspect. In marked contrast to the virtually perfect Latin of the surviving portion of the Picard manuscript, Skinner's fifteen chapters contain a light sprinkling of errors (all of which are corrected in the Columbia text). Sumner recorded 27 slips in Skinner, but only four in Picard's much longer section. Sometimes Sumner's corrections are added to the palimpsest: gratiae for Skinner's gloriae (MS 28; CE, XIV, 102.22); cor autem for Skinner's corruentum (MS 46; CE, XIV, 168.9); orare for Skinner's errare (MS 66; CE, XIV, 236.22); coelorum for Skinner's coecorum (MS 137; CE, XIV, 94.12). Many such errors escaped Sumner's pencil: nos for non, re for rex, iniquam for inquam, decere for docere, explorentur for explerentur and many similar instances, all of which suggest an exceedingly modest command of Latin. Some repeated spelling mistakes, such as accomodans and seperatim, always corrected by Sumner, anticipate illiteracies of our own time. In Greek, Skinner confuses omicron and omega, muddles breathings and comes unstuck with the iota subscript. In Hebrew, Skinner wrote twenty-seven words, always imitating the square forms of printed Hebrew rather than using a cursive. Three of the Hebrew words have no vowel points, and others garble vocalisation in various ways: even the names of God are incorrectly vocalised (MS 13, CE, XIV, 40; MS 16; CE, XIV, 52). Leo Miller (1984) surveyed the evidence and concluded that the Skinner draft was probably "not begun until after Milton was dead." Maurice Kelley had reached the same conclusion in 1941 (p. 56), based on his observation that there are no revisions in Skinner's hand; the only changes are added phrases and minor corrections, which suggests that Skinner took the trouble to check his transcription. However, it is that case that no aspect of his conduct while the papers were in his possession suggests that he would have been selected for the task of seeing into print what the author of SP 9/61 calls "my best and richest possession" ("quibus melius et pretiosus nihil habeo") (CE, XIV, 8-9). Skinner was about 23 years old and apparently something of a novice in dealing with Dutch presses -- Elsevier, after all, held the manuscripts for many months, from an unknown date in 1675 to March 1677, without printing them. Milton knew others much better equipped for the purpose. Moreover, in the summer of 1674 Milton had had some distinct sense of his impending death, enough to have made, while bedfast, a nuncupative will in the presence of his brother. If this manuscript were indeed so precious to him, then he may well have been expected to take similar precautions at such strong intimations of his own mortality.
The manuscript carries Milton's name on its titlepage (IOANNES MILTONVS) and on the first page of the first book (IOANNIS MILTONI) and the initials "I.M." after the preface. The hand in which the name is twice written is not Skinner's, but the initials resemble his hand, and are circled in a way similar to one on the cancelled coda of the manuscript of the State Papers. It seems odd that Lemon should not have mentioned the presence of Milton's name when he prepared a document (now in SP 9/61/4) setting out his reasons for attributing the treatise to Milton. Milton's name was on the State Papers as Iohannis Miltonii, with an H in the Christian name. The second I in the genitive inflexion was apparently added at a later date; our hypothesis is confirmed by the running title on the verso pages, which is Iohannis Miltoni. Lemon noticed the name on the State Papers, and guessed that the theological treatise might also be the work of Milton. He noted that the wrapper bore the address "Mr Skinner, Merchant," and turned to Charles Symmons's edition of Milton's prose (1806), where he discovered that the treatise "was once in the hands of Cyriac Skinner, but what became of it, afterwards, has not been traced" (VIII, p. 500). Lemon was not to know that Symmons, following Wood, had confused Daniel Skinner with Cyriack.
There is compelling evidence that Milton's name and (possibly) the initials may have been added in the nineteenth century. The words in both cases certainly are squeezed in above what would otherwise be the top line of text. They are mostly in block capitals so the handwriting defies much interpretation. However, when Lemon prepared some material to describe his discovery he had made an engraving of the titlepage which is now bound into Part Four of SP 9/61; that engraving, which was subsequently published in Sumner's edition of the Latin text, does not have the current first line with Milton's name, suggesting that at least that name may have been inserted there sometime after the engraving was made, either by Sumner, its editor and translator (whose hand is often to be seen making corrections to the text), or else by Lemon. It is of course possible that the engraver blundered, but as the chief interest of the treatise is its attribution to Milton, it would seem bizarre to omit his name. In any case, the line on the titlepage is an afterthought. Skinner, perhaps wholly ingenuously as he prepared the manuscript for Elsevier, could have put it in; so, too, could Elsevier himself. If Milton's name was a later addition, then, possibly, so too were the initials. Curiously, perhaps the best evidence for rejecting the authenticity of the names comes from Kelley, who observes, in another context, that Milton customarily represented himself in Latin as "Miltonius", not "Miltonus" (Kelley, 1986); here it is "Miltonus" ("Ioannes Miltonus Anglus"). On the titlepages of his Latin defences and his Artis Logica, we find only the genitive form, which in the defences is usually printed MILTONI, and on occasion, as in the revised edition of the first Defence (Shawcross, 1984, p. 259), MiltonI. The large terminal I is the Renaissance convention for "ii"; in this respect Renaissance practice differs from classical convention, in which contractions of the "ii" case ending are optional and commonplace in second declension nouns in the genitive singular case. Milton's acquaintances sometimes represented his name differently. In Poems (1645) the commendations heading the Latin poems variously style him "Miltonem" (i.e., the accusative form of a third-declension noun) and "Miltonus" (in Salvaggi's commendation), which needs "Miltonum" (accusative) to scan. In the Arnold album Milton wrote "Miltonus" and then very clearly and somewhat clumsily corrected it to "Miltonius." None of this constitutes evidence that the document is not Miltonic; however, we doubt whether the presence of the name and initials of Milton can usefully be regarded as evidence that Milton wrote the treatise.
It has been long recognised that the Picard part of the manuscript contains corrections, additions and some deletions which would seem not to be the work of the scribe primarily responsible for these pages. Indeed, Kelley has sought to demonstrate the involvement of amanuenses A ("a fluent, legible Italian hand"), M (perhaps "the work of two separate scribes, one writing a sharp, angular hand, the other a rounded hand and using a noticeably darker ink"), B ("a heavy, printed hand, executed with a coarse quill"), N ("a minute but extremely legible script"), C ("a fairly large printed hand"), O ("a small, semi-printed hand sometimes closely resembling the writings of Amanuensis N"), R ("a rather coarse, printed hand"), and remaining entries attributed to what he terms "the Later Hands" (Kelley, 1973, pp. 22-35).
We have made only ocular examination of the manuscript; yet it seems to us at least worth considering that the use of amanuenses may be considerably simpler than Kelley suggests. The hand of Picard in the various contexts in which it has been identified shows a considerable range of variation. Comparison and scrutiny of digitised images of that hand and of the hands attributed to others may well reduce very significantly the estimate of the number of amanuenses involved in producing the non-Skinner part of SP 9/61.
SP 9/61 shows numerous characteristics indicative of its status as a working manuscript. Though Skinner's transcription gives to the early portion the air of finality associated with a fair copy prepared for the press, Picard's pages tell a different tale. Though the manuscript has been cut into single leaves, each mounted by PRO conservationists on a stub of a book, Picard's section evidently consisted of a series of booklets of varying lengths, each corresponding to a single chapter, and each numbered through, beginning at page 1. Many of these pages have noticeably large gaps between lines; the pages appear as it were double- or treble-spaced; in an age not prodigal of its resources and one in which paper was of significant expense, this is a striking indicator that the text has been set out to admit interlinear additions and accretions. Moreover, all the pages in Picard's hand have singularly wide left margins (though the right margin is very small). Once more, the purpose of these blank spaces was clearly to allow room for marginal additions. By the earlier eighteenth century such wide margins had become a familiar feature of composition in contexts where multiple revisions were expected or invited (see Downie, 1976; Downie and Woolley, 1982); quite possibly the practice was established in Milton's age.
The body of Picard's section would seem to be a fair copy of one or more earlier states of the document, albeit of a provisional or interim kind. The evidence for this comes both from the neat and uncorrected character of the text and from the presence of revised leaves within booklets. For this there are four kinds of evidence. Firstly: the number of lines per page. While generally the Picard section is wide-spaced, with typically 17-19 lines per page, some pages are much more cramped, sometimes with 30 or more lines, indicative of a process of rewriting pages to incorporate marginal or interlinear additions while retaining the original pagination. Thus within the booklet which contains I.27 (MS 312-37), MS 317 has 26 lines, MS 318 20 lines, MS 319 16 lines, and MS 320 23 lines. A skilled and professional scribe, as Picard evidently was, does not introduce such variations unless he is incorporating accretions into a (new and again possibly interim) fair copy. Secondly, there are different paperstocks represented within booklets. Generally, examination of the paper seems to us unpromising. It has been variously suggested by Hunter and Shawcross in unpublished material that the paper of the manuscript may yield some clues as to its provenance. Possibly it may be demonstrably Dutch, which would not prove that it was certainly written in the United Provinces (Dutch paper may have been imported into England), but perhaps that would add to the volume of circumstantial evidence. If it were demonstrably English then the corollary may be argued. Perhaps it could be demonstrated to contain the same paper as the Commonplace Book, though why Milton should have used the same paper stock for a manuscript book made in the pre-war period as for a theological treatise for which no-one is arguing so early a date is less than clear. We have made only a superficial approach to this issue (none of us has expertise in this field); however, we must report that we feel less than sanguine that this variable will produce much information. SP 9/61 has had its pages cut and pasted on to the stubs of three manuscript books. It is difficult to see which pages were parts of the same sheets. The paper is grubby, thick, and, while chain marks are discernible, we couldn't find any water marks. However, there is good evidence in the very different levels of ink absorption that booklets have had pages deleted and fresh pages added. Consider for example the booklet containing II.4 in which the ink absorbency of MS 507-10 contrasts sharply with MS 511-16. Thirdly, within the same booklet there are often considerable variations in ink colour, indicative, most probably, of similar deletions and substitutions of whole leaves. See, for example, MS 345-46. (We suspect that ink colour may also relate to differences in paper stock.) Finally, the size of the writing changes from leaf to leaf within booklets (e.g. MS 216 compared with MS 217).
The way in which marginalia is added is indicative of the mode of revision. Marginal additions run parallel to the left edge, and in nearly all cases must have been made with the manuscript page turned on its left edge. From the evidence of pages with just one marginal addition, it is clear that Picard began to fill the margin by working from the main body of the text outwards to the edge of the page. Additions are usually tied to the appropriate place in the body of the text by means of flag characters. It is evident that, where there is more than one marginal addition, the first to be written does not necessarily relate to the earlier point on the manuscript page. Thus the process of revision would seem to have been one of repeatedly revisiting the manuscript to add, in no particular sequence, new material as and when it occurs to the author of the revision. See, for example, MS 210, 211, 292, 654.
Some parts of the Picard section are both densely written and have no additional marginalia, such as II.7, MS 560-66, of which most pages have 29 lines or more. These seem to us close to a finished state, into which additions have been incorporated.
Our hypothesis about the state of the manuscript is this: the least densely written parts are those which have not been subject of revision; the most densely written parts without further marginalia, such as MS 560-66, are most nearly finished -- though wide margins in this section indicate that further revision has not been excluded; and the pages with unassimilated marginalia are in the stage between revision and recopying. What we have in the Picard section is a frozen moment in the process of composition.
We have then, beneath the seeming finalities of the text as represented in Skinner's transcription and in the printed editions, an altogether more problematical and unstable manuscript with two principal components, which are in a complex relationship to each other. We have the ur-text, Picard's fair copy of a theological treatise (or treatises), perhaps visible in pristine form in wide-spaced and thus, we postulate, unrevised sections of the manuscript. Then we have the accretions, most surely visible in unabsorbed marginalia. Of course, both may be wholly Miltonic. But other relationships merit investigation. The ur-text may be non-Miltonic in origin; or it may be a Miltonic synthesis of a multiplicity of sources. The physical characteristics of the manuscript may certainly be reconciled with a disintegrationist theory of its authorship.
The manuscript, then, is a palimpsest, the lowest layer of which is a fair copy of a treatise, copied by Jeremie Picard. Of this layer several portions are missing: the first fourteen chapters (MS 1-196) and part of II.7 (MS 571-4) have been replaced by Skinner's fair copy; part of II.5 (MS 549-52) has been replaced by copy in the hand of the amanuensis designated by Kelley as Amanuensis A; and, as we argue, numerous other sections have been recopied by Picard himself. Any doubts about the existence of a lost version that precedes the Picard draft are allayed by Kelley, who notes two telling errors of anticipation (Kelley, 1973, p. 23). The next layer, also in Picard's hand, consists of large numbers of minor changes in diction, word order, paragraph order and citation order of proof texts; there are also scores of new citations and expanded and contracted quotations. All of this material is scrupulously listed by Kelley (1941, pp. 42, 236-44, sections 50-59). Kelley also identifies in this layer a series of elaborations of points of dogma which, as he phrases it, "supplement theological views already present in the manuscript" (Kelley, 1973, 24). Some of this Picard marginalia has in turn been copied by Skinner.
There are structural indications that Picard's revisions were broken off before he had finished the task. The view that the treatise is unfinished has been proposed by Campbell (1976) and disputed by Kelley (1989). The argument centres on the last five chapters of Book I. Campbell's view that the organisation of these chapters is "internally confused" and "chaotic" is derided by Kelley, who concedes only that "chapters 29-33 have some organisational difficulties." Kelley insists that the treatise is complete, in the sense that its contents are all present in the manuscript, but concedes that it is unfinished, in the sense that "it offers an alert copy editor a rich field in which to work." This is an awkward time to revive the debate, because Professor Kelley's recent death means that he cannot reply, but even as we set out the issues we are conscious that our obligations extend beyond the injunction de mortuis nil nisi bonum to an acknowledgement that Kelley's contribution to our understanding of the composition of the manuscript is a scholarly achievement unmatched by any other student of the treatise.
It would seem that the treatise, like Paradise Lost, once stood in ten parts. There are cancelled divisions into ten parts in what seem to be Skinner's hand. In his scheme, I.25 ended with the words "Quartae partis finis", which has, like Skinner's other part divisions, been deleted. At the end of I.22, however, the words "Finis Quartae Partis" appear in another hand, one which has not been identified. Kelley's view is that this second entry is the fossil of an earlier division of the treatise" and that other evidence of this fact has been lost" (Kelley, 1973, p. 37, n. 4). Ten-part treatises were not unusual, and Milton was certainly familiar with those of Dudley Fenner and Thomas Cartwright. In the surviving ten-part scheme, chapters 29-33 of Book I constitute part 6, which concludes with the phrase "Finis Libri Primi" (not deleted) followed by "et sextae partis" (deleted).
The second organisational principle is that of Ramist dichotomies. In 1941 Kelley observed (p. 195) that De Doctrina is organised according to the principles set out in Milton's Artis Logicae, but did not elaborate. The argument was first set out in a PhD thesis submitted to Princeton in 1941 by H. F. Irwin, who was presumably Kelley's student. Irwin produced a Ramist chart (between pp. 68 and 69) for De Doctrina of a sort that is familiar from the theological treatises of Ames (25 pages of charts), Wolleb (9 pages), Cartwright (a chart for each chapter) and Alsted (6 charts). Milton's transitions enabled him to plot the entire treatise, except for chapters 29-33 of Book I. Irwin's chart is complete save for these five chapters. In 1946 A. J. Th. Eisenring also produced a Ramistic chart (pp. 108-9), and once again chapters 29-33 are omitted. Kelley acknowledges that there is a problem, and proposes a solution:
The primary difficulty with part 6 results from the presence of chapter 30, OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURE, between a two-chapter discussion of the church: chapter 29, OF THE VISIBLE CHURCH, and chapter 31, OF PARTICULAR CHURCHES, which begins with an imperfect transition linking it to chapter 29. Remove chapter 30 from its present position, place it after chapter 32, OF CHURCH DISCIPLINE, supply it with a transition such as "The rule by which all things taught by the ministers and done by the people should be measured is the Holy Scripture," and the organizational error is remedied. Thirty one follows its linked chapter 29, and the new transition of 30 links it to 29, 30, 32. (p. 44)
If only life were so simple. The organisational assistance that Kelley offers is ingenious, and, had the treatise been completed, his may indeed have been the preferred solution. The analogy with Ames's Medulla suggests another possible solution: Ames distinguishes between ministers who are extraordinarius (chapter 33) and those who are ordinarius (chapter 35); the intervening chapter, on the Holy Scriptures, is an extension of the discussion of "extraordinary" ministers, a term which had been defined in the previous chapter: "extraordinarij ministri fuerunt Prophetae, Apostoli, & Evangelistae." De Doctrina adopts Ames's definitions as well as his dichotomies, and so the definition of Holy Scripture in I.30 as "SCRIPTA prophetarum, apostolorum, evangelistarum" would seem to imply a plan to tie the material on the Scriptures to the discussion of "extraordinary" ministers of the visible church.
We cannot be certain about which solution might have been adopted, because none was adopted. There is a more considerable problem with the final chapter of Book I of De Doctrina, on the final judgement and complete glorification. This chapter was the normal subject of the final chapter of the first book of early modern systematic theologies, but the means by which it is connected to earlier material varies considerably. Ames treats perfect glorification as the third variant of the manner in by which the application of redemption by the new covenant is administered; Wolleb makes it the fourth part of that portion of the special providence of God which is applicable to humankind; Cartwright treats it as the last part of that portion of the office of Christ which pertains to his kingdom; Fenner treats it as the second part of Christ's office. These schemes all bear a close resemblance to the organisational principles of De Doctrina, but none is sufficiently close to allow an inference of how the final chapter might have been integrated into the Ramist principles of the reorganised treatise. Parker was quite right to say that the treatise was "essentially complete" in 1660, "at least in first draft" (p. 1056). First drafts are not finished treatises.
Picard would seem to have broken off work on his draft at about the time of the Restoration. We have not investigated the issue of secondary hands in a scientific way, but we provisionally agree that the second part does contain some corrections or additions in seventeenth-century hands other than Skinner's or Picard's. How may this be explained except in terms of the working practices of a blind scholar dependent on the offices of others to record his alterations to the text? There are other hypotheses one could postulate. The document may have been passed by its author to friends or associates for their comments or corrections. The document may have come into Milton's possession in this way, and he may have chosen to retain it, having comments inserted by a series of casual amanuenses. He may have received it already thus corrected or augmented. But if it were not Milton's, why, given how important it seems to have been to its author, did Milton retain it? Again, there are a number of hypotheses. Possibly the author had tried to publish it and, after some discouragement, had abandoned it to the possession of someone who may have found it interesting or useful. We have the anecdotal evidence that Elsevier claimed that he had decided not to publish it on the advice of a leading Dutch divine.
Even if the non-Skinner corrections to the second part were the work of amanuenses used elsewhere by Milton, that would not conclusively prove that Milton had not used them to adapt or personalise someone else's notes which had come into his possession. Yet it would certainly be fascinating to compare the hands in SP 9/61 with the hands found in that multi-scribed manuscript of certain Miltonic provenance, the Commonplace Book. Kelley is of the opinion that N may be a hand in the Commonplace Book, but that other hands are not represented there (Kelley, 1941, pp. 40-1).
Hunter recognises the implied question to be put to any who suggests that Milton is not the author of the treatise: if Milton isn't, then who is? After some initial entertainment of the notion that it may have been Milton's fellow republican apologist and fellow Arminian, John Goodwin (Hunter, 1992, 139). Hunter's more recent deliberations have tended to the view that Picard was indeed the second scribe, that he was also the author, and that he was Dutch.
A Dutch identification is in a number of ways attractive. Certainly, we know that Milton had quite intricate connections with the United Provinces, something that has been the subject of two recent major studies (Miller, 1995; Fallon, 1993). Again, the United Provinces were the location of the genesis of Arminianism and of the most deeply divisive controversies associated with it. Moreover, a Dutch source for the treatise would obviate the awkward necessity of finding an English Arminian, other than Milton, who has written on divorce.
One detail seems to Hunter to exclude an English context for the authorship of SP 9/61. Taking his prompt from Burgess, he fixes on the discussion of tithes, especially the passage which runs
To bargain for or exact tithes or gospel-taxes, to extort a subsidy from the flock by force or by the intervention of the magistrates, to invoke the civil law in order to secure church revenue, and to take such matters into courts -- these are the actions of wolves, not ministers of the gospel. . . . How disgraceful is it, then, for a man of the church to enter into litigation with his flock, or rather with a flock which is not strictly speaking his at all, for the sake of tithes.
(Kelley, 1973, 598)
The passage continues, "This sort of thing does not go on in any reformed church except ours" (599). Hunter concludes, "Whether or not ministers sued to collect them in England, the important point here is that Milton, who strongly opposed forced tithing in Hirelings (1659), never suggested there that ministers went to court over the issue" (Hunter, 1993, 197-98); Burgess rather thought that the use of the civil magistrate by clergy in the collection of tithes was not part of English practice.
The facts of the matter are pronounced and simple. By the mid-1640s, the Long Parliament recognised that the collection of tithes had become problematic since the system of ecclesiastical courts was no longer operational. Its remedy was quite powerful and innovative: it charged the civil magistrate with the responsibility of using the apparatuses at his disposal to effect the collection. This became, in effect, a new way for the civil magistrate to be invoked in matters of religious practice or belief (that is, the belief that one should or should not be obliged to pay tithes to support the minister). The legislation, first passed on 8 November 1644, was frequently refreshed or reenacted, the last time on 16 March 1660. At the Restoration, ecclesiastical courts were eventually resurrected, and the failure to pay tithes fell within their sphere of judgment; from 1661 the matter became once more outside the range of the civil magistrate (Firth and Rait, I, 568, 996-8, 1117-8, 1226; II, 146a; Green, pp. 133-5).
The discussion of the issue in SP 9/61 would be wholly congruent if the treatise were written before the Restoration and if this passage had escaped later revision in the light of the renovation of the ecclesiastical courts. It is in no sense pertinent that Milton does not make this argument or attack this phenomenon in Hireling, which is a pamphlet explicitly addressed to Parliament; Parliament in its various manifestations had been responsible for this innovation of using the magistrate to collect tithes, and it would certainly not suit Milton's immediate polemical objectives to reproach Parliament on this point, when the pamphlet is trying to persuade Parliament to take a more sceptical view of the claims of tithing ministers. The notion of a date of composition before the Restoration is consonant with what seems to be the only dateable line in the treatise: the phrase "as was done by bishops formerly, and is not unfrequently practised by magistrates in the present day" (CE, XVII, 416) was surely composed before 1660; it lies in the earliest portion of Picard's manuscript.
The manuscript, discussing Acts 20:28, remarks "Syriaca versio non Dei, sed Christi ecclesiam scribit, ut nostra recens Domini ecclesiam" (MS 73); on this Burgess, in an insight that stimulates Hunter, observes:
By our recent Version, the writer must have meant the public Version of his country, or his own translation. Our recent Version in Milton's time was that of King James's translators, which has not the "Church of the Lord" but "the Church of God." Nor has any Version of the seventeenth century been yet discovered that has the meaning which is ascribed to it in the Latin Treatise, but one, and that is the Arian Version of the New Testament by Felbinger, published at Amsterdam in 1660. . . . (quoted Hunter, 1993, p. 196)
Hunter develops the point thus:
Burgess may not have know that Felbinger's interpretation derives from a comment of a better-known scholar, Étienne Courcelles . . . a leading figure in the Remonstrant Seminary in Amsterdam who in 1658 had published an edition of the Greek New Testament with a note that made the points . . . that Burgess found in Felbinger's German. . . . Burgess dismissed Walton's Polyglot Bible as the text referred to "because that [Latin] translation, whether it was by Tremellius or by Gabriel Sionita, was not the work of Walton or of his age." (pp. 196-97)
We are uneasy about this argument. The "Syriac version" is the translation of Tremellius, who has ecclesiam Christi, and "our recent version" is the translation printed in Walton's Polyglot, which was published in London in 1657; moreover, the Latin translation that Walton prints (ecclesiam illam Domino) is a mistranslation of the accompanying Syriac text, which has 'dteh da-msha, i.e. "Church of Christ" (Campbell and Brock, 1993). The fact that the Latin translation was not by an Englishman may well not be pertinent. The edition was perceived as a triumph of English scholarship (more strictly, British, in that Ussher as well as Selden was an early sponsor of it). Moreover, Walton (1600-1661) was certainly of Milton's age. Courcelles's rendering of the phrase comes not in a translation but in a note on a Greek edition. If the phrase does come from Felbinger's edition, that would point to a German not a Dutch provenance, and that brings its own irremediable problem, our countryman Ames.
The treatise once refers to the Calvinist divine William Ames as "noster Ames" (CE, XVII, 172), "our countryman Ames." As Hunter concedes, "one might argue that inasmuch as Ames was born in England the author of the treatise was English," but he argues instead
as [Burgess] showed, Ames had no significant English connections. He identified himself only with Holland, where he spent his life and published most of his work, and indeed place himself, as Burgess noted, firmly in the Dutch tradition "in the Preface to his Coronis ad Collationem Hagiensem. . . Throughout the whole of the Coronis, Nostri is used" to refer to Dutch, not English, divines. The "oppositi" who were his opponents there were "the Remonstrant Divines." (pp. 197)
There are a number of problems with this section of what seems increasingly like a rather strained argument. Ames had a successful academic career before his puritanical though deeply Calvinist leanings led him to quit England about 1610, by which time he had been a Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge, and apparently a contender for headship of the college. He was in his mid-thirties when he moved to the United Provinces. He died in a flood in Rotterdam, to which he had moved to be pastor to the English community and to preside over an English college which it was proposed to found there (DNB). This scarcely squares with the picture of the eager Dutch immigrant striving to slough off his English past. Moreover, as Hunter says, he used the term Nostri in the context of a debate between Arminians and Calvinists, the latter being his own side; it would seem really to mean "our people" in the sense of our fellow Calvinists, not our fellow Dutchmen. The balance of evidence would seem to indicate that the allusion to our countryman Ames does indeed point to an English provenance.
Scholars have long assumed that De Doctrina Christiana contains a reference to Tetrachordon; and more recently this reference has been used as evidence for Milton's authorship of the treatise (Lewalski,1992, 147; Hill, 1994, 169). The passage, in John Carey's translation, runs:
as Selden demonstrated particularly well in his Uxor Hebraea . . . the word fornication . . . does not mean only adultery. It can mean also either what is called some shameful thing (i.e., the lack of some quality which might reasonably be required in a wife), Deut. xxiv. 1, or it can signify anything which is found to be persistently at variance with love, fidelity, help and society (i.e., with the original institution of marriage). I have proved this elsewhere, basing my argument on several scriptural texts, and Selden has demonstrated the same thing.
(Kelley, 1973, p. 378)
The closing phrase of the Latin text -- "ut nos alias ex aliquot scripturae locis et Seldenus idem docuit, reperitur" (MS 159; CE, XV, 172) -- has been analysed by Paul Sellin in a forthcoming study (Sellin, 1997), in which he argues that the phrase has been mistranslated, that its emphasis also been shifted by successive translators, and that it need not after all constitute an allusion to Milton's tract. We are greatly in Sellin's debt for his generous disclosure of his findings to this group, and recommend an early consideration of his article to all who wish to understand the kind of text that De Doctrina Christiana is, the kind of problems it contains, and especially the inadvisability of taking the current published translations at face value.
Sellin, inter alia, shows that when the rendering given above makes three sentences out of the passage's single sentence, it gives inappropriate emphasis and coverage to what is, rather, a passing and deeply subordinated remark. Or again, Sellin gives reasons for thinking that the words "proved," "argument," and "demonstrated" -- which sound so clear and bookish in Carey's rendering -- may have a number of less clear-cut meanings, so reducing the certainty of allusion to a separately published work like Tetrachordon. The key passage and its possible allusion are actually an awkwardly expressed afterthought.
An exciting new suggestion from Sellin's essay is that the truth-status claimed in the passage for Selden's "teaching" (docuit) is not being equated with but instead differentiated from that of the author of De Doctrina Christiana, whose words "ut nos alias ex aliquot scripturae locis" would as naturally read in Latin with a vague verb of saying or thinking -- "ut nos [diximus]" or the like.
Sellin's careful philology, together with these speculations, could and should defamiliarize De Doctrina Christiana for its modern readers, who should ponder at how many more points of this huge, prolonged, shambling and difficult manuscript a similarly cautious philology should also be exercised. Sellin eloquently demonstrates the need for systematically cautious refusal to overinterpret; for constant resource to the original Latin (not translation); and perhaps for using a facsimile or microfilm of that Latin.
Edward Phillips says that in the early 1640s, shortly after he returned from Italy, Milton became occupied with
the writing from his own dictation, some part, from time to time, of a Tractate which he thought fit to collect from the ablest of Divines, who had written of the Subject; Amesius, Wollebius, &c. viz. A perfect System of Divinity, of which more hereafter.
(Darbishire, p. 61)
Milton was sighted at this point, but he nonetheless dictated his treatise; the use of amanuenses does not necessarily point to blindness. The extent to which SP 9/61 is collected out of Ames and Wolleb is open to argument, though Kelley's annotation indicates many points of contact, and he has mounted a case for "Milton's Debt to Wolleb's Compendium Theologiae Christianae" (Kelley, 1935).
The title "System of Divinity" was used in 1698 by Toland, who explains that Milton
wrote likewise a System of Divinity, but whether intended for public view, or collected merely for his own use, I cannot determin. It was in the hands of his friend Cyriac Skinner; and where at present is uncertain.
(Darbishire, p. 192)
Toland may have taken the title from Phillips, but the idea that the manuscript had been in the hands of Cyriack rather than Daniel Skinner seems to derive from Wood, who claims that after the publication of Pro Se Defensio in 1655, Milton began
the framing [of] a Body of Divinity out of the Bible . . . which he finished after His Majesty's restoration. . . . [Those of Milton's books that are not now extant include] The body of Divinity, which my friend calls Idea Theologiae, now, or at least lately, in the hands of the author s acquaintance called Cyr[iack] Skinner, living in Mark Lane, London.
(Darbishire, pp. 46-7)
It was of course Daniel Skinner who had been living in Mark Lane. Wood's friend, the source of this confusion, was Aubrey, who had recorded among Milton's works the "Idea Theologiae in MS in the hands of Mr Skinner a merchant's sonne in Mark Lane" (Darbishire, pp. 9-10). Wood had also drawn on Cyriack Skinner, whom we now know to be the so-called "anonymous biographer", who had said of Milton that after the onset of blindness, "hee began that laborious work . . . a Latin Thesaurus. . . . Also the composing Paradise Lost and the framing a Body of Divinity out of the Bible: All which . . . hee finish'd after the Restoration" (Darbishire, p. 29). Skinner returns to the treatise to defend its heterodoxy:
[F]rom so Christian a life, so great learning, and so unbyassed a search after Truth it is not probable any errors in doctrine should spring. And therefore his judgement in his Body of Divinity concerning some speculative points, differing perhaps from that commonly receaved (and which is thought to be the reason that never was printed) neither ought rashly to bee condemned, and however himselfe not to be uncharitably censur'd; who by beeing a constant champion for the liberty of opining, expressed much candour towards others.
(Darbishire, p. 31)
This passage, more than any other in the early lives, might seem to refer to SP 9/61. Indeed, though it is advanced tentatively ("thought to be the reason"), the opinion that the treatise's heterodoxy excluded it from the press offers corroboration of sorts for the late anecdote attributed to Limborchus that he advised against its printing on the grounds of its heterodoxy. However, it could be argued that the real agent of its suppression was Williamson and his motivation probably had less to do with the minutiae of the treatise's theology than with the reputation of its assumed author.
Thus we have evidence that Milton was certainly writing a treatise (or treatises, as Hanford, 1920, argued) variously described as (or possibly entitled) a "System of Divinity", a "Body of Divinity" and "Idea Theologiae", any term of which could serve as a general description of SP 9/61 -- or, we may hypothesise, of the ur-text on which it was founded. A considerable working collection of exegetical discussions compiled by the sighted Milton could well have served the blind Milton well as the raw material for a systematic exegetical treatise.
The extent to which the theology of SP 9/61 is consonant with that of Paradise Lost has long been a problematical issue in Milton studies. Maurice Kelley famously deployed the scholastic metaphor of the gloss as a way of plugging the treatise into the poem, and Barbara Lewalski, perhaps more subtly, used a similar method to elucidate Paradise Regained. Discrepancies have been explained either by reference to differences of genre, or, in the case of Lady Radzinowicz's account, in terms of a chronology that constructs a plausibility that Milton developed over time. The points at which a Miltonic De Doctrina resists reconciliation with Paradise Lost have been the subject of intensive scrutiny, but the ingenuity of critics, including Hunter before his apostacy, has arguably eliminated most of the apparent contradictions.
It is certainly the case that there are heterodox views articulated in SP 9/61 which do not find expression in the undisputed Milton oeuvre. Yet arguments from silence in this context are probably unwise. The pressure of self-censorship may well have operated in texts vouchsafed to the press in ways not felt in a manuscript retained from public disclosure in the author s lifetime. Again, before 1660 Milton's polemical impulse is characteristically harnessed to the service of the factions he espoused, and he operates in the context of mature pamphlet exchanges and the immediately felt exigencies of on-going debate. His first divorce tract may seem an exception to that, though (whatever its significant motivation in the complications of his private life) that too belongs to a particular moment in the puritan review of doctrine and discipline within the national church. None of his prose works is situationally analogous to SP 9/61, so it may be unsurprising if we find sentiments expressed in the manuscript which are not found in his printed oeuvre.
Indeed, it is very difficult to find either in his poetry or his prose issues addressed in the same frame of reference that we find in the manuscript treatise. This renders much of the discussion about alleged discrepancies somewhat inconclusive. Consider, for example, a point recently argued by Hunter:
Because its Arianism denies to the Son a necessary intermediary role between man and God, the author of the treatise can argue in opposition to the traditional Christian judgment of the hopeless state of many pagan gentiles that they "are saved although they believe in God alone." The reason is that Christ's sacrifice is for anyone "who believed only in God the Father" (Yale Prose, 6.475). On the contrary, in Paradise Lost "to God [there] is not access / Without Mediator" (12:239-40), whom the virtuous pagans, of course, could not know; and in Paradise Regained, beginning with Socrates, they were led only "by Natures light," were "Ignorant of themselves, of God much more" (4:28-310), and so could not meet the requirements asserted by the treatise.
(Hunter, 1993, p. 201)
But the arguments don't quite match. The passage in Paradise Lost is not primarily about salvation, but about communication with the godhead, and it says that Moses, in typological prefiguration of Christ, performs that task in the pre-Christian era. Again, the passage in the short epic does not say that virtuous pagans can or cannot be saved; simply that they cannot know the godhead as a Christian believer can know the godhead.
It is an easy matter to point to discrepancies and conflicts within the undisputed Milton oeuvre both between works published at different times and even between works published at the same time (consider the ideological pluralism within both Poems (1645) and the double volume of Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes). So we feel the issue probably cannot be advanced beyond dispute by the accumulation of discrepancies (any more than by the listing of absences and silences). We are unconvinced by those new discrepancies Hunter has adduced (though space precludes engaging them systematically here), but we nevertheless note a hard core of four points, all of them local, in which treatise and Paradise Lost are curiously and in a sense gratuitously at odds:
i) The treatise describes the invocation of the Holy Spirit as lacking Biblical authority (I.6; CE, XIV, 392-4; Carey, p. 295, translates "a person for whom requests are addressed to the Father, and who is given by the Father, not by himself, cannot be a God or an object of invocation"). The author of Paradise Lost seems to invoke the said spirit.
ii) "Thus to his son audibly spake" (Paradise Lost, VII.518) seems hard to reconcile with the view of the treatise that God the Father "est inaudibilis" (I.5; CE, XIV, 252). The statement arises in the context of a discussion of the word ("sermo," not "verbum") of John 1. Carey, p. 239, translates "The Word must be audible, but God is inaudible just as he is invisible, John v. 37; therefore the Word is not of the same essence as God."
iii) The treatise identifies Satan with Beelzebub (I.9; CE, XV, 111); in Paradise Lost they are separate characters. Carey, pp. 349-50, translates thus: "The devils have their prince too: Beelzebub prince of devils, . . . the devil and his angels, . . . that great dragon and his angels. . . . Their chief has been given a number of titles which suit his actions. He is frequently called Satan . . . also the great dragon."
iv) The treatise argues that Father and Son are consubstantial but not coessential, and are therefore "non aequalibus" (I.5; CE, XIV, 210). The phrase occurs in a discussion of John 10:36. Carey, p. 219, translates it thus: "it must be said that this is said of two persons, distinct in essence and, moreover, not equal to each other." Paradise Lost presents a Son who is "equal to God, and equally enjoying God-like fruition" (III.306). The harmonisers of treatise and poem (e.g., Kelley, 1941, p. 31) have pointed to Philippians 2.5-6 ("thought it not robbery to be equal with God"), a text which the treatise deals with rather curiously, arguing that "if this pasage imply his [the Son's] co-equality with the Father, it rather refutes than proves his unity of essence, since equality cannot not exist but between two or more essences" (CE, XIV, 343). The logic of this statement leads to a a conclusion antithetical to the argument of the chapter on the Son, where coessentiality is denied in order to affirm inequality. Such contradictions within the treatise underline the perils of using discrepancies to distinguish the authorship of treatise and poem.
To these four points Paul Sellin will shortly add a fifth, arguing that the supralapsarianism of the treatise ("ante iacta mundi fundamenta" CE, XIV, 90) is at odds with the unusual position dramatised in the poem, whereby the decrees of God are placed between the creation of the universe and the fall (Sellin, 1996). We shall present an account of this paper in the printed version of our report, but at present will confine ourselves to the observation that the term "Arminian" is not one that can be used with any precision with reference to the theology of the treatise, a view which we share with Professor Sellin.
Yet against all of this there are striking points of contact between treatise and poem. For example, the treatise's grumpiness about trinitarianism would seem to be reflected in Milton's substitution of a polemical point about baptism in "the profluent stream" (XII.442) for the trinitarian baptismal formula of Jesus; indeed the substituted phrase seems to recall the treatise's "in profluentem aquam" (CE, XIV, 169). If the Tetrachordon reference is now deemed to be doubtful, there is another apparent link that should be considered: Campbell (1992) noted that the phrase "opinio autem in Deum non cadit" appears in both De Doctrina and Artis Logicae, and a common source has not been identified, though we should not be surprised if the phrase were shown to be patristic. Similarly, David Norbrook (1995) has noted some remarkable similarities in the treatment of Euripedes in De Doctrina and in Milton's undisputed writings. But consonance remains a problematical approach, as points of agreement could derive from a common source, or a commonplace, or the influence of one author on another (after all, no-one argues that the manuscript was not in Milton's possession, whoever may have written it), or of course they could derive from common authorship. There often seem to be as many differences within authors as between them, and we remain doubtful about argument arising from congruence or contradictions with works undisputedly written by Milton.
The use of statistics to investigate problems of authorship brings objectivity to an area that has been treated subjectively in the past. This is particularly important in certain fields, such as legal cases where objectivity is vital. However, the reaction of the humanities scholar is not always one of unalloyed welcome to such a quantitative method. The development and success of various statistical discriminating methods has gone some way to resolving this mistrust. A detailed review of techniques that have been applied can be found in Holmes (1994).
The perhaps unlikely association between statistics and authorship attribution began in 1851 when de Morgan suggested to a friend that it might be possible to distinguish writers by examining if one "does not deal in longer words" than the other. De Morgan went on to predict that "Some of these days spurious writings will be detected by this test" (De Morgan). Mendenhall proceeded to examine de Morgan's suggestion, using word length "spectra" to investigate the controversy about Bacon's possible authorship of works attributed to Shakepeare (Mendenhall). It was also used by Brinegar in his attempt to investigate the authorship of the Quintus Curtius Snodgrass letters (Brinegar). This technique has since been shown to be unreliable and is seldom used today.
Other early work was mainly concerned with sentence length. Yule used sentence length distributions to study the authorship of De Imitatione Christi; Williams proposed a log-normal distribution for sentence lengths and this was used by Wake in his examination of the sentence lengths of Greek authors (Yule, Williams, Wake). However, observational data does not support this distribution as many sentence length distributions are negatively skewed. Sichel introduced a compound Poisson model which is more successful at representing sentence length distributions (Sichel). In a more general way, Marckworth and Bell examined the differences between sentence lengths in different genres in the Brown corpus (Marckworth and Bell).
Function words, words that are context-free, have also been studied. Ellegard examined a list of words, and defined a "distinctiveness ratio" for each of the words (Ellegard, 1962). Perhaps the most comprehensive study in the field was carried out by Mosteller and Wallace. They investigated function-word usage in the Federalist Papers, especially synonym preference, using a variety of statistical techniques, including both Bayesian and classical inference.
Vocabulary richness, the number of words used by an author, appears to be one of the more successful techniques proposed in recent years. The term covers a multitude of methods, from the older type-token ratio, the number of different words divided by the total number of words, to more recent techniques such as Brunet's index (Brunet). These techniques have been used to analyse a variety of texts, including Mormon scripture (Holmes, 1992) and aphasic speech (Holmes and Singh, 1996).
What is most clear in the past five years is the movement from univariate methods to multivariate ones. It is being realised that a single variable is very unlikely to discriminate correctly between texts, and the wealth of recent papers making use of correspondence analysis, principal components analysis, cluster analysis and similar techniques is proof of this trend.
Stylometry in Latin
From the earliest point in the history of stylometry, studies have been undertaken on works in many different languages. However, Latin has remained relatively untouched by stylometric hand, though Greek has attracted much attention, probably because of its status as a biblical language. Work has been carried out on the New Testament, poetry, and letters. However, although both Latin and Greek are classical, inflected languages, there are fundamental differences between them which impact on stylometry. For example, the lack of the article in Latin invalidates the enthusiasm for sentence length investigations in Greek writings (Wake; Michaelson). Previous stylometric studies in Latin are detailed in Tweedie et al (1995); here we will note that they have with one exception concerned classical texts, in particular the Historia Augusta (Marriott, 1979; Meissner, 1992; Frischer, 1995; Frischer et al, 1996; Gurney and Gurney, 1996) and works of Cicero (Mellet, 1994; Mellet and Xuong, 1995). The only work concerning neo-Latin that we have identified is Hubka's study of a suspected Comenius fragment (Hubka, 1985). The statistical methods employed in several of the above investigations are generally elementary and their application open to criticism. We would aim to update these techniques and, as Latin stylometry is relatively new territory, before techniques can be applied to SP 9/61 it is important to validate their effectiveness on Latin texts of known authorship.
Stylometry, Milton and De Doctrina Christiana
This study would not have been possible without machine readable copies of Milton's Latin works being made available to the group by Eva Thury from Drexel University.
In order to determine the relationship between the undisputed Milton canon and De Doctrina Christiana, it is important to have work of undisputed provenance by other authors for comparison. Genre poses a considerable technical challenge to the design of this investigation. Nowhere in the undisputed Milton canon is there another Latin exercise in biblical exegesis. It is recognised that genre is a variable which impacts on aspects of style (Corns, 1982, 1990). The most extensive and, in a way, unproblematic Miltonic texts to set in comparison with De Doctrtina Christiana are his Latin Defences, in that (unlike the Prolusiones) they are mature works, and (unlike Artis Logicae) they are not reworkings of earlier texts by other writers. In assembling our control texts, we sought out examples both of exegetical writing and of polemical tracts which are situationally analogous to the Defences, in order that we could investigate and model the impact of genre on stylometrically analysed variables in seventeenth-century neo-Latin.
Nine control texts were identified, copies obtained and the text typed in by members of the group. Samples of around 3,000 words were obtained from the following texts:
William Ames, Medulla Theologica, editio novissima
(Amsterdam, 1649)
Richard Baxter, Methodus Theologicae Christianae (1681)
Johan Wollebius, Compendium Theologicae Christianae (Amsterdam,
1654)
George Bate, Elenchus Motuum nuperorum in Angli
(1649)
John Earle, Eikon Basilike, trans (1649)
Tom May, Historiae Parliamenti Angliae Breviarum (1650)
William Prynne, Guilhelmi Prynn Angli Fulcimentum Gladii Christianorum
Regum, Principium, & Magistratuum (1649)
Anon., Tragicum Theatrum Actorum, et Casuum Tragicorum Londini (Amsterdam,
1649)
Salmasius, Defensio Regia pro Carolo I (1649).
Minimal pre-processing was carried out; ampersands were converted to "et", hyphenations were reformatted and quotations were removed. The last procedure changed the electronic version of De Doctrina Christiana considerably as the resulting 60,000 words of text that we analysed were derived from almost 90,000 words of original text. In the case of the Defences, diacritic marks were present. While these diacritics may distinguish between declinable and indeclinable homonyms (Steenbakkers, 1994), their absence in the other texts means that we were unable to take advantage of this information.
The texts were processed using the Oxford Concordance Program which resulted in word lists and their frequency in the texts.
The texts were analysed using a technique pioneered by Burrows (1987, 1989, 1992), which examines the most commonly occurring fifty words using a statistical technique called Principal Components Analysis. As the name implies, Principal Components Analysis, or PCA, is concerned with identifying the most important elements, or components, of the information held in the data. This enables the researcher to view the data as a 2- or 3-dimensional scatter plot. This plot preserves the maximum information possible that is being held in the dimensions of in our case, the 50 variables being considered. The information itself is determined by a method known as "eigen-analysis." Technical details of PCA are available in many statistical textbooks, including Manly (1994).
Results
The problem that we are dealing with is hierarchical in nature. In order to establish that this technique is valid for investigating the provenance of SP 9/61, it is necessary that it can distinguish texts by known authors. Secondly we have to deal with the problems imposed by the different genres involved in this investigation. We need to be able to distinguish between texts in polemic and theological genres and to identify a genre "shift" between them. We need to consider the relationship between De Doctrina Christiana and the Defences. Finally, we need to examine the internal consistency of De Doctrina Christiana to consider the disintegrationist hypothesis.
Milton in comparison with others
The graph shown in Figure 1 is the result from a Principal Components Analysis of three groups of texts. The 1.1-1.9 represent samples from Milton's Defensio Prima; 2.1-2.5, samples from the Defensio Secunda and S.1-S.5 samples from Pro Se Defensio. B.1-B.11 are samples of neo-Latin text by Bacon, obtained from the Oxford Text Archive and the remaining three letter codes indicate the control texts listed above.
It is clear that the Milton Defences are clustered together and, while mixed, generally move chronologically from right to left. The Milton texts are all on the negative side of the first principal component represented by the horizontal axis, and around the zero point on the second principal component or vertical axis. Lower on the vertical axis, to the right of the control samples, but still fairly compact are the Bacon samples, again grouped, with the possible exception of sample B.4. The control samples are generally in the upper centre area of the plot. Positive scores on the horizontal axis are associated with high levels of "et" and "in" usage; Milton uses "et" more sparingly than the control texts or Bacon, while negative scores are associated with high usages of "quid," "tam" and "te." The far left positioning of the Pro Se Defensio can be accounted for in the high number of occurrences of second person pronouns. On the vertical axis, high numbers are associated with "ab" and "nec" while low numbers are associated with "atque" and "neque." The Wollebius sample (Wol) which appears to the right and above all the other samples is distinguished in a relatively high "et" figure -- 36.14 occurrences per 1000 words, no occurrences of "neque" and a high use of "nec" (9.8 per mille). This graph indicates that the Milton and Bacon samples are internally consistent and distinguishable from each other and texts by other authors. From this we conclude that this method of analysis will be suitable for investigating the provenance of SP 9/61.
Milton in comparison with the control texts
Having determined the suitability of this method of analysis we can now introduce the De Doctrina Christiana samples. We will not consider the Bacon samples as they have served their purpose above. The resulting PCA plot is shown in Figure 2. It can be seen that the Milton samples are to the left of the zero line and roughly central vertically. The DDC samples, C.1 to C.10 are in the lower left of the graph, while the control samples are generally towards the right, with the polemic controls in the lower half of the plot. There would appear to be a split between the genres under consideration; the theological texts are all below the zero line and the polemic samples, with the exception of a few samples from the Defensio Prima, are above the zero line. The polemic controls are distinguished by their high use of et and in, while est, along with deo and dei not surprisingly separate the theological texts. The Defences are characterised by their high usage of quid and tam as well as quidem. It is also of interest that the samples obtained from the DDC seem to fall into two separate groups, one including C.1-C.5 and C.9, the other with C.6-C.8 and C.10. The text would not seem to be as homogeneous as the Defence texts. It would seem to be prudent to consider the internal consistency of the DDC as a next stage.
The Defences in comparison with De Doctrina
Christiana
In order to investigate the internal consistency of De Doctrina Christiana the text was split into chapters and compared with the Defences. This allows us to identify chapters that exhibit a Miltonic influence as well as permitting a consideration of a difference in style between the Picard and Skinner sections of the MS. The resulting graph is shown in Figure 3.
It can be seen that the Milton Defences samples are generally to the left of the zero point on the first principal component, with the exception of the eighth sample from Defensio Prima. The De Doctrina Christiana samples are all to the right of the zero point on the first principal component and are all to the right of all of the samples from the Defences. Turning to the second principal component represented by the vertical axis, it is clear that the Milton Defences samples are quite homogeneous; they are all found between -2 and 2 on this axis, while Chapters I.3 and I.11 of De Doctrina Christiana are at extreme ends of this axis. Chapter 3 has much higher rates of quod (9.1 per mille, compared with 4.8 per mille in Chapter 11) and non (26.4 per mille versus 8.8 per mille), and much lower rates of et (17.3 per mille versus 38.1 per mille) and etiam (2.7 per mille versus 7 per mille) than Chapter 11. The wide spread of the first eleven chapters, in comparison with the remaining chapters shown on this graph, indicates that there is no consistent difference between the Picard and Skinner sections of the MS (that is, there is no stylometric evidence to distinguish the sections of the treatise transcribed by Skinner from the parts still primarily in the hand of Picard).
The Epistle
The Epistle (CE, XIV 3-14; MS 1-5) appears over the initials I.M. It is has been remarked elsewhere that Milton as a prose writer, from his earliest Prolusiones onwards, frequently invests considerable skill in the captatio benevolentiae of his readers, in securing their sympathy through the production of an engaging image of the author and of the purposefulness of his objectives. Other examples include the opening address to Parliament in Areopagitica or in The Readie and Easie Way, or the careful self-representation Milton as republican champion in the opening paragraphs of Eikonoklastes (Corns, 1997, passim). The Epistle shares some rhetorical analogies to such Miltonic engagements of audience support, and thus by its nature it commends itself to separate consideration from general chapters of SP 9/61.
When the data obtained from the text are plotted on our chart, shown in Figure 4, it is clear that this section of text lies close to the core of Miltonic practice; the sample is well over to the left of the plot, and only slightly below the Defences samples.
Lewalski, in her reply to Hunter (Lewalski, 1992), quotes extensively from the Epistle to indicate parallels between canonical texts and De Doctrina Christiana (pp. 147-8), and then asks the reader to consider the persona projected by the Epistle (pp. 152-3). She concludes "As I encounter this persona, . . . I can only call him --- John Milton," a conclusion with which with respect to the Epistle, we most certainly concur. However, the Epistle constitutes the clearest example of some parts of De Doctrina Christiana seeming much more Miltonic than others. That he should have been wholly responsible for the Epistle to a book of much more complex authorial genesis is a tenable hypothesis consonant with the stylometric analysis.
Synonyms for "marriage" and the integrity of
Book I, Chapter 10
The heterogeneity of Chapter 10: "Of the Special Government of Man before the Fall, including the institutions of the Sabbath and of Marriage" (CE, XV, 112-178), was noted in Hunter's initial paper questioning the provenance of De Doctrina Christiana. In the discussion on why the work had not been published he writes, "The assumption has been that he did not [publish it] because it was incomplete, but it is essentially finished except perhaps in its discussion of marriage" (p. 130). In his reply, Shawcross expands on this point noting that much of the chapter,
discuss[es its subject matter] in a style and brevity that fits with Chapters IX and XI. . . . But then comes the prolix discussion of marriage that would have got x'd out as disunified and even incoherent (as unplanned and unprepared for), were it a freshman composition paper. . . . If the author was not Milton, he certainly fell into the same kind of prolixity and special pleading that Milton exhibited in Tetrachordon. (p. 161)
The point is further taken up by Hunter (in a paper in private circulation) where he considers the chapter in detail. He proposes an alternative hypothesis; that Milton did indeed write sections of Chapter 10, which were then inserted into the document, evidence of which was hidden by the fair copy made by Skinner. Shawcross describes the discussion on marriage as "disunified" and "incoherent" (161). Hunter develops this to look at all of the subjects treated in the chapter. Of the pages that make up Chapter 10; 112-178, marriage is treated from pages 120.5 to 122.6, at which point a discussion of polygamy intrudes until 150.18. The discussion of marriage is then resumed until divorce is discussed from 154.22 to the end of the chapter. Hunter provides two strands of reasoning for this particular break-up of Chapter 10, one lexical, the other textual. The former argument has prompted us to a stylometric comparison of the four parts he distinguishes.
The lexical reasoning centres on the use of two synonyms for marriage --- "coniugium" and "matrimonium." Table 1 illustrates their use in Chapter 10. It is clear that "matrimonium" only occurs in the sections pertaining to polygamy and divorce while "coniugium" appears across the chapter, in every section. Hunter, who noticed this distinction, concludes,
we are witnessing the word choice of two different authors who can be clearly distinguished in this way. Milton indeed could have written the section on divorce which someone appended to the discussion of marriage already written by the author of the rest of the treatise. He freely interchanged "coniugium" and "matrimonium"; the other employed only "coniugium." (p. 2)
| coniugium | matrimonium | connubium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Marriage | 16 | 0 | 0 |
| Polygamy | 4 | 4 | 1 |
| Divorce | 15 | 17 | 0 |
Hunter concludes that "[Milton] freely exchanged "coniugium"
and "matrimonium" (2), whereas the ur-text author favoured only
"coniugium". We have widened the investigation to include all
of De Doctrina Christiana, the Defences , and the Prolusiones. The emerging
picture is even more remarkable than Hunter's account would anticipate,
as Table 2 shows.
| coniugium | matrimonium | connubium | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CE vol XIV | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| CE vol XV | 37 | 21 | 1 |
| CE vol XVI | 3 | 3 | 0 |
| CE vol XVII | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Def Prima | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Def Secunda | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Def Pro Se | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| Prolusiones | 0 | 1 | 0 |
Quite simply, Milton in his undisputed works does not use
"coniugium" but does use "matrimonium"; the pattern
is clear.
It is wholly consonant with this pattern of usage to hypothesise that the sections of Chapter 10 which eschew "matrimonium" and always uses "coniugium" are not by the author of the Defences or the Prolusiones. We would further hypthesise that the mixture of usages which occur elsewhere in De Dcocrina Christiana is consonant either with the synthesis of one text from the texts of several authors or of the revision of texts which favour "coniugium" by an author who (like Milton of the other Latin texts) favours "matrimonium." (It should be noted that all occurrences of the synonyms within CE, XV come from Chapter 10.)
An obvious next step was the multivariate analysis and comparison of the constituent sections of Chapter 10 as identified by Hunter. The marriage section and the introduction were combined into sample R. The position of the three sections in relation to the other chapters of De Doctrina Christiana is shown in Figure 5. It is clear that the divorce section (D) moves to the left, towards the Milton texts, while the polygamy (P) section moves slightly upwards and the remainder (R) moves much further over, towards the main body of chapters. Quite simply some parts of the chapter are much more Miltonic than others, which further supports the disintegrationist hypothesis indicated by the account of synonyms for marriage.
We should like to propose an analogy to Artis Logicae, which was published in 1672 over Milton's name. The researches of Francine Lusignan (pp. 166-91) have shown that approximately 82% of Milton's text in Book I of the Artis Logicae is lifted without acknowledgement from George Downame's Commentarii in P. Rami Dialecticam; in Book II approximately 73% derives from Downame's text. Milton was in effect editing Downame's commentary, purging it of postclassical examples (Lusignan, p. 200). Walter Ong, the editor of the Yale edition, even considered distinguishing through differing typefaces material taken from Downame (and Downame's appropriations from Ramus) from Milton's own words (Ong, pp. 188-9).
Against the context of Milton's demonstrable practice in that case and in the light of our stylometric analysis, our attempted prosopography of Skinner and Pickard, and our history of the early years of the manuscript, we offer the following hypotheses as wholly consonant with what has been established:
i) SP 9/61 was a working manuscript under revision by Milton.
ii) Milton had not finished it for the press.
iii) He may well have done most work on it during the late 1650s.
iv) The manuscript has two principal strata, an ur-text and a transformation of that text effected by a process of revision which primarily consisted of the accretion of material by Milton.
v) Some parts of the manuscript show more evidence of Miltonic composition than others; some parts may be wholly of Miltonic origin; others show stylometric characteristics unlike Milton's; much of the manuscript probably constititutes a Miltonic appropriation and transformation that finds precedent in Milton's practice in the production of the Artis Logicae.
vi) We have not identified the text that Milton was in process of revising. It may well have been a transcription of the system of divinity which had been assembled from many sources by the sighted Milton.
vii) The relationship of De Doctrina Christiana to the Milton oeuvre must remain uncertain, since in the case of a work of revision that has halted before completion we cannot know what other changes, especially what deletions of doctrines to which he did not subscribe, Milton would have made in completing his task.
viii) Our investigation has vividly demonstrated the difficulties of accounts which rest on translations and on the seamless transcriptions to be found in modern printed editions. A proper account of the treatise must rest on the Latin text and must take appropriate account of the highly unusual character of the manuscript. A new edition, containing the electronically imaged representation of the manuscript, would be timely.
Manuscripts
Beckenham, Kent, Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum
Admissions Book, 1683-1701.
Cambridge, Trinity College
MS R.5.5 (Milton's poetical workbook).
London, British Library
Add MS 32310 (Milton's family Bible).
Add MS 36354 (Milton's Commonplace Book).
Add MS 63766 (Preston Papers XV, Letters from France, 1682-6).
Egerton MS 1324 (Christoph Arnold's Album Amicorum).
London, National Maritime Museum
MS LBK8 p. 746 (letter from Pepys to Jenkins, 24 July
1676).
MS LBK8 p. 755 (letter from Pepys to Skinner, 17 November 1676).
MS LBK8 p. 801 (letter from Pepys to Jenkins, 16 July 1677).
London, Public Record Office
E 190/63/8 (Searcher's Port Book, London, Overseas Outwards,
Christmas 1675 - Christmas 1676).
SP 9/61 (Parts 1 - 3 of the MS of De Doctrina Christiana; Part 4
is a portfolio of related documents).
SP 9/194 (Milton's State Papers).
SP 29/386 fol. 96 (Skinner's testimony of 18 October 1676).
SP 29/390 fols. 280-1 (Isaac Barrow's letter of 13 February 1676/7 to George
Seignior).
SP 29/390/159 fols. 282-4 (Isaac Barrow's letter of 13 February 1676/7
to Skinner in Paris.
SP 44/51, p. 252 (Daniel Skinner's passport).
SP 46/112 fol. 46 (a paper by William Towerson on the relief of the Vaudois).
SP 78/142 fol. 15 (William Perwich's report from Paris of 5/15 March 1676/7
to William Bridgeman).
SP 84/202 fol. 140 (Chudleigh to Williamson, 2/12 August 1676).
SP 84/202 fol. 375 (Ellis to Williamson, 23 October/2 November 1676).
SP 84/203 fols. 16-17 (Chudleigh to Williamson, 6/16 November 1676).
SP 84/203 fols. 24-5 (Jenkins to Williamson, 6/16 November 1676).
SP 84/203 fols. 106-7 (Elsevier to Williamson, 10/20 November 1676).
SP 84/204 fols. 97-8 (Meredith to Williamson, 26 January/5 February 1676/7).
SP 84/204 fols. 102-3 (Meredith to Williamson, 30 January/9 February 1676/7).
SP 84/204 fols. 108-9 (Meredith to Williamson, 2/12 February 1676/7).
SP 84/204 fol. 125 (printed flyer describing a projected edition of Milton's
state papers).
SP 84/204 fols. 123-4 (Daniel Elsevier's letter from Amsterdam of 9/19
February 1677 to Skinner Senior).
SP 84/204 fols. 140-1 (Meredith to Williamson, 16/26 February 1676/7).
SP 84/204 fols. 246-7 (Elsevier's letter of 6/16 March 1676-7 to Skinner
Sr.
SP 103/88 (Nijmegen Duplicates, December 1675-September 1677; unbound and
unnumbered.
SP 104/66, fol. 120 (Williamson to Meredith, 19 January 1676/7).
Longleat, Marquis of Bath's Collection
Coventry Papers f.60 (Unsigned and undated letter discussing
Daniel Skinner's dealings to publish Milton's papers after his death).
Oxford, Bodleian Library
Rawlinson A183, fols. 207-8 (William Howe's letter to
Pepys of 15 June 1681)
Rawlinson A185, fols. 133-4 (Daniel Skinner's letter from Paris to Pepys
of 28 January/ 7 February 1676/7.
Rawlinson A185 fols. 271-4 (Daniel Skinner's letter of 9/19 November 1676
to Pepys from Rotterdam).
Rawlinson A185, fols. 396-7 (Daniel Skinner's letter to Pepys dated 5 July
1676; in Latin).
Rawlinson A194 fol 169 (Pepys's letter to William Howe of 8 July 1680).
Rawlinson A352 pp. 277-8 (Sir Joseph Williamson's letter of 31 October
1676 to Sir Leoline Jenkins).
Rawlinson A352 p. 295 (Sir Joseph Williamson's letter of 28 November 1676
to Thomas Chudleigh, Secretary of the Embassy).
Philadelphia, Rosenbach Museum
MS 810/25 (Maundy mortgage deed with Picard's signature).
Books and articles
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Christie's Sale Catalogue of 29 June 1995.
Corns, Thomas N. (1982), The Development of Milton's Prose Style (Oxford).
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Fallon, Robert (1993), Milton in Government (University Park, Pa.).
Fenner, Dudley (1586), Sacra Theologica (Geneva).
Firth, C. H. and Rait, R. S., editors (1911), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660 (London).
French J. Milton (1940), "That Late Villain Milton." PMLA 55: 102-115.
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Frischer, Bernard D., Guthrie, Donald, Tse, Emily and Tweedie, Fiona J. (1996), "Sentence length and word-type at 'sentence' beginning and end: Reliable authorship discriminators for Latin prose. New studies on the Historia Augusta." Research in Humanities Computing 5.
Green, I. M. (1978), The Re-Establishment of the Church of England 1660-1663 (Oxford).
Gurney, Penelope J. and Gurney, Lyman W. (1996) "Disputed Authorship: 30 Biographies and Six Reputed Authors: A New Analysis by Full-text lemmatisation of the Historia Augusta," ALLC-ACH'96 Conference Abstracts 123-5 (Bergen).
Hamilton, Douglas (1859),"Original Papers Illustrative of the Life and Writings of John Milton, Including Sixteen Letters of State Written by Him Now First Published from Manuscripts in the State Paper Office." Camden Society 75.
Hanford, James H. (1920), "The Date of Milton's De Doctrina Christiana." SP 17: 309-18.
Hanford, James H. (1931), "Pepys and the Skinner Family." RES 7: 251-70.
Hill, Christopher (1994), "Professor William B. Hunter, Bishop Burgess, and John Milton." SEL 34: 165-193.
Holmes, David I. (1992), "A Stylometric Analysis of Mormon scripture and related texts." Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 155, 1: 91-120.
Holmes, David I. (1994), "Authorship Attribution." Computers and the Humanities 28.2: 87-106.
Holmes, David I. and Singh, S. (1996), "A Stylometric Analysis of Conversational Speech of Aphasic patients," forthcoming in Literary and Linguistic Computing 11.3.
Hubka, K. P. (1985) "Stylometric test for authorship of a supposed Comenianum, Explicatio causae moventis naturalis." Humanistica Lovaniensia 35: 159-68.
Hunter, William B. et al (1971), Bright Essence: Studies in Milton's Theology (Salt Lake City).
Hunter, William B. (1992), "The Provenance of the Christian Doctrine." SEL 32: 129-42, 163-66.
Hunter, William B. (1993), "The Provenance of the Christian Doctrine: Addenda from the Bishop of Salisbury." SEL 33: 191-207.
Hunter, William B. (1994) "Animadversions upon the Remonstrants' Defenses against Burgess and Hunter." SEL 34: 195-203.
Hunter, William B. (unpublished paper), "Ramblings in Elucidation of the authorship of the Christian Doctrine."
Hunter, William B. (unpublished paper) "The Relevance of the Issue of Divorce and of the State of the Text to the Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana."
Hunter, William B. Untitled and unpublished paper on Coniugium and Matrimonium in De Doctrina (limited to private distribution).
Irwin, H. F. (1941), "Ramistic Logic in Milton's Prose Works" (unpublished PhD thesis, Princeton).
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