Milton’s Student Verses of 1629

MS 770 in Lambeth Palace Library (LPL), entitled ‘Notitia Academiae Cantabrigiensis’ and probably compiled during the early 1680s, contains previously undiscovered information about the date and occasion of two of Milton’s student Latin poems. First published in 1645, the poems are ‘Naturam non pati senium’ (That nature does not suffer old age) and ‘De Idea Platonica’ (On the Platonic Idea). The former has been variously dated to ‘1628–32?’ (Carey, ed., Complete Shorter Poems (London and New York, 2nd edn, 1997), 63); ‘1628?’ (Flanagan, ed., Riverside Milton (Boston and New York, 1998), 218); and as being ‘composed while Milton was at Cambridge’ (Revard (ed.), Complete Shorter Poems (Chichester, 2009), 230). The latter has been dated to ‘June 1628?’ (Carey (ed.), 68); ‘1628?’ (Flanagan (ed.), 221); and ‘composed at Cambridge’ (Revard (ed.), 236). A more precise date now looks likely. LPL MS 770 fixes both poems to their occasion of delivery in Stuart Cambridge, the visit of Henry Rich, first earl of Holland (bap. 1590, d. 1649), Chancellor of the University, and Charles de l’Aubespine, marquis de Châteauneuf (1580–1653), French Ambassador from Louis XIII to England from 1629–30, in late September 1629. {Taken opening paragraph]