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Milton’s Student Verses of 1629

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posted on 2014-11-13, 16:40 authored by Sarah Marie Knight
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]

History

Citation

Notes and Queries, 2010, 57 (1), pp. 37-39

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF ARTS, HUMANITIES AND LAW/School of English

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Published in

Notes and Queries

Publisher

Oxford University Press

issn

0029-3970

eissn

1471-6941

Copyright date

2010

Available date

2014-11-13

Publisher version

http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/content/57/1/37

Language

en

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