The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 998 pages of information about The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660.

The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 998 pages of information about The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660.

[Footnote 3:  I have translated the speech from the official Latin draft, as preserved in the Record Office, and as printed by Mr. Hamilton, Milton Papers, pp. 18-20.  Mr. Hamilton has no doubt that the composition is Milton’s.  He founds his opinion partly on the style, and partly on the fact that the draft is “written in the same hand as the other official copies of Milton’s letters.”  I agree with Mr. Hamilton, though the matter does not seem to be absolutely beyond controversy.  The style is generally like Milton’s; there are phrases repeated from Milton’s Latin elsewhere—­e.g. “montesque nivibus coopertos,” repeated from the Letter to the Duke of Savoy, and “totius nominis Italici studiosissimum” which almost repeats the “toiius Graeci nominis ... cultor” of the second Letter to Philaras; and there are also phrases identical with some used in Milton’s other letters on the subject of the Massacre which have yet to be noted in this list.  On the other hand, there are passages and expressions in the Speech that strike one as hardly Miltonic, while the purport in some places would favour the idea that Morland wrote the speech himself.  What seems to negative this idea most strongly, and therefore to point most distinctly to Milton as the author, is the existence of the MS. official copy in the Record Office.  The speech, that copy proves, must have been prepared before Morland left London, and must have been taken with him.  For that it cannot have been merely deposited in the State Paper Office afterwards, as a record of what he did say at Turin, is proved by the fact that his actual speech at Turin, as printed by himself in his book, with an English Translation (pp. 558-561), though in substance identical with the draft-copy, differs in some particulars.  In the actual speech the plural, “Your Royal Highnesses,” is changed into the singular, “Your Royal Highness,” for address to the Duke only, though the Duchess-mother was present; the parenthetical comparison of Morland to the Son of Croesus is entirely omitted; and there are other verbal changes, apparently suggested by Morland’s closer information as he approached Turin, or by his sense of fitness at the moment—­in illustration of which the reader may compare the very strong passage about “the Neros of all times and ages” as we have just rendered it from the draft with the same passage as we have previously rendered it from Morland’s actual speech (ante p. 42).  But, if Morland took the speech with him, unless he wrote it himself and had it approved before his departure, who so likely to have furnished it as Milton?  All in all, that is the most probable conclusion; and anything un-Miltonic in the speech may be accounted for by supposing that, though the Latin was Milton’s, the substance was not entirely his.  Morland, though he does not say in his book that the speech was furnished him, does not positively claim it as his own.  He, at all events, used the liberty of deviating from the original draft.]

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The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.