Melville's Milton: A Transcription of Melville's Marginalia in His Copy of The Poetical Works of John Milton

Melville’s Milton A Transcription of Melville’sMarginalia in His Copy of The Poetical Works of John Milton ROBIN GREY AND DOUGLAS ROBILLARD in consultaion with Hershel Parker he poems collected in The Poetical Works ofJohn Milton span Milton’s career, from his earliest lyric poems, masque, and pastoral elegy, to TParadise zyxwvuts Lost and Paradise Regained, to his dramatic poem Samson Agonistes. The two-volume set also includes John Mitfords heavily-footnoted introduction, which details Milton’s career, politics, and theological beliefs. Melville’s annotations, underlinings, marginal scorings,Xs and checking appear throughout the entire set and represent his reading on at least three dated occasions : 1849, 1860, and 1868. Our transcription of the marked passages from Mitfords introduction and Milton’s poetry render Melville’s markings and comments in terms of both content and placement as precisely as the transcription process allows.Melville’serased annotations are noted, and questionablereadings are placed in brackets. As noted, we also include the scored, underlined, and annotated portions of the Mitford introduction. We include the content of Mitfords footnotes appearing in passages that Melville marked, even if Melville did not mark the footnote itself, to give readers some sense of the Milton scholarship to which Melville had access. To aid readers, we provicde enough unmarked lines in an annotated passage to provide context for the targetedlines. We also add contextualizinginformation (the names of the speakers in the long poems) at the head of the separate passages marked by Melville. In offeringthis transcription of Melville’smarginalia,we recognize that our reproduction of Melville’s markings and words can only approximate what appearsin the actual object itself and that, however accurate it may be, it cannot be a substitute for the richly annotated book presently located at Princeton. Our hope is that readers may inspect the artifact in person. If they do, they will also experiencethe thrill and frustration of confronting Melville’s hand and trying to make sense of its hieroglyphics. They may also find markings not registered in this particular transcription. In certain instances in Melville’s copy of Milton, a heavy marginalscoringhas created a fainter but quite discerniblemirror-imageof itself on the facing page. These offset impressions should not be taken as intended annotations; they are not even actual markings,but phantoms, and are, therefore , not included here. They appear in Paradise Lost, Book VI, lines zyx 205-225, 315-317, 333-334,374-375,383-389,420-426,528-533,551-572, and 579-583. We would like to thank the General Rare Books Collection, Princeton University Library, for their permission and assistance in making this transcription possible. Our special thanks goes jointly to Stephen Ferguson, Curator of Rare Books, and a private endowment for their help and permission. L E V I A T H A N zyxwvuts A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S zyx 1 1 7 THE zyxwv POETICAL WORKS OFJOHN MILTON. WITH NOTES, AND A LIFE OF THE A m O R . A N E W E D I T I O N . VOL. I. BOSTON: IIILLIARD, QRAY, A N D COMPANY. zyx 1836. Title page.zyxwvutsrq Melville’s copy of the 1836Hilliard and Gray Milton. Published with permission of the Princeton University Library The Poetical Works ofJohn Milton zy Ed. ReverendJohnMitford. 2 vols. Boston: Hilliard, Gray, and Company, 1836. VolumeI ANNOTATION zyxwvut [frontend paper]: C. Horn 1860 ANNOTATION [frontfly leaf]:H Melville, N.Y. 1849 ANNOTATION [frontfly leafl: 1868 ANNOTATION [backfly leaf]:In Bartas zyxw -4The Lge o f Milton zy BY THE REVEREND JOHN MITFORD. zyx p.xxx. monody of Lycidas shows an intimate acquaintance with the Italian metres; and to one poem, the Alcon23 of Balth. Castiglione, it is more peculiarly indebted for some of its imagery It discovers also Milton’s familiaritywith our elder poets, and supported by the authority of his ‘MasterS p e n ~ e r , ’ ~ ~ in similar allusions ; it has mixed up with its pastoral beauties a stern and early avowal of his hostility to the church.*S The beautiful I 23See Class.Journal, No Ixiii. p. 356, by G...