In 1632, just as now, people complained of a plethora of books. "Good God!" says Wither in his Scholar's Purgatory, "how many dungboats full of fruitless volumes do they yearly foist upon his Majesty's subjects; how many hundred reams of foolish, profane, and senseless ballads do they quarterly disperse abroad!" To the same effect Robert Burton, in his preface to the Anatomy of Melancholy. "In this scribbling age," he says, "the number of books is without number. What a company of poets hath this year brought out! as Pliny complains to Sosius Senecio. What a catalogue of new books all this year, all this age, I say, have our Frankfort marts, our domestic marts, brought out! Quis tam avidus librorum helluo? Who can read them? We are oppressed with them; our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning." Of divinity especially there was a glut. "There may be so many books in that kind," says Burton, "so many commentaries, treatises, pamphlets, expositions, sermons, that whole teams of oxen cannot draw them; and, had I been as forward and ambitious as some others, I might have haply printed a sermon at Paul's Cross, a sermon in St. Mary's, Oxon, a sermon in Christ Church, or a sermon before the Right Honorable, Right Reverend, a sermon before the Right Worshipful, a sermon in Latin, in English, a sermon with a name, a sermon without, a sermon, a sermon, a sermon." With such complaints in our ears, it is somewhat amusing to compare the actual statistics of the British book-trade of 1632 with the statistics of the same trade now. The entire number of books and pamphlets of all kinds, including new editions and reprints, now annually published in the United Kingdom, exceeds 5,000. This is at the rate of nearly fourteen publications every day. The registers of Stationers' Hall for 1632 and the adjacent years, tell a very different story. The entire number of entries of new copies and of transfers of old copies there registered as having taken place in the London book-trade during the year 1630 (i. e. from January 1629-30 to December 1630 inclusive) is 150, or not quite three a-week. The corresponding number for the year 1631, is 138; for 1632, only 109; in 1633 it rises to 154; and in 1634 it again declines to 126. With all allowance for publications out of London and for publications in London not registered, it seems from these statistics as if, taking big and little together, it was possible for a diligent reader to become acquainted in some measure with every book that was published. As it may be interesting to have the most exact and authentic information possible respecting the nature and the quantity of literary matter thus supplied to the English reading public by the legitimate book-trade of London during a given consecutive period, I here present, from the registers of the Stationers' Company, a list of all the entries of new copies and of transfers of copy during the complete half-year from July to December, 1632 inclusive: July 5. "Quaternio, seu via quadrupla ad vitam rectam, by Tho. Nash." "Cures without care, by M. S.” 66 66 66 66 "16. Hall dues paid on Butter's corantos for the preceding half-year. Three Ballads, entitled, 1. "Man's Felicity and Misery;" 2. "Knavery in all Trades;" 3. "Monday's Work." "Ornithologia, or the History of Birds and Fowles." "19. "The Swedish Intelligencer, the Second Part; being a continuation of the former story, from the victory of Leipsick unto the Conquest of Bavaria." This is a publication of Butter's. 4 25. "A Treatise of Types and Figures of Christ, by Tho. Taylor, D.D." "27. Three of Butter's corantos registered. 66 66 A Ballad entitled "When the Fox begins to preach, beware your Aug. 3. "A Historie of the warres of Ireland, with mappes; written by Sir 66 66 66 66 "14. ❝ 21. A Ballad called "News from the King of Sweden." "An Exposition of the 12th Chapter of the Revelation of St. John, by Tho. Taylor, D. D." “Quadrivium Sionis: or the Four Waies to Sion: by John Moules, B. D." "A Commentary or Exposition upon the 2d Epistle of St. Peter, by Tho. Adams." "26. Transferred unto Mr. Joyce Norton and Mr. Whittaker, the copyright or part copyright of 98 books, the property of a deceased bookseller. The list includes, besides many books now forgotten, Gerard's Herbal, Keckermann's Logic, the Basilicon Doron, Willett's Hexapla in Genesin, Camden's Britannia, Beza's Latin Testament, Selden's Titles of Honor, Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients, Calvin's Institutes, and Fairfax's Tasso. Sept. 3. A Ballad entitled "Love's Solace, or Sweet is the lass that loves 66 me." 4. Transfer of copyright in two Sermons, entitled "Repentance" and "Of the Lord's Supper," both by Mr. John Bradford, and in “a Catechism containing the sum of the Gospels, by Edm. Littleton.” "The Church's Rest, with the use made of it, in 9 sermons," with 8 other "select sermons," by Dr. Jo. Burgess. 66 9. 13. "A Book of Verses and Poems, by Dr. Donne," entered as the copy of John Marriott, with the exception of "The five Satires, and the 1st, 2d, 10th, 11th, and 13th Elegies;" these to be Marriott's "when he brings lawful authority." Sept. 21. "Analysis or Resolution of Merchants' Accompts, by Ralph Sanderson, Accomptant." Sept. 21. "A Treatise of Justification, setting down the true doctrine of Justification, by Bishop Downham" (Bishop of Derry). 66 66 "An Exposition upon the Lord's Prayer, delivered at Leith in Scotland, in 22 Sermons, by Mr. William Wishart, parson of Restolrigg (Restalrig)." "22. "The Serpentine Lines of Proportion, with the Instruments belonging thereunto, by Tho. Browne, a lover of the mathematical practice." (Can this be an early publication of Browne of Norwich ?) "27. Rowley's Tragedy of "All's Lost by Lust." Oct. 10. "The Returning Backslider, or Ephraim's Repentance, by R. Sibbs, D. D.; " being sermons delivered in Grey's Inn. Sibbs's "Cantica Canticorum, or a Discourse of the Union and Communion betwixt Christ and the Church, delivered in divers sermons in Gray's Inn." ❝ 20. ❝ 23. ❝ 24. 66 46 "Ovid's Tristia in English verse, translated by Wye Saltonstall." Viginti Propositiones Catholica, by the Right Rev. Father in God, Joseph, Bishop of Exon," i. e. Bishop Hall. 66 "A Book called Poeticall Blossoms,' and containing the Tragicall Stories of Constantia and Philetus, and Pyramus and Thisbe in verse, by Abra. Cowley." "Certain Paradoxes and Problems in prose, written by J. Donne." "27. "A Table called 'A yearly Continuation of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London."" "31. John Marriott enters "the five Satires written by Dr. J. Dun (Donne), excepted in his last entrance." Nov. 2. A Comedy called "The Costly Whore." 8. "Gerardi Mercatoris Atlas," in Latin and in English. Dec. 19. "A Visitation Sermon preached before the Archbishop of Canter bury, by Fra. Rogers, D. D." "A Funeral Sermon," by the same. "The Schoolmaster, or Theatre of Table Philosophie, and Ptolemie's Astronomie." "Nine Sermons," by the late Dr. Preston. "A comfortable Treatise concerning Temptations, by Mr. Capell."1 1 The list is from the Books of the Stationers' Company, as inspected by myself; but I have given the entries in a somewhat abridged form. In the original, the name of the bookseller or firm entering the copy is always given, and there is also given in most of the entries the name of the licenser of the book, together with a note stating by what official authority of the Company the entry is allowed - whether that of both the wardens of the year, or of only one, or of a courtmeeting. The first of the above-quoted entries, for example, stands as follows:-"5th July: Mr. John Dawson [the bookseller] entered for his copy, under the hands of Mr. Buckner [the licenser] and both the wardens, a book called Quaternio, seu via quadrupla ad vitam rectam : 6d. [the registration-fee]." The other entries are after the same formula. The names of the booksellers who made the entries are - Dawson, Jones, Butter and Browne, Grove, Coates and Legatt and Coates, Daulman, Milbourne, Blackmore, Matthews, Bloome, Norton and Whittaker, Henry and Moses Bell, Marriott, Harper, Edwards, Serle, Green, Sheares, Sparkes, Adderton, Gosson, and Badger. The names of the licensers are-Mr. Buckner, Mr. Topsall, Mr. Wecherlyn, Mr. Austen, Sir Henry Herbert, and Mr. Haywood. Sir Henry Herbert Such were the transactions of the London book-trade during the first six months of Milton's leisure after leaving Cambridge; and such as has been described in this chapter was the state of British Literature generally at the time when Milton resolved to connect himself with it. We are able, by this time, to surmise for ourselves what were likely to be his relations to this motley element. We are able to say, in the first place, that, whatever he might do, it would be of no ordinary kind, but something new and impressive. We are able farther to say that he would carry into literature a moral magnanimity not always found in association with the literary tendency, and in that age as little as in any. We are able to say that, as there were parts of his nature in preëstablished harmony with the national revolution then approaching, so in him alone, in the midst of the Davenants, the Herricks, the Shirleys, the Wallers, and the rest, was there a notion of the literary calling itself, corresponding by a deep affinity with Puritanism in its essence, and pointing, therefore, to a literary development which should be no mere continuation of the dregs of Elizabethan wit, but an outburst as original intellectually as the movement it accompanied was to be socially. We are able to say also, that, in virtue of this peculiarity, Milton, though a very respectful subject of Ben, was by no means likely to make his entry into the world of letters as one of Ben's tribe. Finally, we are able to say (and of this we shall have farther proof) that, though, as a reader, he may have ranged widely among the writings of his contemporaries, his own sympathies as a poet were more particularly with the Spenserians. licenses almost all the poetry - Donne's Poems, etc., Cowley's Poetical Blossoms, Rowley's Tragedy, and the translation of Ovid. The other licensers were, I think (with the exception of Wecherlyn), Abbot's or Laud's chaplains. he CHAPTER VII. HORTON, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE. 1632-1638. Ox leaving Cambridge, Milton, as he himself informs us, went to live again under his father's roof-not now, however, in the old house in Bread-street, but in a house which his father had taken at some distance from London. "At my father's country residence," says, "whither he had retired to pass his old age, I, with every advantage of leisure, spent a complete holiday in turning over the Greek and Latin writers; not but that sometimes I exchanged the country for the town, either for the purpose of buying books, or for that of learning something new in Mathematics or in Music, in which sciences I then delighted. Having passed five years in this manner, after my mother's death, I, being desirous of seeing foreign lands, and especially Italy, went abroad with one servant, having by entreaty obtained my father's consent." It is the purpose of the present chapter to fill up the five years, or, more exactly, the five years and nine months, of Milton's life (July 1632 to April 1638) thus sketched by himself in outline. The "paternal country residence" (paternum rus) mentioned by Milton was at Horton, near Colnbrook, in that part of Buckinghamshire which borders on Middlesex, Berkshire, and Surrey, and which forms, for well-known Parliamentary purposes, the so-called Chiltern Hundreds. Colnbrook is about seventeen miles due west from London, and may be reached now from London either by the Great Western Railway (Langley Station) or by the London, Richmond and Windsor line (Wraysbury Station). Lying as it does midway between the two lines, and about two miles off either, the town is one of those which have declined in importance since the rise of our railway system. Till then, though never of more than a thousand inhabitants, and consisting but of one narrow street of houses 1 Defensio Secunda: Works, VI. 287. |