The text is taken direct from Aubrey's manuscript, such contractions as 'X'ts coll:' and 'da:' for daughter being expanded. For the complete life, see Brief Lives, ed. A. Clark, vol. ii, pp. 62-72.
There is no character of Milton. We have again to be content with notes for a character.
Page 192, l. 7. Christ's College, Cambridge, which Milton entered in
February 1625, aged sixteen.
ll. 15-18. Milton had three daughters, by his first wife—Anne, Mary, and Deborah. Mary died unmarried. Deborah's husband, Abraham Clarke, left Dublin for London during the troubles in Ireland under James II: see Masson's Life of Milton, vol. vi, p. 751. He is described by Johnson as a 'weaver in Spitalfields': see Lives of the Poets, ed. G.B. Hill, vol. i, pp. 158-60.
Page 193, ll. 2-4. Litera Canina. See Persius, Sat. i. 109
'Sonat hic de nare canina littera'; and compare Ben Jonson, English
Grammar, 'R Is the Dogs Letter, and hurreth in the sound.'
ll. 11, 12. But the Comte de Cominges, French Ambassador to England, 1662-5, in his report to Louis XIV on the state of literature in England, spoke of 'un nommé Miltonius qui s'est rendu plus infâme par ses dangereux écrits que les bourreaux et les assassins de leur roi'. This was written in 1663, and Cominges knew only Milton's Latin works. See J.J. Jusserand, A French Ambassador at the Court of Charles the Second, 1892, p. 58, and Shakespeare en France, 1898, p. 107.
l. 19. In toto nusquam. Ovid, Amores, i. 5. 18.
Page 194, l. 4. Milton died November 8: see Masson, Life of Milton, vol. vi, p. 731.
58.
Letters of State, Written by Mr. John Milton, To most of the Sovereign Princes and Republicks of Europe. From the Year 1649 Till the Year 1659. To which is added, An Account of his Life…. London: Printed in the Year, 1694. (p. xxxvi.)