2'"i S. VIIL Oct. 29. '69.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



345 



the above. In his early academic career, the great poet 

 threw off some careless copies of verses (such as those on 

 Hobson the carrier) which are rugged and imperfect in 

 style and conception. But the sonnet in dispute must 

 have been written in or after the year 1646 — the date of 

 Mr. Tite's copy of the ' Mel Heliconium ' — and at that 

 time Milton was in his thirty-eighth year, or more. Ross 

 was a roj'-alist and churchman, and is supposed to have 

 derived his appointments from Laud, to whom, in the 

 dedication of one of his works, he expresses his obliga- 

 tions. Milton, on the other hand, was a Republican and 

 Puritan. He had, in 1638, in his poem of Lj'cidas, de- 

 nounced the church, and menaced Laud with the axe 

 and scaffold. In his controversial prose works, Milton 

 assailed the prelates and court chaplains in the most un- 

 measured and virulent terms, and in his ' Areopagitica ' 



— that noblest of political treatises — he had vindicated 

 the inalienable right of Englishmen to free speech and 

 unlicensed writing, which Laud and the prelates laboured 

 to extinguish. Can it be believed that, after all this, 

 the Republican poet should have sat down to pen a com- 

 plimentarj' sonnet to ' Mr. Ross, Chaplain to her Majestj-.' 

 The words 'Chaplain to her Majesty ' must have stuck in 

 his throat like Macbeth's ' Amen.' But still more un- 

 tenable is the idea that Milton could have called the 

 court chaplain 'powerful Ross.' That he, who was so 

 chary of all acknowledgment of his contemporaries, who 

 guarded his self-respect with jealous dignitj', and was 

 distinguished, as he himself confessed, by a certain se- 

 verity of taste and judgment, should have awarded to 

 the garrulous, pedantic Alexander Ross an amount of 

 distinction and praise — exalting him even above Ovid ! 



— which he denied to his most illustrious compeers, is a 

 supposition utterly incredible. All internal evidence and 

 analogy is against such a conclusion. With respect to 

 external evidence, we may notice that the sonnet does not 

 profess to be the composition of Milton. It bears only 

 the initials ' J. M.' Those letters are not unlike the 

 authentic writing of Milton, but the style was not un- 

 common. Let Mr. Tite look at the signature of Marston, 

 the dramatic poet and satirist, of which a fac-simile is 

 given in Collier's Bridgewater Catalogue, and he will 

 find that the form of the two letters is precisely the same. 

 Marston, however, was dead before 1646, and, in the 

 absence of any direct proof, we should be disposed to 

 assign the sonnet to another minor poet of that period, 

 Jasper Mayne, who, like Ross, was a royalist, and who 

 was one of the divines appointed to preach before Charles 

 I. at Oxford. Mayne translated Luciau's Dialogues and 

 Donne's Latin Epigrams ; and from his poetical tastes 

 and capacity, no less than from his political and eccle- 

 siasticai position, was just the person to compliment 

 Alexander Ross, court chaplain, as ' powerful Ross.' 

 The slight resemblance of the ' J. M.' of the sonnet to 

 Milton's initials proves nothing as opposed to the almost 

 insuperable internal evidence against the identity of the 

 parties, and the lines themselves do not appear to us to 

 bear any close resemblance to the genuine handwriting of 

 Milton. Mr. Tite and Mr. Bohn think otherwise, and 

 yve admit that this is a point on which men will enter- 

 tain different opinions. The identity of handwriting, 

 like the resemblance of portraits, is very difficult to 

 determine. But all Milton's genuine manuscripts seem 

 to us to be written in a broader and firmer character 

 than the writing of this sonnet. Before 1G46, the poet's 

 eyesight had begun to fail, and he wrote strongly, 

 charging his pen fully with ink. In a few more years, 

 all was dark, irrecoverably dark, and it is the interest 

 attaching to this part of the poet's historj' that led us to 

 look minutely at his handwriting. We have traced it 

 through the Cambridge MSS. and the records of the 

 State Paper OflEice, and should grieve to think that even 



a passing shade might rest on the memory of the great 

 poet from his being recognised as the author of this poor 

 and servile sonnet." 



It seemed to me, as to others, that " N. & Q." 

 was the proper place for preserving the supposed 

 production by Milton, and the controversy as to 

 its genuineness. D. (1.) 



ANDEBSON PAPERS. — NO. V. 



I trust the enclosed will be considered worthy of 

 a place in "N. & Q." ; it is No. 5. of " Anderson's 

 Papers," a copy of a letter from Neil Campbell, 

 minister of Rosneath, Moderator of the Synod, 

 to John Anderson of Dumbarton. It should 

 have properly come before the letter from T. 

 Martine, Oct. 1715 (2°'^ S. vii. 413.), as it pre- 

 cedes it in date. The writer was evidently in 

 direct communication with those at head-quar- 

 ters, and his information was likely to be good 

 and trustworthy. The move of the French and 

 Spanish governments in disbanding their British 

 mercenaries, and thus giving the Pretender a 

 force of 18,000 disciplined men, is noteworthy. 

 The fierce party feud of Argyle and Montrose 

 seems the home pivot upon which the rebellion 

 turned, the Lord-Lieutenancy of the important 

 county of Dumbarton, a valuable card in either 

 hand, being the special bone of contention. The 

 game is a tough one, with Argyle, Townsend, and 

 Stanhope, against Montrose and the Jacobites. 



« Rossneath 8 August 1715 

 "Nine at night 

 « R(everend) & D(ear) B(rother) 

 " About half ane hour before j-^our express came here 

 the Lady Ardkinless* was at my house who told me 

 that some braemenf came down on their land in the 

 night tyme and caried away some horses, but as yet 

 they have attempted nothing with daylight or be way of 

 harshipj, however the opperations among them are so 

 vigorous that we cannot be too early in our precautions, 

 and I tiuely think it lyes much on us to animate the 

 people to exerte themselves on this occaisiou for our all 

 in everj' respect is at stake if I get any accounts worth 

 Sending Express with — you may be sure to have fm 

 (them) very soone. This night I have letters from M"^ 

 John at London, and find there is now no roume left to 

 doubt of ane Invasion The Ffrench King has disbanded 

 all the British and Irish in his service as the K.(ing) of 

 Spain has done also and they instantly took on with the 

 P.§(rince), thej' make eighteen thousand men, there is a 



* "Lady Ardkinless." I suppose the widow of Sir 

 Colin Campbell of Ardkinglas. 



f "Braemen," Highland catturans or thieves — men 

 from the brae-hill. 



X " Harship " (properly hairship), systematic plunder 

 bj' armed bands. In this letter we see the kindling of 

 that fierce feud between the Campbell and the Graham, 

 whose brands our old friend Rob Roj' (S""* S. vi. 495.), as 

 we saw, so kicked about. Here is the first sputtering of 

 rebellion; and the strings of court intrigue are plain 

 enough. Had the king been deaf to Argyle, Townsend, 

 and Stanhope, should we have heard o{ Mar and the '15? 



§ " The P.," the Chevalier d« St. George, or the old 

 Pretender. 



