2 Colorado College Studies. 



oetweeu the death of Milton (1674) and the publication 

 of Anthony Wood's 'Fasti Oxonienses, ' appended to the 

 'Athenae Oxonienses" (1691). 



In the 'Fasti' appeared Wood's biography of Milton, the 

 first printed account of the poet's life. For its composition 

 Wood had at least three sources of information, but in the 

 opening sentence he speaks particularly of one. 



"This year (1635) was incorporated Master of Arts John 

 ^Milton ; not that it appears so in the Register, for the reason 

 I have told you in the Incorporations 1629,*^ but from his 

 own mouth to my friend, avIio was well acquainted with, and 

 had from him, and from his Relations after his death, most 

 of this account of his life and writings following." 



Literary tradition, dating back well into the seventeenth 

 century, asserts that his friend Avas John Aubrey." Wood 

 seems to confirm this tradition when, in discussing ]\Iilton's 

 'Body of Divinity,' he designates it as the book 'which my 

 friend calls "Idea Theologiae, " ' the title Aubrey gives it 

 in his own life of ]Milton,^ which AVood had before him in 

 manuscript when he wrote the biography in question. But 

 it seems strange, nevertheless, that AYood should have referred 

 to Aubrey when the latter supplied him with less than ten 

 per cent, of his material, while the manuscript now under 

 discussion contributed about forty-five per cent." ^Moreover 



editor has examined tlie numerous facsimiles in Sotheby's Ramblings 

 in the Elucidation of the Autograph cf Milton, the facsimile of the 

 Cambridge manuscript, and also, by the courtesy of the British ^Museum 

 authorities, Milton's Commonplace Hook. There are great difficulties 

 in tlie theory that the manuscript was written by an amanuensis. If 

 it is correct, Nathan Paget, M.D., was perhaps the author. 



' The ' reason ' was that the ' registrary of the university,' John 

 French, though ' a good scholar,' was a ' careless man,' and during his 

 term of office omitted to record the incorporations of the Cantabrigians, 

 .of whom Milton was one. 



'For a sketch of his relations with Wood, see Clark's Auhrey's 

 Brief Lives, introd. 



Uhid. ii. 71 f. 



'The rest of \\ood"s biography is mostly made up of matter from 

 the autobiographical passages in Milton's prose works, a careful list of 

 his writings, and Wood's own interpretation of Milton's acts and of 

 national events. 



