4 Colorado College Studies. 



AVootl follows the chronological order of this manuscript, and 

 ver>' often its exact phraseology. !May it not have been that 

 AVood meant by his 'friend' the writer of the manuscript, 

 but that, using his two main authorities together, he con- 

 fused them for the moment when speaking of the 'Body of 

 Divinity ' ? 



The manuscript is certainly not the work cf Aubrey, for 

 neither the handwriting nor the stvle is his. He may perhaps 

 have secured it from some friend for "Wood, but this seems 

 unlikely, because Aubrey himself made no use of it, although 

 it contains information concerning long periods of Milton's 

 life which Aubrey passes over almost in silence. 



The autobiographical suggestions in the manuscript are 

 few, but some traits of its author are more or less distinct. 

 He was probably of Milton's own generation, an older man 

 than Anthony Wood. He writes as one who had passed 

 through the civil struggles, in which he was evidently an 

 Independent, though one of Milton's type, sympathising 

 deeply with real liberty but despising its counterfeit, be- 

 lieving that some of the puritan leaders had been 'abusers of 

 that specious name.'" He was a well-educated though not 

 altogether scholarly man, with good, though not carefully 

 practised, literary ability. He was probably not a clergyman ; 

 perhaps he was a physician. He was either himself one of 

 Milton's friends or he was w'ell acquainted with sc.iie who 

 stood in close relations with the poet. He writes under the 

 impulse of a deep per>sonal interest in his subject, and Wood 

 almost implicitly trusts his authority." 



But whoever was its author, the biography is worthy of 

 most careful study. It affords an illuminating glimpse into 

 Wood's editorial methods. The way in which he uses the 



"Seep. 19. 



" If Nathan Paget, M.D., is the author, the manuscript has a pecu- 

 liar interpretative value. Dr. Paget was Milton's friend, perhaps, as 

 early as 1640, and was his phj'sician during the latter part of the poet's 

 life. It was at Dr. Paget's suggestion that Milton married, as his third 

 wife, Elizabetn Minshull, the doctor's cousin. The appointment of Dr. 

 Paget in 1650 to the position of physician to the Tower is evidence as 

 to his puritan sympathies. 



