THE LATIN MOTTO 5 "Whose is the book?" do you ask. "Why start such a bootless enquiry? If you but read and enjoy, you will have made it your own.' " I In 1645 Milton brought before the public for the first time his college verses and other MS. treasures, with the object, as is significantly hinted at by a motto on the title page, of vindicating his claim to the inspiration of a bard (vates). He was known at this period chiefly as a pamphleteer whose energetic prose was used mainly for polemical purposes; for demolishing the Historical Episcopate, the current opinions on Divorce, and the press censorship. With those who disagreed with him he was the best hated man of the time, possibly because he hit the hardest, and no doubt the mala lingua wagged itself freely at his expense. However, he determines they shall know that they have a poet among them; and so this Latin motto is placed just over the publisher's name, in the very same position that the motto occupies in the second title page of Nova Solyma Baccare frontem Cingite, ne vati noceat mala lingua futuro— i.e. he felt he was worthy of "some green thing round. the brow" for what he had done in the "heat of youth," and those other great things yet to come unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. The next year the same book was published again—an evident attempt to utilise the unsold remainder, as there was no difference whatever except a new title page 'Milton was fond of prefixing appropriate Latin mottoes to his early productions. There is his pathetic motto, when in 1637 he allowed his friend Lawes to publish Comus. I will give it in full here: Eheu quid volui misero mihi? floribus Austrum which may be turned: Ah, wretched me! Why have I yielded to my own undoing? Why thus expose my buds to bitter winds? with the old fly-leaf motto included in it and a page at the end containing the autocriticon. In the only copy I have seen, the title page runs as follows: Novae Solymae Libri Sex; sive Institutio Christiani I. De Pueritia. 2. De Creatione Mundi. 3. De Juventute. 4. De Peccato. 5. De Virili Aetate. 6. De Redemptione Hominis. Cujus opus, studio cur tantum quaeris inani? Londini: Typis Johannis Legati, et venundantur Here we have the very useful addition that it was published by Thomas Underhill, of Wood Street. Now, when Milton wished to publish anything anonymously, he seems to have chosen this same Thomas Underhill for the purpose of carrying the matter through. Milton's first three anti-prelatical pamphlets, and his tractate on Education to Master Samuel Hartlib (1644), were all strictly anonymous, and were all printed for Thomas Underhill. The education pamphlet had nothing in it to point to Underhill, but his connection with it was discovered by a chance reference to the stationer's books. Now, Nova Solyma was published anonymously in 1648, and the next year disclosed Underhill's connection with it. As to the imprint on the title page-Londoni: Typis Joannis Legati-my first impression was that it was fictitious, for Legat had never before printed anything for Milton, nor was he a likely man to be asked, as he was on the list duly licensed by the Star Chamber, that abomination in Milton's eyes. And the book looked as if it had been published abroad, for both my copies are THE HIDDEN PRINTER 7 alike in their original vellum bindings with a small turndown flap, much more like Dutch than English. However, when I compared the type of Nova Solyma with the type of certain books of John Legat, printed in 1637 and 1647, I saw distinct peculiarities of type common to all three; and on showing them to an expert at the British Museum (Mr. Proctor), he kindly informed me there was no doubt whatever that the type was Legat's. So that point is clear. But it does not logically follow that therefore Legat was the printer. I have a book where the types are Dr. Fell's which he gave to Oxford University, but the printer is a fellow of Worcester College still, I believe, alive; of course Legat may have sold or otherwise disposed of his types in the ten years or more after 1637, and indeed he did not enter either of the later books with his imprint at Stationers' Hall as we should expect, neither is his name in the list of printers for 1649-50. The printer or typographer may be Adrian Vlacq' of the Hague. Vlacq had much business with Hartlib, about this time and later, with reference to printing books and especially any books of Milton's, saying he was at the Hague and had better type than he formerly had. I have many reasons for thinking that it was Hartlib who overcame Milton's natural repugnance and cunctativeness in issuing his Romance to the world; and so the Dutch binding made me think of Vlacq who in his other books is so often a self-assertive Typographus addressing his readers, as in Nova Solyma and airing his Latin. Moreover, we know that Hartlib lost all his books printed in Holland by a fire at the booksellers, which may be a reason for the rarity of Nova Solyma. But there is not space to go = 1 For more concerning Vlacq see Masson's Index to Milton's Life, where he is called Ulac throughout. This is, I think, a misnomer. Vlacq Flack Platt, and Milton dubs him Flaccus in his Defensio Secunda. The great Dutch Biog. Dict. of A. J. van der Aa knows no name Ulac under U, but under V there are five Vlacqs, one being Adrian the very man. We have reason to remember the word nowadays by Vlakfontein, into these matters fully, nor is it of much importance, since in any case the type was that of John Legat. Possibly it was printed in London, and a number of copies wet from the press were sent over to Vlacq by Hartlib and bound in Holland by him, which would account for my two in original binding.' And the great fire of London (1665) might be responsible for the loss of the English remainder. But Vlacq was not alone at the Hague as a printer. There was an English (or rather Scotch) bookseller there named Samuel Browne who printed many books for the English market; and, curiously enough, he used a printingpress and types that he had brought over from England. So it will not do to be at all confident as to who printed Nova Solyma. It may be Sam Browne; it may be Vlacq; it may be some London friend of Milton or Hartlib whose press was within a stone's throw of St. Paul's. In this matter I feel very diffident about the "who " and " where," and whatever be the conclusion I favour, I shall not state it. For I tremble lest the awful form of some omniscient expert should presently rise up before and declare that, "with the exception of a few printed in Kentucky, all the copies of Nova Solyma were undoubtedly from the private press of the Sultan of Morocco." This last little piece of humour about Kentucky and Morocco, I ought to say, comes from Mr. Almack's Bibliography of Eikon Basilike, p. 57, where I was looking up Sam Browne. But, leaving conjectures, to what class does the book belong? Now, a literary work wherein we find Milton's 1 The few other copies I have examined have all been rebound and therefore do not help. The British Museum copy, which was not obtained till 1888, seems to have been bound abroad, and is placed in the class of reserved books, as a token, I suppose, of its great rarity and the absence of all bibliographical notice. On the fly-leaf of this copy there are some amusing literary graffiti. 1. (In ink.) "Cet ouvrage est du fameux Emmanuel de Swedenborg. Il en existe une traduction par M. Chastanier. Londres, Hawes, 1784." 2. (Lower down, in pencil.) "Stuff. Swedenborg born 1688 died 1772." genius discussing at considerable length and with much variety, the greatest problems that can be presented to the human mind must needs be worth classifying, but it is really somewhat difficult to place it in any recognised class of books. It is neither History, Science, Poetry, nor Romance, and yet it contains something of each. It is more of didactic Romance than anything else, and to some extent it may be classed with More's Utopia and Bacon's unfinished Nova Atlantis.1 How the author himself classed it is quite clear from certain pages of Nova Solyma, where he describes the different styles of writing and authorship or the different "pens," as he puts it. In his youthful ardour and confidence, Milton places his book as the work of the last pen (ultimus calamus); that is, in the best class of most carefully varied and finished literature. And he describes what the "last pen" work should be. It should comprise in itself all styles of composition and all subjects; it should be steeped in the poetic spirit, though cast in the mould of prose. From time to time, when. Fancy at her own sweet will should bid, there were to be strewn here and there flowers of the most varied poesy. It was to be the pen of a ready writer, this last and best of all pens or styles. Not the Iron Pen of ordinary daily discourse, and of such trivial subjects as are therewith connected; not the larger and more lasting Pen of Bronze, the Pen of History; not the Silver Pen of Rhetoric, nor yet the Golden Pen of Poetry, but a Pen ex omni metallo conflatus, of an amalgam in which all That Milton had a high opinion of a well and usefully written Utopian Romance is evident from his own words on the subject in his Apology for Smectymnuus. He says: "That grave and noble invention " (the Romance of a model State), "which the greatest and sublimest wits, in sundry ages, Plato in Critias, and our two famous countrymen, the one in his Utopia, the other in his New Atlantis, chose, I may not say as a field, but as a mighty continent, wherein to display the largeness of their spirits, by teaching this our world better and exacter things than were yet known or used." Strange to say, if I am right, this was what Milton himself had already attempted in Nova Solyma, and it was even then lying in a rough state in his own desk. Book III., chapters ii, and iii. |