Decalogue as having been abolished with the rest of the Mosaic Law, and continued literal adhesion to it as inconsistent therefore with true Christian liberty. Hence he is an anti-Sabbatarian, finding no authority for the substitution of the first day of the week for the Jewish Sabbath, and no higher reason for the observance of that day than Christian consent and general convenience. His views of Church discipline are those of Independency or Congregationalism, with a marked tendency to absolute Individualism, or to a kind of Quakerism in some things; and he goes with the Baptists or AntiPædobaptists in their particular tenet. He dissents positively from the Quakers in their extreme doctrine of peace or passivity, and in other matters, holding war to be often lawful, resistance by arms to tyranny to be lawful, and finding Scripture warrant also for prayers for curses and calamities upon bad men and enemies. Perhaps the part of the treatise that most shocks modern opinion is that where, not content with repeating his old doctrine of the lawfulness of divorce in cases of mutual incompatibility, he inserts a defence or justification of polygamy. But the treatise generally, it will be seen, contains not a few very heterodox speculations. SPECIMENS OF MILTON'S SIGNATURE THE following is a copy of Milton's signature in the Graduation Book of the University of Cambridge on the occasion of his being admitted to the degree of B.A., January 1628-9. He was then in the twenty-first year of his age :— Joannes Milton The above, being an academic signature, gives his Christian name in Latin form. For ordinary purposes his usual form of signature in his Cambridge days seems to have been that which is found in a copy of the Phænomena and Diosemeia of the Greek astronomical poet Aratus (Paris quarto edition of 1559), which once belonged to him, and which is now in the British Museum. There are marginal notes in his hand to the text of the poems; and on the fly-leaf before the title he had written his name, adding “pre. 2s. 6d." as the price he had paid for the book, and "1631" as the date of the purchase. His name appears there in this form : Jo: Milton Milton was in his twenty-third year when he wrote that; and he graduated as M.A. in July in the following year, when he was more than half through his twenty-fourth year. In his signature in the Graduation Book on that occasion he reverted to the Latin form: thus: Joannes Milton In 1634, two years after Milton had left the University, and when he was living at his father's country-house at Horton, engaged in a systematic course of Greek and Latin reading, he bought, for 12s. 6d., a copy of Paul Stephens's Edition (Geneva, 1602, two vols. quarto) of his favourite Euripides. This book, still extant, and containing interesting marginal notes on the text in Milton's hand, has his name, with a note of the price and of the date of purchase, on the fly-leaf before the title-page of the first volume. The name is in this form,—almost the same, in his twenty-sixth year, as that in the copy of Aratus in his twenty-third Jo. Milton The following is a copy of his signature seven years later, when he was in the thirty-first year of his age. It was written at Geneva on the 10th of June 1639 during his short stay in that city on his return route to England from his Italian tour. A certain Camillo Cerdogni, or Camille Cardouin, a Neapolitan, who had been forced into exile by his Protestantism, as long ago as 1608, and had been resident since then in Geneva as a teacher of Italian, had the fancy of keeping an Album for the receipt of autographs of such distinguished strangers as might pass through Geneva. The Album (now in America) was already pretty full of the names of eminent persons of different nations, many of them Englishmen, written at very various dates, and with mottoes, verses, etc., in different languages, annexed by the writers to their names, to increase the value of the autographs, when, on the abovementioned date, Milton was asked for his contribution. It consisted of a quotation of the concluding words of his Comus, and of a Latin hexameter line, with his signature appended thus, the Latin form and the addition “Anglus” natural enough in the circumstances :— Joannes Mittonis This signature illustrates a point of some interest in the history of Milton's handwriting. Although, on referring to the first of our specimens, viz. Milton's graduation signature as B.A. in January 1628-9, it will be seen that the small e in the name Joannes is written in our present common looped form of that letter, a reference to our third specimen, viz. his graduation signature as M.A. in July 1632, will shew that he then favoured what may be called the Greek form of the same letter, from its resemblance to the Greek epsilon. Now, whatever may have been his usage in this respect before he went to Cambridge, and during a portion of his stay there, it can be proved, from the numerous and copious specimens still extant of his handwriting, in drafts of his poems, etc., through the Horton period, that through the whole of that period, i.e. from 1632 to 1638, he kept all but invariably to the Greek or epsilon form of the small e. What the autograph in the Geneva Album illustrates is the fact that, somehow or other, during his residence in Italy, he had been led to abandon this Greek form of the e, and to revert to the usual looped form,-adopting indeed a very marked and bold variety of that form. This was no casual occurrence in the Geneva signature of June 1639; for the same looped form of the e, in the same bold variety of it, characterises all Milton's handwriting in England from 1639 onwards. There may occasionally be found a relapse into the Greek form of the e; but it is very rare. Nor is this change, after his Italian journey, from the Greek form of the e to the looped form, such a mere trifle as it looks. It becomes a test for determining, in some dubious cases, the date of a piece of Milton's autograph. One may propound it as a rule that any surviving piece of Milton's handwriting in which the Greek form of the small e prevails is to be taken as a relic of him before his Italian journey of 1638-9, and that any piece in which the looped form of that letter prevails is as certainly to be taken as penned by him after that date. Evidence corroborating this rule is plentiful enough in autograph remains of his, both in prose and in verse, known to have been written in those eight years or so, after his return from his Italian journey, when he was a London householder, first in Aldersgate Street, then in Barbican, and then in Lincoln's Inn Fields; but, as it is his signature only that we are now dealing with, let us pass to the year 1647. On the 21st of April in that year, Milton, then thirty-eight years of age, and residing in Barbican, wrote a Latin letter to his Florentine friend Carlo Dati, afterwards printed in his Epistolæ Familiares, but the original draft of which, in Milton's own hand, still exists. Here is a copy of the signature in that draft :— Joannes Miltonius Loudinensis, The following is a copy of Milton's signature to a legal receipt for Five Pounds paid him by a private debtor of his on the 16th of February 1649-50, when he was in the first year of his Latin Secretaryship to the Council of State of the Commonwealth, and was residing in his official apartments in Whitehall : John Milton Not unlike this, but a better specimen of his autograph, is the following, of about a year later, when he was still in the same residence. It is his signature to an affidavit or sworn statement, on the 25th of February 1650-1, before the Commissioners for the Sequestrated Estates of Royalists, relative to his interest in a portion of the sequestrated estate of his deceased father-in-law, Richard Powell of Forest-hill : John Milton : Nine months afterwards, or on the 19th of November 1651, there was occasion for another signature from Milton's pen in the more |