poem from the preceding contents. In the edition of 1673 there is the same distinction of title and argument on a separate right-hand page, though in that volume some additional matter follows the Epitaphium. There is proof that the memory of Diodati never faded from Milton's mind. In a Latin letter, among his Epistolæ Familiares, dated "London, April 21, 1647," and addressed to his Florentine friend Carlo Dati, the death of Diodati, then nine years past, is mentioned, with peculiar solemnity, as still in his thoughts and ever to be sacredly present there. The similarity of the names of the Carlo Dati so addressed and the Charles Diodati spoken of is curious; but they are to be remembered as two perfectly distinct persons in Milton's biography.

A few particulars as to the further history of the Diodati family, so memorable from Milton's relations to it, may be acceptable here :— Besides the old physician, Dr. Theodore, and his children, there had been resident in London for some while, Colonel Chester found, and apparently in mercantile business, another member of the family, in the person of a Charles Diodati, one of the brothers of Dr. Theodore and of the famous Jean Diodati, the Genevese divine. This uncle and namesake of Milton's Charles Diodati may have been one of the mourners at his nephew's funeral. But ere long,-certainly before 1650,-there came to be still another of the Genevese Diodatis in London: viz. a younger Theodore, one of the sons of the Genevese theologian, and therefore a nephew of the old physician of Little St. Bartholomew's, and of his mercantile brother Charles, and a cousin of Milton's deceased Charles. He had graduated as M.D. at Leyden in 1643, and had come to settle in London for medical practice there, beside or in partnership with his uncle, old Dr. Theodore, thus, in fact, stepping into the place which ought to have been the deceased Charles Diodati's had he survived. It was this younger Dr. Theodore Diodati that was to carry on the main fortunes of the Diodati family in London. For, when old Dr. Theodore died, and was buried at Little St. Bartholomew's, 12th Feb. 1650-1, his will, after providing for his widow, Abigail (the second wife who had worked such woe), constituted this nephew of his the residuary legatee; and, when the other and mercantile uncle, Charles Diodati, died, in August 1651, and was described as "late of St. Mary Magdalen, Old Fish Street, London," it was the same Dr. Theodore the younger that administered to his estate as

next of kin. He lived on in good medical practice in London, was admitted an Honorary Fellow of the London College of Physicians in 1664, and is heard of as late as 1680, bearing then the double designation of "Doctor of Medicine and Merchant,” as if he had found it convenient to combine with his own profession some inheritance of his mercantile uncle's business. From these facts (most of them communicated to me by Colonel Chester in 1874), and especially from the fact that in old Dr. Theodore's will, proved 12th Feb. 1650-1, there is no mention of his son John, the brother of Milton's Charles, it might be inferred that this John was then no longer alive. That, however, it appears, would be a wrong conclusion. A John Diodati, whom Colonel Chester identified with the John who had lived in Blackfriars in 1638, is found alive in London, in business of some kind or other, and styled "Factor" in some documents, to as late as Feb. 1687-8; and, if Colonel Chester was right in his identification (and he was rarely wrong in such a matter), then this John, whose first wife Isabell (in full Isabell Underwood) had died in Blackfriars in June 1638, leaving an infant named Richard, had married a second wife, whose Christian name was Sarah, and by whom he had another son, named John, born about 1660. The omission of mention of him in his father's will in 1650-1, and the substitution of his cousin, Dr. Theodore the younger, in his natural place in that will, would thus have to be accounted for by the supposition that, his stepmother being still alive when old Dr. Theodore died, the "stepmotherly war" of 1637-8 had ended in a permanent rupture of relations between father and son. In February 1687-8, the said John the "Factor" having died, letters of administration to his estate were granted to his said son by his second wife, born about 1660, and also named John. This John, who had then been married for some years to a Mercy Tinley, made a second marriage, after her death in 1689, with an Elizabeth Morton, and left children by both marriages. One of the children by the second marriage, named William Diodate, emigrated to America, in or about the year 1717, and was a well-known and respected man in the New Haven Colony from that date to his death in 1757. Descendants of his are numerous in the United States to this day, whether with the original name Diodate, or with that name changed by marriage; and their ramifications have been elaborately traced in the remarkable paper by Professor Edward E. Salisbury, entitled

"Mr. William Diodate (of New Haven, from 1717 to 1757) and His Italian Ancestry," to which reference has been already made (ante, p. 255, note). The paper incorporates the results of Colonel Chester's researches in England with those of the investigations of Professor Salisbury himself, made in America, and by correspondence with Italy and Geneva; and, as the chief motive to all these inquiries into the genealogy of the Diodati family has been the interest conferred on the family by Milton's immortal friendship with one member of it, we may regard this also as one of the forms in which the prophecy of Milton, addressing the shade of his dead friend in his Epitaphium Damonis, has been conspicuously fulfilled:

“Stand shall thine honour for thee, and long henceforth shall it flourish Mid our shepherd lads."

AD JOANNEM ROUSIUM,

OXONIENSIS ACADEMIE BIBLIOTHECARIUM.

JANUARY 23, 1646-7.

(Edition of 1673.)

John Rous, M.A. of Oxford, and Fellow of Oriel College, was elected Chief Librarian of the Bodleian May 9, 1620; and he remained in that post till his death in April 1652. Milton may have become acquainted with him in some visit to Oxford during the Cambridge period of his life, or, at all events, in 1635, when, as a Cambridge M.A. of three years' standing, he was incorporated in the same degree at Oxford. It is almost certain that "our common friend Mr. R." mentioned by Sir Henry Wotton in his letter to Milton of April 13, 1638, as having sent to Wotton a copy of Lawes's anonymous edition of Comus of the previous year, bound up with a volume of inferior poetry printed at Oxford, was this John Rous, the Oxford Librarian. In any case, Milton had come to know Rous. Who in those days could avoid doing so that had dealings with books, and was drawn to the sight of such a collection of books as that in the great Bodleian? have been a recommendation of Rous in Milton's eyes that, Oxonian though he was, his sympathies were decidedly Parliamentarian. Possibly he was a relative of

It may

Francis Rous, the Puritan member of the Long Parliament for Truro.

Milton's present verses to Rous are dated by himself "Jan. 23, 1646" (i.e. Jan. 23, 1647, as we should now write); and, in his own extended title, they are designated "Ad Joannem Rousium, Oxoniensis Academia Bibliothecarium: De Libro Poematum amisso, quem ille sibi denuo mitti postulabat, ut cum aliis nostris in Bibliothecâ Publicâ reponeret: Ode." ("To John Rous, Librarian of the University of Oxford: concerning a lost Book of Poems, of which " he asked a fresh copy to be sent him, that he might replace it with "others of ours in the Public Library: An Ode.") The circumstances here indicated may be explained exactly :-There is still in the Bodleian an old bound volume containing all Milton's pamphlets that had been published before 1645, and the following inscription, indubitably in Milton's own hand, on a blank leaf at the beginning: "Doctissimo viro, proboque librorum æstimatori, Joanni Rousio, Oxoniensis Academia Bibliothecario, gratum hoc sibi fore testanti, Joannes Miltonus opuscula hæc sua in Bibliothecam antiquissimam atque celeberrimam adsciscenda libens tradit, tanquam in memoriæ perpetuæ fanum, emeritamque, uti sperat, invidiæ calumniæque vacationem, si Veritati Bonoque simul Eventui satis litatum sit. Sunt autem :-De Reformatione Anglia, Lib. 2; De Episcopatu Prælatico, Lib. 1; De Ratione Politiæ Ecclesiastica, Lib. 2; Animadversiones in Remonstrantis Defensionem, Lib. 1; Apologia, Lib. 1; Doctrina et Disciplina Divortii, Lib. 2; Judicium Buceri de Divortio, Lib. 1; Colasterion, Lib. 1; Tetrachordon, in aliquot præcipua Scripturæ loca de Divortio Instar, Lib. 4; Areopagitica, sive de Libertate Typographia Oratio; De Educatione Ingenuorum Epistola; Poemata Latina et Anglicana, seorsim." ("To that most learned man and good judge of books, 'John Rous, Librarian of the University of Oxford, on his testifying "that this would be agreeable to him, John Milton gladly gives these "small works of his, to be taken into the most ancient and celebrated library, as into a temple of perpetual memory, and so, as he hopes, "into a merited freedom from ill-will and calumny, if satisfaction enough be paid to Truth and at the same time to Good Fortune. "They are:-'Of Reformation in England,' two Books; 'Of Prelatical "Episcopacy,' one Book; 'Of the Reason of Church Government,' "two Books; Animadversions on the Remonstrant's Defence,' one "Book; 'Apology against the same,' one Book; 'The Doctrine

66

"and Discipline of Divorce,' two Books; 'The Judgment of Bucer " on Divorce,' one Book; 'Colasterion,' one Book; 'Tetrachordon, an "Exposition of some chief places of Scripture concerning Divorce,' "four Books; 'Areopagitica, or a Speech for the Freedom of the Press'; "An Epistle on Liberal Education'; and 'Latin and English Poems,' separate.") This inscription tells the story so far. Milton, at Rous's request, had sent him, for the Bodleian, in 1646, a set of his published writings complete to that date: to wit, the eleven controversial Prose Pamphlets of 1641-4, and the edition of his Poems in English and Latin published by Moseley in the end of 1645. Of these, however, only the Prose Pamphlets had reached their destination: the Poems had been lost or stolen on their way to Oxford, or had otherwise gone astray. Rous, accordingly, both in his own behalf and in the interest. of the Library, begs for another copy, to make the set of Milton's writings complete, as had been intended. Milton complies with the request, and sends a second copy of the Poems. But, amused by the incident of the loss of the first, he composes a Latin Ode on the subject; and a transcript of this Ode, carefully written out on a sheet of paper by himself, or some one else, in an Italian hand, he causes to be inserted in the second copy, between the English and the Latin contents of the volume. Accordingly, there are now in the Bodleian two volumes of Milton's writings, his own gift to the Library. One is the volume of the eleven collected Prose Pamphlets enumerated above, and with the inscription above copied, in Milton's undoubted autograph; the other is the supplementary volume of his Poems, sent to Rous, "ut cum aliis nostris reponeret" ("that he might replace it beside our other things "), and containing the Ode to Rous in an inserted sheet of MS., generally supposed to be also Milton's autograph, in an unusual form of laboured elegance, but probably, I think, a transcript by some caligraphist whom he employed.

If Warton's story is true, there was a danger, about 1720, that these two volumes would be lost to the Bodleian. With a number of other small volumes, chiefly duplicates, they were thrown aside; and Mr. Nathaniel Crynes, then one of the Esquire Bedels, and a book-collector, was allowed to pick what he chose out of the heap, on the understanding that he was to bestow some equivalent on the Library in the form of a bequest. By good luck, Mr. Crynes did not care for the two Milton volumes, and so they went back to the