A Note on Milton's Annotated Copy of Gildas in Harvard University (Widener) Library

Abstract

On pages 75–80 of the Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature, Vol. XX (1938), is an article (with facsimiles) by Mr. J. Milton French entitled ‘Milton's Annotated Copy of Gildas’. It deals with a copy, in the Widener Library (shelf number Br. 98.319 F), of H. Commelinus' Rerum Britannicarum … Scriptores Vetustiores ac Praecipui, Heidelberg (1587), given to the library about 1765 by Thomas Hollis. This book contains on pages 113–146 the ‘De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae Epistola' of Gildas. A former owner has inserted thirteen brief marginal notes on pages 114–123, i.e. explanatory comments on various matters in Ch. 1–33 of the ‘De Excidio’ (numbered according to Mommsen's edition; Mon. Germ. Hist., Auct. Ant., XIII, Chron. Min. iii, Berlin 1894–8). The remainder of the book, containing Geoffrey's ‘Historiae Regum Britanniae’ (pp. 1–92), the ‘Historia Britannica’ in six books of Ponticus Virunnius (pp. 93–112), Bede's ‘Ecclesiastical History’ (pp. 147–280), a ‘De Gestis Anglorum Libri Tres’ (pp. 281–348), William of Newburgh's ‘Rerum Anglicarum Libri Quinque’ (pp. 353–496) and Froissart’s ‘Historiarum Epitome’ (pp. 497–568), has no marginalia.