Political Diplomacy, Personal Conviction, and the Fraught Nature of Milton’s Letters of State

Abstract

Discusses the considerable challenges facing the editors of the letters of state for the Clarendon Complete Works. These include the difficulty of ascertaining the degree of Milton’s authorship of state letters which were subject to revision by other agents of the Commonwealth, a problem only partially remedied by scholars’ ability to distinguish Milton’s Latin from that of other government employees. The discovery of additional manuscript collections unknown to earlier editors provides additional challenges, as does the fact that the final published versions of the letters often revise and alter Milton’s Latin. It is dangerous to assume that Milton’s own political convictions are substantially reflected in the state letters