The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle. Volume 17. For the Year M.DCC.XL.VII. By Sylvanus Urban Gent.

8vo. pp. [5], 622, [18]. Includes engraved plates. Manuscript ex libris inscriptions “G. Barrow, Jan. 1975” with notes and “Shevill” on front flyleaf recto.

The ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for January (pp. 24-26), February (pp. 82-86), April (p. 189) 1747, published by Edmund Cave, with the the nihil obstat of Cave’s literary advisor, Samuel Johnson, printed William Lauder’s original ‘evidence’ against John Milton. In these articles, Lauder ‘demonstrated,’ through parallel passages, that Milton had plagiarized large sections of Paradise Lost from various neo-Latin sources, notably Jakob Masen’s Sarcotis (included in Palaestra eloquentiae ligatae. Cologne, 1654), the shorter poems of Andrew Ramsay (1633), and the rare Adamus exul of Hugo Grotius (1601). Richard Richardson’s reply appeared as a ‘Letter’ in the July number of that journal, to which Lauder himself immediately replied. In the issues of June (285-286), and August (363-366) appear ‘An Essay on Milton’s Imitation of the Moderns,’ the first form of the notoriously forgery-laced ‘An Essay on Milton’s Use and Imitation of the Moderns’ (see Bib# 4173330/Fr# 602 in this collection), signed ‘W. L.’ Responses appear at pp. 58, 67-68, 211, 278, and 322-324. In August as well (p. 404) appears Samuel Johnson’s (anonymous) ‘Proposals for printing, by Subscription, Hugonis Grotii Adamus Exsul, Tragoedia,’ one of the supposed Miltonic sources, to be edited by Lauder; a broadside version of this is unique at the British Library (see J. D. Fleeman, A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Oxford, 2000, 47.8LP).

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