New York Public Library, Rare Book Collection

An exemplum with Milton's autograph inscription on the title-page, Jo: Milto[n] pre: 10^d. 1629. Dece[], and with marginal annotations in other hands; bound with exempla of Dante's L'amoroso convivio (Venice, 1529) and of Benedetto Varchi's I sonnetti (Venice, 1555).

1563.

Later in the library of Richard Heber (1774-1833), book collector. Sotheby's, 16 March 1857, lot 734, and 18 May 1874 (Sir William Tite sale), lot 2043. Bookplate (dated 1881) of J. Eliot Hodgkin, FSA (1829-1912), of Richmond, Surrey, engineer and book collector.

Discussed, with a facsimile of the inscribed title-page, in Maurice Kelley, Milton's Dante-Della Casa-Varchi Volume, BNYPL, 66 (1962), 499-504, where it is argued that all three parts of the volume belonged to Milton, that some of the marginalia in both the Della Casa and the Varchi are in Milton's hand, and that a transcript of a sonnet on f. 28r of the Della Casa is in the hand of an amanuensis responsible for certain entries in Milton's commonplace book (MnJ 66). Facsimile examples also in Sotheby, Ramblings, after p. 124 (Plate XVII [bis], No. i, item 2), and in Kelley and Atkins, SB, 17 (1964), 77-82. A note (not by Milton) edited in Columbia, XVIII, 345, and see Thomas Ollive Mabbott, Milton: A marginal note in Varchi, N&Q, 163 (10 September 1932), 189. Recorded in Hanford No. 7; in LR, I, 205; and in Boswell, No. 480.

A printed exemplum, bearing the royal arms and coronet of the Prince of Wales, later Charles I, and possibly the dedication exemplum.

c.1638.

Recorded in Bowers & Davis (pp. 240-1).

Allegedly Milton's exemplum.

Mid-17th century.

Puttick & Simpson's, 19-20 April 1849, lot 322. Sotheby's, 18 May 1874 (Sir William Tite sale), lot 2044.

Facsimile example in Sotheby, Ramblings, pp. 111-12 (Plate XVI, No. i). Recorded in Columbia, XVIII, 357; in LR, II, 135; and in Boswell, No. 1236.

A printed exemplum signed by Cotton on a flyleaf.

Mid-late 17th century.

Recorded in Samuel A. Allibone, Contributions to a Catalogue of the Lenox Library, No. 7 (New York, 1893), No. 448. Also recorded in Dust, p. 21, and in Parks, p. 33.