[Milton-L] Cabinet-council

[Angelica Duran]

Dear scholars,

I am curious about two republications of a 1658 translation by Milton,
Cabinet-council, which Milton attributed Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) but
which we now do not attribute to Raleigh.  I have read Dzelzainis¹ and
Stevens¹ articles on the work. Are there any conjectures on why the work was
published in 1692 and 1697? Both works describe Milton as the translator,
and a quick electronic page-through shows the works to be faithful to
Milton¹s original.  The only difference I can detect is the change of title
-- to Secrets of government and misteries of state (1697) and Arts of
empire, and mysters of state discabineted (1692) -- and a two-page
advertisement in the 1692 volume.

A work that has been misattributed to Milton, Scriptum Dom. Protectoris
reipublica Anglia [Š] causa contra Hispanos justa esse demonstratur (1655)
was reissued four times in 1738-41, when King George II renewed England¹s
efforts to wrest American holdings from Spain. Whether well-founded or not,
some 18th-century British citizens wanted their great poet-statesman to
collaborate with them from the dead in their specifically anti-Hispanic
American project. Their prefaces and nationalistic poems indicate this
direct historical connection. But such a direct historical connection is
textually absent from the Cabinet-council.

Many thanks.

Adios,
Angelica Duran
Associate Professor, English and Comparative Literature
Director, Religious Studies
Purdue University
500 Oval Drive
West Lafayette, Indiana 47907
USA
(765) 496-3957
<duran0 at purdue.edu>
<http://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/directory/?personid=80>



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