Zoilomastix, or a Vindication of Milton, From the invidious Charges of Mr William Lauder. With Several new remarks on Paradise Lost. By R. Richardson, B. A. late of Clare-Hall, Cambridge

About this book

8vo signed in 4s. pp. [4], iv. 42. Signatures: [A]4 B-F4. New wrappers. With half title. Watermark of Hammond Library, Chicago Theological Seminary on title page. Only edition of the very earliest response to William Lauder’s original ‘evidence’ against John Milton, published by Edmund Cave, with the the nihil obstat of Cave’s literary advisor, Samuel Johnson, in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for January throrough April 1747. 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; a ‘second Letter’, then still in preparation, ‘was intended to be inserted’ in a subsequent number, but became (with an expanded version of Richardson’s first letter) ‘a work too large for Mr. Urban’s monthly collection’, and ‘now appear[s] [...] in a pamphlet’, together with a new ‘Letter III’. See Bib# 4103312/Fr# 601 in this collection for volume 17 of the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine.’ See also ESTC T146013. Click here to view the Johns Hopkins University catalog record.