John Milton (1608–1674) Draft of Lycidas. Milton’s Poetical Notebook, Trinity College MS R.3.4, pp.30-31. Facsimile of the manuscript of
In the eighteenth century, Charles Mason made the extraordinary discovery of Milton’s poetical notebook in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. Its loose-leaf sheets were bound for the first time in 1736. Along with Milton’s commonplace book, now in the British Museum, the Trinity manuscript (as it has come to be known) is one of the most significant literary manuscripts of the seventeenth century, for the insight it gives us into Milton’s processes of composition. It contains autograph drafts of many of Milton’s shorter poems, from Lycidas to Comus, and several of the sonnets, including ‘On his blindness’.
The manuscript is displayed here in William Aldis Wright’s photographic facsimile, printed by Cambridge University Press in 1899.