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P. H. or Patrick Hume, as he was the first, so is the most copious annotator. He laid the foundation, but he laid it among infinite heaps of rubbish.
—Thomas Newton, 1749 "Preface" to Paradise Lost1
In histories tracing the genesis of the discipline of English studies, a confluence of factors causes a foundational advancement in the field to be often overlooked and undervalued. Jacob Tonson's third folio of The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton (1695) includes 321 densely packed pages of Annotations on Paradise Lost providing glosses and context, explications of biblical and classical allusions, and paraphrases.2 Attributed only to "P. H. poet-lover," this first monumental work of English literary scholarship elevates the poem while at the same time working to isolate it from its author and political context.3 The author of Annotations, by any measure a founding figure in the history of English literary criticism, has for centuries been misidentified as a mysterious Patrick Hume. In turn, Annotations became unmoored from the historical and political context that produced it. Assumptions about Hume's origin, politics, and motivations have combined with his mistreatment by later commentators to obscure the import of his work. Properly identifying P. H. and his complex political and religious affiliations allows us to better contextualize the development of a discipline.
Predecessors to Annotations include glosses by "E. K." on Spenser's 1579 Shephearde's Calendar, Thomas Speght's 1598 notes on Chaucer, Francis Thynne's "Of the Animaduersions upon Chaucer" correcting Speght, and John Selden's voluminous 1613 annotations on Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion.4 Since E. K.'s glosses were published with Spenser's work and the author may indeed have had a hand in them, they clearly differ from Annotations, a critical paratext that was added decades after Milton's death. Selden's commentary on Drayton deals mainly with nonliterary concerns. Speght and Thynne, then, may justly be considered predecessors to P. H. in the genre of vernacular literary criticism, but Annotations goes far beyond the simple explanation of obscure words and takes a large stride toward modern literary scholarship, especially as it grapples with the political reputation of Milton.
P. H.'s anonymity perhaps licensed the dismissal of Annotations by later commentators. Thomas Newton's derisive characterization of Annotations as "heaps...