In
Notes and Records
, Vol. 13, No. 2, I referred to a copy of Cicero’s
Epistolae familiares
(1550), which belonged to Robert Boyle when he was a boy at Eton and in which he had scribbled his name. Since then I have discovered two more books in Eton College Library written in by him. One is a copy of two works of Aristotle bound together, both of the Greek text, the
Ethica
(Frankfurt, 1584) and the
Politico and Oeconomica
(Frankfurt, 1587). On a fly-leaf is written in a childish hand: ‘I Robert Boyle doe say Albert Morton is a brave boy.’ The other is a copy of two works by Joannis Treminius, a Spanish theologian, also bound together,
In Ionae Prophetiam Comentarii
and
Commentarii Regis, & Prophetae celeberrimi Psalmos
, both published at Oriola in 1623. This was written on a fly-leaf in the same hand: ‘Albertus Morton is a most brave & rare boy. 1638.’ Albert Morton was at Eton from 1634 to 1639, first, like Boyle, a commensal of the second table, and then a Colleger. He was the son of Sir Robert Morton, a captain in the Dutch service, and nephew of Albert Morton, who was Sir Henry W ootton’s secretary in Venice from 1604 to 1615 and was appointed Secretary of State in 1625. He died a few months later, his wife following him very shortly to the grave. On her Wotton wrote what is, perhaps, the most perfect English epitaph: He first deceased; She for a little tried To live without him: lik’d it not, and died.
MUSIC THEORY AT WORK: THE ETON CHOIRBOOK, RHYTHMIC PROPORTIONS AND MUSICAL NETWORKS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND
