Neo-Latin Metrical Practice in English Manuscript Sources, c. 1550–1720 Victoria Moul Tis chapter presents an initial report on the fndings of a large research pro- ject surveying for the frst time post-medieval Latin verse recorded in English manuscript sources dating from around the mid-16 th to frst decades of the 18 th century. 1 Troughout this period, the manuscript circulation of verse remained an important element of English literary culture, with many well-known poets of this period, such as George Herbert and John Donne, circulating their verse only or largely in manuscript. For this reason, manuscript verse miscellanies and personal notebooks have received considerable scholarly atention, but al- most exclusively in terms of the English verse that they contain. In practice, literary culture throughout this period was bilingual: the enormous quantity of post-medieval Latin verse in manuscript has, however, received no systematic scholarly study, and is ofen poorly catalogued, or not catalogued at all. Most frst-line indexes of early modern English verse do not include Latin, even whe- re a Neo-Latin poem bears a close relationship to an English piece (such as a translation, imitation or response). 2 1 Victoria Moul, ‘Neo-Latin verse in English manuscript miscellanies’, funded by the Le- verhulme Trust for four years (2017–2021). In practice, we looked actively for material dating from between the 1540s and 1720, with a handful of items surveyed from outside these parameters. 2 Te exceptions to this are the excellent catalogue and frst-line index of the Notingham Portland manuscripts, which includes Latin verse (www.notingham.ac.uk/manuscript- sandspecialcollections/documents/collectionsindepth/family/pwv-frst-line-index-2016.pdf) and Hilton Kelliher’s addendum to the frst-line index of verse in British Library manu- scripts, which covers only manuscripts acquired between 1894 and 2009, but excludes a single manuscript which contains over 700 Latin epigrams (BL Additional MS 72542). Both these frst line indexes are incorporated in the Folger’s ‘Union First Line Index of English Verse’ (htps://frstlines.folger.edu). Details of some Neo-Latin verse can also be found in the digital Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts 1450–1700 (htp://celm2. dighum.kcl.ac.uk), though this is limited to Latin poems by the 237 16 th and 17 th -century authors included in the catalogue plus a handful of Latin translations of English poems by included authors.