CHAPTER II.

THE LAST SEVEN YEARS OF MILTON'S LIFE.

No English book has had a more curious trade-history than the first edition of Paradise Lost. It appeared, as we saw, in or shortly after August 1667, and original copies with the date 1667 exist in our libraries, and fetch high prices at book-sales1. But there are copies also bearing the date 1668 on the title-page, and other copies bearing the date 1669; and these, no less than the copies of 1667, belong indubitably to the first edition, and are valued accordingly. Nor is this all. If all the extant copies of the first edition were collected and compared with each other, they would be found to differ not only in the dating of their title-pages as above, but also in the form and typography of their title-pages and in other particulars. Perhaps no two copies are precisely alike in all respects. There are minute differences in the text, such as a with in some copies where others give an in, a misnumbering of the lines on the margin in some copies where others give the correct numbering, a comma in some copies where others have no comma. In this respect, however, there is nothing peculiar. Many of our early printed books present such 'slight variations of text in copies of one and the same edition, arising from the fact that, in the days of leisurely handprinting, corrections might be made in a sheet while it was at press, of which corrections only the remaining part of the

1 A very exact facsimile reproduction of the First Edition of Paradise Lost,

with the date 1667, has been published by Mr. Elliot Stock of Paternoster Row.

impression of that sheet would have the benefit. The variations of this kind in the first edition of Paradise Lost are far less numerous than in some other old books, and indeed very few and altogether insignificant. Of much more consequence are the variations in the form of the title-page and in the leafing of the book before the text of the poem. At least nine different forms of title-page have been discovered in original copies of the first edition; and these variations of title-paging are complicated by the fact that some copies have fourteen pages of preliminary prose-matter between the title-page and the text of the poem, while other copies have nothing of the sort. The explanation of all this belongs to Milton's biography.

The explanation, in brief, is that, though the 1300 or 1500 copies constituting the first edition of Paradise Lost were all printed off in or about August 1667, they were not all then bound and issued to the public, but were issued in successive instalments or bindings, to meet the gradual demand at the bookshops. There were at least nine successive bindings and issues of copies before the edition was exhausted, two of them in 1667, four of them in 1668, and three of them in 1669. The printer and publisher Samuel Simmons had the management of this process of dealing out copies of the book gradually, but Milton's hand was also in it.

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We may repeat here the title-page of the first binding sent out:-"Paradise lost. A Poem written in Ten Books By John "Milton. Licensed and Entred according to Order. London "Printed, and are to be sold by Peter Parker under Creed Church neer Aldgate; And by Robert Boulter at the Turks Head in Bishopsgate-street; And Matthias Walker under St. Dunstons "Church in Fleet-street, 1667." The moderate number of copies sent out with this title-page seem to have been sold before the end of 1667; for there was a second binding that year. For this second binding Simmons printed a new titlepage, the wording exactly the same as before, but the author's name in a smaller size of type. Thus before the end of 1667 there were copies out with two slightly differing forms of title-page. The sale so far seems to have been too slow to

satisfy Simmons, and he had begun to fancy that it was checked to some extent by the appearance of the author's name in all the copies yet sent out. In some of these copies it was in smaller type than in others; but, whether in smaller type or in larger, what was to be expected but that many people, seeing the name JOHN MILTON on the title-page, would throw down the book with an exclamation of disgust? To suit such weak-minded brethren, it seems to have occurred to Simmons to issue copies without the author's name in full, but with his initials only. The book had been entered in the Stationers' Registers as merely "by J. M."; and "J. M." might be any respectable person. Accordingly, early in 1668, a third binding of copies was issued, most probably with Milton's sanction, bearing the title, "Paradise lost. "A Poem in Ten Books. The Author J. M. Licensed and "Entred according to Order. London Printed, and are to "be sold by Peter Parker under Creed Church neer Aldgate; "And by Robert Boulter at the Turks Head in Bishopsgate"street; And Matthias Walker under St. Dunstons Church in Fleet-street, 1668." This was followed in the same year by a fourth binding, with a title-page identical in the wording, but with variations in the size of the type. To print a new title-page for every new binding was a convenient plan, for it enabled the book to be dated afresh so as to keep it always one of the current year. And so, by about the middle of 1668, there had been sent out four bindings of Paradise Lost, giving customers the option of copies with the author's name in full, if they would have it, or only his initials, if these were thought more innocent.

Still the sale seemed to lag, and to need what is now known in the trade as a "push." The push could not be given, of course, in the modern fashion of a repeated burst of advertising. The machinery of advertisement was then scanty, and was less used for books than for missing dogs, while the machinery of book-paragraphing and reviewing had not been invented. The push was given in the simpler form of an adaptation of the look of the book to the habits of purchasers and readers. Simmons had ascertained by this time that it

was not the author's name that impeded the sale so much as the want of such introductory matter as might indicate the nature of the contents. The mere title Paradise Lost conveyed but vague ideas. It suggested perhaps the story of Adam and Eve, and so corresponded with some of the sweeter and more idyllic parts of the poem; but it gave no intimation that the poem contained also the pre-mundane history of Satan, the angelic wars in heaven, the expulsion thence of the rebel angels, their incarceration in the abyss of hell, the six days' creation of the universe of man between the fallen angels and their lost heaven, their debates in hell for revenge and recovery, and Satan's voyage of invasion for them upwards into the new universe, all inwrought coherently into one epic and leading to its particular catastrophe on earth. Of these grandeurs there was no promise in the title. Besides, even those who became aware of the grandeurs by actually reading the poem, or parts of it, could hardly at once grasp its plan, and had no clue afterwards but that of memory to the succession of the incidents. So much having been gathered by Simmons, and having been reported by him to Milton, the remedy was easy. Milton prepared what he called "The Argument," consisting of ten sections of prose-headings, giving a summary of the contents of the poem, book by book, for all the ten books. That would show any one who took up the poem casually what it was about, and it would serve as an index to readers who wanted means of reference 1. He was the more willing to take this trouble because he had the

1 It seems to me possible that Milton took advantage of the Prose Argument to furnish explanations of the plan of the poem at one or two points where he had already heard that readers had been in difficulty. Thus, in the Argument to Book I, "the Poem," he says, having assumed the rebellion of the Angels in heaven and their expulsion as events already passed," hastens into the midst "of things, presenting Satan, with his Angels, now fallen into Hell,-de"scribed here not in the centre (for "heaven and earth may be supposed as "not yet made, certainly not yet ac"cursed), but in a place of utter dark

'ness, fitliest called Chaos." This looks

like a defence of his departure from the ordinary or orthodox conception of his time as to the place of hell. His readers may have expected to find it in "the centre," i.e. within the earth's bowels, as in Dante's poem, whereas he has made it wholly extra-mundane. If reasons are wanted, he offers two. In the first place, did not the expulsion of the rebel angels into hell precede the existence of the earth and the material universe to which it belongs? In the second place, even if the earth had been in existence, it was not accursed till after the fall of man, and how could the ball, while innocent, have contained a hell?

opportunity at the same time of noticing another objection to the poem, which had interested himself more than Simmons. A long epic in blank verse, put forth at the very time when the great controversy among the critics was whether blank verse was not too low for even the serious drama, and when even those who contended for the sufficiency of blank verse for the serious drama agreed that it was too mean for any form of non-dramatic poetry, had been a very daring experiment indeed. Accordingly, so far as there had been talk about the poem hitherto in the critical world, the chief stumbling-block to its reception had been the question whether it could be called strictly a poem at all, inasmuch as it did not rhyme. Though the objection can have been no surprise to Milton, it may have reached him so annoyingly from some quarters after the first appearance of the poem as to prompt him now to a few words of remark. While handing to Simmons, therefore, the prose "Argument" to be inserted in future issues of copies, he handed him also that little prefatory paragraph, entitled "The Verse," which now appears in every good edition of the poem. When set up in type, the Argument and this little paragraph on the Verse, together with a list of a few errata that had been discovered, made fourteen pages of absolutely new matter, to be inserted in future issues between the title-page and the text. Simmons did not grudge the expense of printing as many copies of the new fourteen pages as were needed for the copies of the poem still on hand; and, when he sent out his fifth binding of the poem in 1668, it was thicker by these additional fourteen pages than any of the previous bindings, and swelled the small quarto volume from a total of 342 pages to a total of 356. The title-page of this fifth binding marks it as an epoch in the history of the book in yet other respects. It runs thus:-"Paradise lost. A Poem in Ten Books. The Author John Milton. London, Printed by S. Simmons, and to be sold by S. Thomson at the Bishops-Head in Duck-Lane, H. Mortlock at the White Hart in Westminster Hall, M. Walker under St. Dunstons Church in Fleet-street, and R. Boulter at the Turks-Head in Bishopsgate-street, 1668." Here we have