Messiah was declared in sight of heaven, How small the spark that could kindle into a poetical flame in Milton's mind! how quick the apprehension that seized the slightest hint! and how rich and fertile the genius to improve what it possessed! Callimachus had (Hymn. Del. 292) mentioned three Hyperborean nymphs, who sent fruits to Apollo in Delos. The word Hyperborean' was sufficient. Instantly Milton converts them into British goddesses, and clothes them in a Pictish dress; Selden had mentioned that Apollo was worshipped in Britain, Milton on those hints joins them to the Druids: 6 * What extent of time was passed in the composition of this great work is not with exactness known. Mr. Capel Lofft thinks that Milton began this poem in his forty-eighth year, and finished it in his fifty-seventh. Philips says that he had the perusal of it from the very beginning, for some years, in parcels of ten, twenty, or thirty verses at a time; and that his vein never happily flowed but from the autumnal equinox to the vernal, so that in all the years he was about the poem, he may be said to have spent about half his time v. Preface to Lofft's Milton, p. xxviii. The Aubrey Letters (vol. iii. p. 447). equinoctial, and ceased at the vernal, or thereabouts (I be'His verse began at the autumnal lieve about May); and this was four or five years of his doing it. He began about two years before the king came in, and finished about three years after the king's restoration, therein. Toland imagines 15 that Philips was mis- Fallor? an et nobis redeunt in carmina vires A friend of Milton's also informed Toland that Milton could never compose well but in the spring and autumn. He then poured out with great ease and fluency his unpremeditated verses. Dr. Johnson says, that there are no other internal notes of the time when the poem was written but the mention of the loss of his sight in the beginning of the third book, and of the return of the King in the introduction to the seventh. Some difficulty was experienced in obtaining a license; 16 and objections were made to particular passages, especially to the simile of the sun eclipsed in the first book. But it was at length granted, and he sold his copy to Samuel Simmons, April 27, 1667, for an immediate payment of five pounds, with a stipulation to receive five pounds more when thirteen hundred of the first edition should be sold. Again five pounds after the sale of the same number of the second edition, and another five pounds after the same sale of the third. None of the three editions were to be extended 15 Birch's Life, p. lvi. 16 Mr. Tomkins, chaplain to Archbishop Sheldon, was licenser. The office of licenser, abolished by Cromwell, was with reference to its different productions, under the judges, placed, the officers of state, and the archbishop of Canterbury. Poetry fell within the province of the latter. 521. Mr. C. Lofft says, "That no manuscript of the Parav. Symmons's Life, p. dise Lost has been discovered, except that of the first book copied for the press, with the imprimatur of the archbishop's chaplain, but where this is to be seen is not mentioned.' See Loffi's Pref. to Milton, p. i. and Newton's Pref. p. liv. beyond fifteen hundred copies. The first edition was of the poem in ten books, in small quarto, which were advertised plainly and neatly bound, at the price of three shillings. The titles were varied in order to circulate the edition in 1667,17 1668, 1669. Of these there were no less than five. An advertisement and the arguments of the books were omitted in some copies, and inserted in others; and from variations in the text, it would appear that single pages were cancelled and reprinted. The sale gave him in two years a right to his second payment; for which the receipt was signed April 26, 1669. The second edition was not given till 1674, and was printed in small octavo, and the number of books was increased to twelve, by a division of the seventh and twelfth, with the introduction of a few connecting lines. He did not live 18 to receive the payment stipulated for this im 17 See Introduction to Pickering's edition, p. xii. and Todd's Life (first ed.) p. 190, for an account of the variations in the poem and titles. Mr. Lofft observes that 1667 was a great year in the annals of our history; for not only was Paradise Lost published, but there was a Statute passed for the employment of poor prisoners,' and a great step made in the art of dressing wool, p. xxiv. of the effect of these different circumstances towards establishing the name and character which Britain holds among the nations, it is difficult to form an idea of any degree of proportionate extent; an adequate is impossible. It opens a vast arena i. the boundless space of human perfectibility. v. Remarks by Tench Coxe. These clustering radiations of moral light may unite mankind to the intelligence of other systems unnumbered and unimagined;' which circumstance, if it come to pass, will open new markets for the wool trade, and be of great advanlage to the publishers of Paradise Lost.- Go thy ways, Capel, the flower and quintessence of all editors." ་ 18 For an account of the editions, see C. Lofft's Preface, P. xxxv. lxi. and Todd's Life, p. 189-217. The number of lines in Paradise Lost amount to 10,565. Dr. Symmons says that Milton lived to receive the whole fifteen pounds for pression. The third edition was published in 1678, and his widow agreed with Simmons the printer to receive eight pounds as her right, and gave him a general release, dated April 29, 1681. Simmons covenanted to transfer the right for twentyfive pounds to Brabazen Aylmer, a bookseller, and Aylmer sold to Jacob Tonson half of it, August 17, 1683, and the other half March 24, 1690, at a price considerably advanced. The sale, Johnson says, will justify the public: the call for books in Milton's age was not great. The nation had been satisfied from 1623 to 1664 with only two editions of the works of Shakespeare, which probably together did not make a thousand copies.19 The sale of thirteen hundred copies in two years was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius. Yet the demand did not immediately increase, for in eleven years only three thousand were sold: but the reputation and price of the copy still advanced; 'till the revolution put an end to the secrecy of love, and Paradise Lost broke into open view with sufficient security of kind reception.' Though the poem of Milton was above 20 the age 109. Concerning the plagiarisms of Callender (who published the first book of Milton, 1750) from the Commentary of Patrick Hume, 1695, see Blackwood's Mag. No. xxiv. p. 659. 19 Johnson, however, should have remembered that large impressions of Shakespeare's Plays were always attainable, in a separate and more commodious form, in 4to. 20 The poets, contemporary with Milton, were Waller, Suckling, Crashaw, Denham, Lovelace, Cowley, Brome, Sherborne, Fanshaw, Davenant, besides those of inferior note. "Never any poet left a greater reputation behind him, than Mr. Cowley, while Milton remained obscure, and known but to few, but your grace knows very well that the great reputation of Cowley did not continue half a century, and that Milton's is now on the pinnacle of the temple of fame." Dennis's Letters Familiar, &c. p. 207. on which it was bestowed (for such greatness of invention, such harmony of numbers, and such majesty of style had not then been seen united); yet admirers among men of learning and genius it undoubtedly had. Andrew Marvell and Barrow, the physician,21 wrote some manly and spirited verses in its praise. Dryden's lines of commendation are known to all;22 and praise in other books by authors of lower fame, has been discovered by the diligence of the commentators. In 1688,23 the handsome folio edition was published under the patronage of Lord Somers, and with the assistance of Atterbury 24 and Dryden; in 1682, it was translated into Dutch, and into Latin in 1685, and ten years after, it appeared with a very curious and learned commentary by Patrick Hume. I shall here take the opportunity of men The following couplet in Marvell has wonderfully puz zled the commentators: I too transported by the mode offend, And while meant to praise thee, must commend.' See Lofft's Milton, p. xlvi. lii. where most commend,' 'miscommend,' but commend,' are offered; whereas the sense is perfectly clear. 'While I meant to praise thee, must commend; i. e. must, for the sake of the rhyme, use the word commend,' instead of praise,' which is the word I should otherwise have used. Even Bentley, in a MS. note in my copy, has erased 'must' and written most.' Dryden owned to Dennis, that when he adapted his state of innocence from Milton, he knew not half the extent v. Dennis's Letters, Moral and Cri of Milton's excellence.' tical, 1721, p. 75. 23 See Todd's Life, p. 198-202, there were five hundred and thirty subscribers. See a list of the most eminent of them in Lofft's Milton, p. xlix. 24 Atterbury said, that he prepared the edition of Milton, usually called Lord Somers's-from a MS. note of his in an edition of Milton out of the library of Warburton.' v. Atterbury's Works, iv. P. 164. |