causes, etc.” (1659); "Considerations Touching The Likeliest means to remove Hirelings out of the church, etc." (1659); "The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth" (March 3, 1660); and "Brief Notes upon a Late Sermon, etc." (1660). The printer of these was T. N., the publisher Livewell Chapman. On the whole the poet succeeded in maintaining the rules he had laid down for himself and his printer. No one turning over the pages of any one of them could doubt that Milton was their author. In the first two especially, dealing with civil power and the church, the first of which is one of the best of Milton's pamphlets, if moderation and simplicity are virtues, he secures all his usual spellings including the emphatic "their": "as for Poparie and idolatrie, why they also may not hence plead to be tolerated, I have much less to say. Their religion the more considerd the less can be acknowledgd a religion; but a Roman principalitie rather, etc." ("A Treatise, etc.," p. 35, and see pp. 78, 79). In “A Readie and Easie Way" he has been rather less successful. I have noted several examples of "their" which do not seem to require special emphasis. It was Milton's last effort before the cause for which he had fought so passionately went finally under. When Milton then came to print "Paradise Lost he had definitely formed views as to the spelling of certain words. They were not adopted for that poem, nor apparently with a special view to metrical effects -unless indeed Milton was already revolving his great poem in his mind and meditating the science of his art. At any rate, when he came to print "Paradise Lost," he set himself, despite his blindness, to see that his wishes were carried out; but it is only, as I have shown above, when the spelling of the First Edition is carefully compared with that of the Second that one realises what trouble he took and what measure of success he achieved. The same rules governed in "Paradise Regain'd" and "Samson Agonistes," but some errors got through and no second edition appeared in the poet's lifetime. Milton's first editors failed to appreciate what he had been endeavouring to do. Toland, in the collected editions of the Prose Works, frequently prints "thir" throughout a pamphlet, but generally fails to notice the difference between "thir" and "their," and Richardson, who comments on this and some other of Milton's peculiar spellings, fails to note the distinction and the motive underlying it. In the editions of the poems his peculiarities were gradually set aside in favour of the principle of uniformity. In his last pamphlet "Of True Religion," 1673, Milton had already let the printer have his own way in printing "their" throughout. H. J. C. G. Q IN PARADISUM AMISSAM SUMMI POETÆ JOHANNIS MILTONI. UI legis Amissam Paradisum, grandia magni Carmina Miltoni, quid nisi cuncta legis? Res cunctas, & cunctarum primordia rerum, Et fata, & fines continet iste liber. Intima panduntur magni penetralia mundi, Scribitur & toto quicquid in Orbe latet. Terræque, tractusque maris, cœlumque profundum, Sulphureumque Erebi flammivomumque specus. Quæque colunt terras, Pontumque & Tartara cæca, Quæque colunt summi lucida regna Poli. Et quodcunque ullis conclusum est finibus usquam, Et sine fine Chaos, & sine fine Deus: Et sine fine magis, si quid magis est sine fine, In Christo erga homines conciliatus amor. Stat dubius cui se parti concedat Olympus, Et flammæ vibrant, & vera tonitrua rauco Excidit attonitis mens omnis, & impetus omnis, Cedite Romani Scriptores, cedite Graii, fama recens vel celebravit anus. Hæc quicunque leget tantum cecinisse putabit Mæonidem ranas, Virgilium culices. S. B., M.D. 1674. ON PARADISE LOST. HEN I beheld the Poet blind, yet bold, I lik'd his Project, the success did fear; Through that wide Field how he his way should find Thou hast not miss'd one thought that could be fit, So that no room is here for Writers left, |