have rather forgotten me, since, as you say, you admire in me so many different virtues wedded together. From so many weddings. I should assuredly dread a family too numerous, were it not certain that, in narrow circumstances and under severity of fortune, virtues are most excellently reared, and are most flourishing. Yet one of these said virtues has not very handsomely rewarded me, for entertaining her; for that which you call my political virtue, and which I should rather wish you to call my devotion to my country (enchanting me with her captivating name) almost, if I may say so, expatriated me. Other virtues, however, join their voices to assure me, that wherever we prosper in rectitude, there is our country. In ending my letter, let me obtain from you this favor, that if you find any parts of it incorrectly written, and without stops, you will impute it to the boy who writes for me, who is utterly ignorant of Latin, and to whom I am forced (wretchedly enough) to repeat every single syllable that I dictate. I still rejoice that your merit as an accomplished

·

man, whom I knew as a youth of the highest expectation, has advanced you so far in the honorable favor of your prince. For your prosperity in every other point you have both my wishes and my hopes. Farewell.

"London, August 15, 1666,"

How interesting is this complaint when we recollect that the great writer, reduced to such irksome difficulties in regard to his secretary, was probably engaged at this period in polishing the sublimest of the poems.

From Ellwood's account, it appears that Paradise Lost was complete in 1665. Philips and Toland assert, that it was actually published the following year; but I believe no copy has been found of a date so early. The first edition on the list of the very accurate Mr. Loft, was printed by Peter Parker in 1665, and, probably, at the expence of the author, who sold the work to Samuel Simmons, by a contract dated the 27th of April, in the same year.

The terms of this contract are such as

a lover of genius can hardly hear without a sigh of pity and indignation. The author of the Paradise Lost, received only an immediate payment of five pounds for a work, which is the very master-piece of sublime and refined imagination; a faculty not only naturally rare, but requiring an extraordinary coincidence of circumstances to cherish and strengthen it for the long and regular exercise essential to the production of such a poem. The bookseller's agreement, however, entitled the author to a conditional payment of fifteen pounds more; five to be paid after the sale of thirteen hundred copies of the first edition, and five in the same manner, both on a second and third. The number of each edition was limited to fifteen hundred copies.

The original size of the publication was a small quarto, and the poem was at first divided into ten books; but in the second edition the author very judiciously increased the number to twelve, by introducing a pause in the long narration of the

seventh and of the tenth, so that each of these books became two.

Simmons was a printer, and his brief advertisement to the work he had purchased, is curious enough to merit insertion:

"Courteous Reader, there was no argument at first intended to the book; but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have procured it, and withal a reason of that, which stumbled many others, why the poem rhymes not." Here we may plainly see that the novelty of blank verse was considered as an unpalatable innovation. The book, however, advanced so far in its sale, that thirteen hundred were dispersed in two years. In April, 1669, the author received his second payment of five pounds. The second edition came forth in the year of his death, and the third in four years after that event: his widow, who inherited a right to the copy, sold all her claims to Simmons for eight pounds, in December, 1680; so that twenty-eight pounds, paid at different times in the course of thirteen years, is the whole pecuniary

reward which this great performance pro duced to the poet and his widow.

But although the emolument, which the author derived from his noblest production, was most deplorably inadequate to its merit, he was abundantly gratified with immediate and fervent applause from several accomplished judges of poetical genius.

It has been generally supposed that Paradise Lost was neglected to a mortifying degree on its first appearance; and that the exalted poet consoled his spirit under such mortification by a magnanimous confidence in the justice of future ages, and a sanguine anticipation of his poetical immortality. The strength and dignity of his mind would indeed have armed him against any possible disappointment of his literary ambition; but such was the reception of his work, that he could not be disappointed. Johnson has vindicated the public on this point with judgment and success: "The sale of books (he observes) was not in Milton's age what it is in the present; the nation had been satisfied, from