its height, and did not abate sufficiently for Milton
to return to town with safety until about February in the following
year, leaving, it has been asserted, a record of himself at Chalfont in
the shape of a sonnet on the pestilence regarded as a judgment for the
sins of the King, written with a diamond on a window-pane--as if the
blind poet could write even with a pen! The verses, nevertheless, may
not impossibly be genuine: they are almost too Miltonic for an imitator
between 1665 and 1738, when they were first published.

The public calamity of 1666 affected Milton more nearly than that of
1665. The Great Fire came within a quarter of a mile of his house, and
though he happily escaped the fate of Shirley, and did not make one of
the helpless crowd of the homeless and destitute, his means were
seriously abridged by the destruction of the house in Bread Street where
he had first seen the light, and which he had retained through all the
vicissitudes of his fortunes. He could not, probably, have published
"Paradise Lost" without the co-operation of Samuel Symmons. Symmons's
endeavours to push the sale of the book make the bibliographical history
of the first edition unusually interesting. There were at least nine
different issues, as fresh batches were successively bound up, with
frequent alterations of title-page as reasonable cause became apparent
to the strategic Symmons. First Milton's name is given in full, then he
is reduced to initials, then restored; Symmons's own name, at first
suppressed, by and by appears; his agents are frequently changed; and
the title is altered to suit the year of issue, that the book may seem a
novelty. The most important of all these alterations is one in which the
author must have actively participated--the introduction of the Argument
which, a hundred and forty years afterwards, was to cause Harriet
Martineau to take up "Paradise Lost" at the age of seven, and of the
Note on the metre conveying "a reason of that which stumbled many, why
this poem rimes not." Partly, perhaps, by help of these devices,
certainly without any aid from advertising or reviewing, the impression
of thirteen hundred copies was disposed of within twenty months, as
attested by Milton's receipt for his second five pounds, April 26,
1669--two years, less one day, since the signature of the original
contract. The first printed notice appeared after the edition had been
entirely sold. It was by Milton's nephew, Edwa