er volumes of this Parisian collection, or in that of separate
prior editions of particular writers. There were some gaps, however,
which he wanted to fill up. He wanted the _Chronographia_ of
Theophanes Isaacius, a chronicle of events from A.D. 277 to A.D. 811;
also the _Brevarium Historicum_ of Constantine Manasses, a
metrical chronicle of the world from the Creation to A.D. 1081; also
the book of Georgius Codinus, the compiler of the fifteenth century,
entitled _Excerpta de Originibus Constantinopolitanis_; also
that of Anastasius Bibliothecarius on the _Lives of the Popes_.
The Parisian editions of these, or of the first three, were now out
(all in 1655). At the same time there might be sent him the Parisian
editions, if they had appeared, of the Annals of _Michael
Glycas_, bringing the History of the World from the Creation to
A.D. 1118, and the valuable Lives of John and Manuel Comnenus by
_Joannes Cinnamus_, the imperial notary of the 12th century.--As
the Parisian edition of Michael Glycas (by Labbe) did not appear till
1660, and that of Joannes Cinnamus (by Du Cange) not till 1670, Bigot
can have forwarded to Milton only the first-mentioned Byzantine
books. One may imagine the arrival of the parcel of learned folios in
the neat new tenement which Milton inhabited in Petty France; and it
gives one a stronger idea than we have yet had of Milton's passion
for books, and of his indomitable perseverance and ingenuity in the
use of them in his blind state, that he should have taken such pains,
at our present date, to supply himself with copies of some of the
rare Byzantine Historians. Connecting this purchase, through Bigot,
with the recent inquiry, through Heimbach, about the price of
Blaeu's great Atlas, may we not also discern some increased
attention to the furnishing of the house occasioned by the second
marriage?

[Footnote 1: It seems to me possible, though I would not be too sure,
that the book about which Bigot wrote to Milton was one entitled
_Modus tenendi Parliamentum apud Anglos_, by Henry Elsynge,
Clerk of the House of Lords, and father of the Henry Elsynge who was
Clerk of the Commons In the Long Parliament (Wood, Ath. III. 363-4).
The book, which had been sent forth under Parliamentary authority in
1641, was a standard one; and manuscript copies of it, or drafts for
it, more complete than itself, may well have been extant in such
places as the Cotton Library or Bradshaw's. Actually Elsynge's
autogra