editions of Paradise Lost during this period are enumerated, and about as many new editions of the collective Poetical Works in different forms.* Among these various editions we may note the following:-A folio edition of Paradise Lost in 1770, by Foulis of Glasgow; the edition of the Poetical Works in 1779, in 3 vols. small 8vo., with Life by Dr. Johnson, which formed part of Johnson's series of the English Poets; an edition of Paradise Lost, "illustrated with Texts of Scripture by John Gillies, D.D., one of the ministers of Glasgow," published in London in 1788; an edition of the first two Books of Paradise Lost, published at Bury St. Edmund's in 1792-3, by Capel Lofft, Esq., with the original spelling in part restored, and other peculiarities; and, finally, the magnificent edition of the Poetical Works in three folio volumes, with Life by William Hayley, and engravings from designs by Westall, published by Boydell and Nicol in 1794-7. But even this last superb book, being without notes, did not supersede Bishop Newton's "variorum" edition. Originally published in 1749-52, Newton's edition of the Poetical Works remained the standard library edition till the close of the century, and was reprinted no fewer than eight times, either in its first form of 3 vols. 4to., or in the form of 4 vols. 8vo. Use was also made of Newton's text and his notes in some of the smaller contemporary editions of Paradise Lost.

In the present century the well-known "variorum " edition of Milton's Poetical Works, by the Rev. Henry John Todd (1763) -1845), has, for library purposes, superseded Newton's and all others. The first edition was in 1801, in 6 vols. 8vo., the editor being then Rector of Allhallows, Lombard Street, London. There was a second edition in 1809, in 7 vols. ; a third in 1826, in 6 vols. ; a fourth in 4 vols., in 1842, at which time Todd was Archdeacon of Cleveland in Yorkshire; and the last edition was in 1852, also in 4 vols. In Todd's editions are amassed, in almost confusing over-abundance, selections from the notes, criticisms, elucidations, and dissertations of the whole series of previous editors and commentators, together with a considerable quantity

* Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual, by Bohn, Art. "Milton ;" and List of Milton Editions in Todd, vol. iv. Edit. of 1852.

of fresh matter, historical and critical, by Todd himself. They retain the value due to great and miscellaneous accumulation of material actuated by conscientiousness and pious devotion to the subject; they ought always to be spoken of with respect; and whoever writes at large about Milton and his Poetry must use their stores, whether he makes sufficient acknowledgment or not. As Todd died in 1845, the edition of 1842 is the last that had his personal superintendence. In 1831 appeared Mr. Pickering's Aldine edition of the Poetical Works, in 3 vols. 12mo., with Life by the Rev. John Mitford-which edition has been reprinted more than once. In 1835 appeared, in 6 vols. 8vo., the Poetical Works, edited, with Notes and a Life, by Sir Egerton Brydges-of which edition there have been reprints in one volume. In 1851 there was issued by Mr. Pickering an edition in 8 volumes 8vo., of the Works of Milton both in prose and in verse-complete, save that it does not include the treatise on Christian Doctrine; to which edition there was prefixed, in a revised form, the Life written for the Aldine edition of the Poems by the Rev. John Mitford. It is to be regretted that an edition so handsome to the eye should be so incorrect, and should be without those accompaniments of accurate dating, explanation of the circumstances of the several publications, and other historical elucidations, which are essential to a good edition of the works of a great writer of the past. In this edition it is professed, indeed, that the poems, as well as the prose-writings, are reproduced from the original editions-spelling, punctuation, and all-which is so far a distinction of the edition for philological purposes; but not even has this scheme been adequately carried out. Still, as one of the most beautiful books of our modern press, Pickering's eight-volume Milton cannot be passed without notice. Nor, while leaving scores of other recent editions of Paradise Lost unmentioned, ought we to omit Mr. Thomas Keightley's, included in his edition of Milton's Poetical Works, in 2 vols. 8vo., in 1859. As this is perhaps the most recent well-known edition of Milton's poetry, so it is one of the most useful. Mr. Keightley has taken great pains with the text, more especially as regards the punctuation, which he has revised throughout according to a system of his own. He has also given a good selection of notes from the stores of Todd and

other commentators, and has added not a few independent notes and criticisms; while in his companion volume on the Life, Opinions, and Writings of Milton (1855) will be found a distinct "Introduction to Paradise Lost," containing much that readers of the poem in his Edition would do well to take along with them. The only other edition which it seems necessary to notice is that included in an American edition of the Poetical Works by Professor Charles Dexter Cleveland of Philadelphia, of which there has been a London issue (1865) in one vol. 8vo. There are brief notes in this edition ; but its chief peculiarity is an extensive verbal index to the poetry, revised and much amended from Todd's Verbal Index, first published in his edition of 1809.

Origin of the Poem and History of its Composition.

A GREAT deal has been written concerning "the origin" of Paradise Lost.

Voltaire, in 1727, suggested that Milton had, while in Italy in 1638-9, seen performed there a Scriptural drama, entitled Adamo, written by a certain Giovanni Battista Andreini, and that, "piercing through the absurdity of the performance to the hidden majesty of the subject," he "took from that ridiculous trifle the first hint of the noblest work which the human imagination has ever attempted." The Andreini thus recalled to notice was the son of an Italian actress, and was known in Italy and also in France as a writer of comedies and religious poems, and also of some defences of the Drama. He was born in 1578, and, as he did not die till 1652, may have been of some reputation in Italy as a living author at the time of Milton's visit. His Adamo, of which special mention is made, was published at Milan in 1613, again at Milan in 1617; and there was a third edition of it at Perugia in 1641. It is a drama in Italian verse,

Essay on Epic Poetry, originally written by Voltaire in English during his stay in London, afterwards translated into French, and now included, in an amended form, in Voltaire's Collected Works, with the title "Essai sur la Poésie Épique." One chapter of the essay is devoted to Milton. It is a slight thing, showing no real knowledge of Milton's life; and the statement about Andreini, with which the chapter opens, is made in this off-hand manner : "Milton, voyageant en Italie dans sa jeunesse, vit représenter à Milan une comédie," &c. Where Voltaire had picked up the fact he does not tell us. I fancy it was a sheer guess of his own put as a fact.

in five Acts, representing the Fall of Man. Among the characters, besides Adam and Eve, are God the Father, the Archangel Michael, Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub, the Serpent, and various allegoric personages, such as the Seven Mortal Sins, the World, the Flesh, Famine, Despair, Death. There are also choruses of Seraphim, Cherubim, Angels, Phantoms, and Infernal Spirits. From specimens which have been given, it appears that the play, though absurd enough on the whole to justify the way in which Voltaire speaks of it, is not destitute of vivacity and other merits, and that, if Milton did read it, or see it performed, he may have retained a pretty strong recollection of it.*

The hint that Milton might have been indebted for the first idea of his poem to Andreini opened up one of those literary questions in which ferrets among old books, and critics of more ingenuity than judgment, delight to lose themselves. In various quarters hypotheses were started as to particular authors to whom, in addition to Andreini, Milton might have been indebted for this or that in his Paradise Lost. The notorious William Lauder gave an impulse to the question by his publications, from 1746 to 1755, openly accusing Milton of plagiarism; and, though the controversy, in the form in which Lauder had raised it, ended with the exposure of his forgeries, the so-called "Inquiry into the Origin of Paradise Lost" has continued to occupy to this day critics of a very different stamp from Lauder, and writing in a very different spirit. The result has been that some thirty authors have been cited, as entitled, along with Andreini or apart from him, to the credit of having probably or possibly contributed something to the conception, the plan, or the execution of Milton's great poem. Quite recently, for example, a claim has been advanced for the Dutch poet, Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679), one of whose productions - a tragedy called Lucifer, acted at Amsterdam, and published in 1654-describes the rebellion of the Angels, and otherwise goes over much of the ground of Paradise Lost. Milton, it is argued, must have heard of this tragedy before he began his own Epic, and may have known Dutch sufficiently to read it. Then there was the somewhat older Dutch poet, Jacob

• A sufficient account of Andreini's Adamo is given in Todd's Milton, vol. i. pp. 230-236, edit. 1852.

Cats (1577-1660), one of whose poems, describing Adam and Eve in Paradise, might have been known to Milton, even if he could not read Dutch, as it had been translated into Latin by Caspar Barlæus, and published at Dordrecht in 1643. Nor, if Vondel and Cats remained unknown to Milton, was it possible that he should not be familiar with Adamus Exul, a Latin tragedy by the famous Hugo Grotius, the most learned Dutchman of his age, and whom Milton himself had met in Paris. This poem of Grotius, the work of his youth, had been before the world since. 1601. But not from Dutch sources only is Milton supposed to have derived hints. May he not have seen the following Latin works by German authors-the Bellum Angelicum of Frederic Taubmann, of which two books and a fragment appeared in 1604; the Dæmonomachia of Odoric Valmarana, published in Vienna in 1627; and the Sarcotis of the Jesuit Jacobus Masenius, three books of which were published at Cologne in 1644 Among possible Italian sources of help, better known or less known than Andreini's Adamo, there have been picked out the followingAntonio Cornozano, Discorso in Versi della Creazione del Mondo sino alla Venuta di Gesù Cristo, 1472; Antonio Alfani, La Battaglia Celeste tra Michele e Lucifero, 1568; Erasmo di Valvasone, Angelada, 1590; Giovanni Soranzo, Dell' Adamo, 1604; Amico Angyifilo, Il Caso di Lucifero; Tasso, Le Sette Giornate del Mondo Creato, 1607; Gasparo Murtola, Della Creazione del Mondo: Poema Sacro, 1608; Felice Passero, Epamerone; overo, L'Opere de sei Giorni, 1609; Marini, Strage degli Innocenti, 1633, and also his Gerusalemme Distrutta; Troilo Lancetta, La Scena Tragica d'Adamo ed Eva, 1644; Serafino della Salandra, Adamo Caduto: Trag. Sacra, 1647. A Spanish poet has been procured for the list in Alonzo de Azevedo, the author of a Creacion del Mundo, published in 1615; and a similar poem of the Portuguese Camoens, published in the same year, has also been referred to. Finally, reference has been made to the Locusta of the Englishman Phineas Fletcher (a poem in Latin Hexameters published at Cambridge in 1627), and to certain Poemata Sacra of the Scottish Latinist, Andrew Ramsay, published at Edinburgh in 1633; as well as, more in detail, to Joshua Sylvester's English translation of the Divine Weeks and Works of Du Bartas, originally published