whole interest in the book, to that extent for a sum equal to about £70 now, one fourth paid in advance, and the rest left in prospect.
The printing of the book may have begun immediately after the agreement, for the registers of Stationers' Hall show this entry under the date August 20, 1667: "Mr. Sam. Symons entered for his copie, under the hands of Mr. Thomas Tomkyns and Mr. Warden Royston, a Booke or Copie Intituled Paradise Lost, a Poem in Tenne bookes, by J. M." To complete the formality of registration, one of the Wardens of the Stationers' Company had to add his name to that of the official licencer of any book registered; and Mr. Royston, a notable Royalist bookseller of the day, whom Milton had had occasion to know well in the time of his Secretaryship, was one of the Wardens that year.
Not long after the date of this entry, and presumably in or about October, 1667, Paradise Lost was out in London, and was to be obtained at the book-shops by "particular reading customers" at the price of 3s. per copy; which is as if a similar book now were to sell for 10s. 6d. The title-page, as purchasers then first cast their eyes upon it, was in these words:—"Paradise lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books By John Milton. Licensed and Entred according to Order. London Printed, and are to be sold by Peter Parker under Creed Church neer Aldgate; And by Robert Boulter at the Turks Head in Bishopsgate-street; And Matthias Walker, under St. Dunstons Church in Fleet-street, 1667." So in mere continuous type; but for the exact look of this original title-page, and for the look of page after page of the ten books of the text in that original edition, down to the minutest details of typography and stationery, the reader is referred to the present facsimile. It is so accurate a reproduction, even to the printer's errata, that a person having it in his hands may, for that matter, imagine himself one of the first purchasers of the original, in October or November, 1667, who has just left Mr. Parker's shop, near Aldgate, or Mr. Boulter's, in Bishopsgate Street, or Mr. Walker's, in Fleet Street, with a fresh copy, and is turning over the leaves as he walks. Three
