present spelling in one place or many places, and arbitrary variation from it the next moment or in other places, which is the most noteworthy characteristic of all. You have flower, just as now, but also flowr, flowre, flour, floure, and flouer; you have seize, just as now, but also sieze, seise, and sease; and so with almost any test-word you may pursue through the text—our spelling of it almost always found, often or occasionally, but with one or more alternatives at option. Not that there are not peculiar spellings in the original edition which have a real significance, etymological or phonetic, and which ought therefore to be carefully preserved in modern editions. Examples are highth for our height, stupendious for our stupendous, sovran for our sovereign, harald for our herald, voutsafe for our vouchsafe, and a few more. These are genuine old forms; and, what is more, some of them are express Miltonisms. For reasons of music, or of other effect, he must have preferred such forms; and he must have given directions that they should be strictly retained wherever they appeared in the manuscript he had dictated, and have taken pains to know that this had been done.[1]
The First Edition of Paradise Lost was sold out early in 1669, not long after the transference by Simmons of his last remaining copies to Helder of Little Britain. The proof exists in the form of Milton's receipt to Simmons, written by proxy, and dated April 26, 1669, for the second £5, due by the agreement. At least 1,300 copies of the poem, therefore, had been disposed of in about eighteen months; and one sees no reason why Simmons should not then have immediately printed a second edition. For about five years, however, except in so far as there may have been an available surplus in the extra 200 copies which Simmons had been entitled to print originally, the book was suffered to remain out of print. During these five years Milton had various transactions with other publishers than Simmons. The publisher of his Paradise Regained and Samson
- ↑ This whole subject of Milton's Spelling I have discussed more at large in an Essay "On Milton's English," prefixed to the Cambridge Edition of Milton's Poetical Works.
