the present Books XI. and XII., he smooths the junction between these two books by throwing in the five lines that now open Book XII. There are, besides, two or three slight insertions or changes in the course of the text of the poem; but substantially, save for the re-arrangement in twelve books, the Second Edition is a reprint of the first, correct enough, but in much less handsome form, and with some of the errata of the first left unamended.
As Milton died on the 8th of November, 1674, all that had come to himself, in the shape of money for his Paradise Lost, was the £10 (worth £35 now) he had received for the First Edition in the two payments of 1667 and 1669. It was to his representatives and administrators that Simmons had to account for the additional due on the completed sale of the current Second Edition, and for any further payments in terms of the original agreement. There was a law-suit in 1674-5 between Milton's widow and his three "undutiful" daughters by his first wife reflecting the inheritance of his little property. This may account for the fact that, though the Second Edition of Paradise Lost must have been exhausted in 1678, when Simmons published "The Third Edition," it was not till the 21st of December, 1680, that he settled with the widow. On that day she gave him a receipt for: "which," said the receipt, "is in full payment for all my right, Title, or Interest, which I have, or ever had, in the Copy of a Poem Intituled Paradise Lost, in Twelve Books in 8vo, by John Milton, Gent., my late husband." The discharge was repeated by her in still more emphatic legal form in a document dated April 29, 1681. Of the £8 paid her £5 had been due to her for the Second Edition; and for the additional £3 the poor lady had parted with the £5 more that would have been forthcoming from the Third Edition, then current, and with all chances beyond that from a new bargain after the expiry of Milton's original agreement for three editions. Paradise Lost had been worth, to the author and his family, exactly £18 in all, a sum equal to about £63 now. Nor was the publisher Simmons to make more out of the poem than he had already made; which cannot have been very much. While
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