negotiating with the widow he had sold the future copyright for £25 to Brabazon Aylmer, of The Three Pigeons in Cornhill; in 1683 this Aylmer sold half the copyright to the rising young bookseller, Jacob Tonson, then of the Judge's Head in Chancery Lane; in 1690-1 Tonson acquired the other half; and from that time till about 1760, such were the old notions and customs of the book-trade, that the sale of Paradise Lost, and indeed of all Milton's poetry, was an almost unbroken monopoly of the famous firm of the Tonsons. In 1727, when the Tonsons were already rolling in wealth, much of it derived from their numerous editions of Paradise Lost and the other poems of Milton, in all varieties of forms, Milton's widow died in extreme old age and in very straitened circumstances at Nantwich, and Milton's youngest and last surviving daughter, Deborah Clarke, died in mere penury in London.
- Edinburgh: Dec., 1876.
