irst three
editions. Each was to consist of fifteen hundred copies, and on the
second and third, respectively, reaching a sale of thirteen hundred,
he was to receive a farther sum of L5 for each, making a total of L15.
The receipt for the second sum of L5 is dated April 26, 1669.

In 1670 Milton published his "History of Britain," from the fabulous
period of the Norman Conquest. And in the same year he published in
one volume "Paradise Regained" and "Samson Agonistes." It has been
currently asserted that Milton preferred the "Paradise Regained" to
"Paradise Lost." This is not true; but he may have been justly
offended by the false principles on which some of his friends
maintained a reasonable opinion. The "Paradise Regained" is inferior
by the necessity of its subject and design. In the "Paradise Lost"
Milton had a field properly adapted to a poet's purposes; a few hints
in Scripture were expanded. Nothing was altered, nothing absolutely
added; but that which was told in the Scriptures in sum, or in its
last results, was developed into its whole succession of parts. Thus,
for instance, "There was war in heaven," furnished the matter for a
whole book. Now for the latter poem, which part of our Saviour's life
was it best to select as that in which paradise was regained? He might
have taken the crucifixion, and here he had a much wider field than in
the temptation; but then he was subject to this dilemma: if he
modified, or in any way altered, the full details of the four
evangelists, he shocked the religious sense of all Christians; yet,
the purposes of a poet would often require that he should so modify
them. With a fine sense of this difficulty, he chose the narrow basis
of the temptation in the wilderness, because there the whole had been
wrapped up in the Scriptures in a few brief abstractions. Thus "he
showed him all the kingdoms of the earth," is expanded, without
offence to the nicest religious scruple, into that matchless
succession of pictures, which bring before us the learned glories of
Athens, Rome in her civil grandeur, and the barbaric splendor of
Parthia. The actors being only two, the action of "Paradise Regained"
is unavoidably limited. But in respect of composition, it is, perhaps,
more elaborately finished than "Paradise Lost."

His subsequent works are not important enough to merit a separate
notice. His end was now approaching. In the summer of 1674 he was
still cheerful, and in the possession of h