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The Poetical Works of John Milton
Scanned and proofed by Donal
O'Danachair,
[email protected]

Transcriber's Notes:
This e-text contains all of Milton's poems in
English and Italian. Poems in Latin have been ommitted.
The original
spelling, capitalisation and punctuation have been retained as far as
possible. Characters not in the ANSI standard set have been replaced
by their nearest equivalent. The AE & OE digraphs have been
transcribed as two letters. Accented
letters in the Italian poems have
been replaced by the unaccented letter.
No italics have been retained.

Footnotes have been moved to the end of the poem to which they
refer; in Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained they have been moved to
the end of the book.
The Poetical Works of John Milton
PREFACE by the Rev. H. C. Beeching, M. A.
This edition of Milton's Poetry is a reprint, as careful as Editor and
Printers have been able to make it, from the earliest printed copies of
the several poems. First the 1645 volume of the
Minor Poems has
been printed entire; then follow in order the poems added in the reissue
of 1673; the Paradise Lost, from the edition of 1667; and the Paradise
Regain'd and Samson
Agonistes from the edition of 1671.
The most interesting portion of the book must be reckoned the first
section of it, which reproduces for the first time the scarce small octavo
of 1645. The only reprint of the Minor Poems in the old spelling, so far
as I know, is the one edited by Mitford, but that followed the edition of

1673, which is comparatively uninteresting since it could not have had
Milton's oversight as it passed through the press. We know that it was
set up from a copy of the 1645 edition, because it reproduces some
pointless eccentricities such as the varying form of the chorus to Psalm
cxxxvi; but while it corrects the errata tabulated in that edition it
commits many more blunders of its own. It is valuable,
however, as
the editio princeps of ten of the sonnets and it contains one important
alteration in the Ode on the Nativity. This and all other alterations will
be found noted where they occur. I have not thought it necessary to
note mere differences of spelling between the two editions but a word
may find place here upon their general character. Generally it may be
said that, where the two editions differ, the later spelling is that now in
use. Thus words like goddess, darkness, usually written in the first
edition with one final s, have two, while on the other hand words like
vernall, youthfull, and monosyllables like hugg, farr, lose their double
letter. Many monosyllables, e.g. som, cours, glimps, wher, vers, aw, els,
don, ey, ly, so written in 1645, take on in 1673 an e mute, while words
like harpe, windes, onely, lose it. By a reciprocal change ayr and
cipress become air and cypress; and the vowels in daign, vail, neer,
beleeve, sheild, boosom, eeven, battail, travailer, and many other words
are similarly modernized. On the other hand there are a few cases
where the 1645 edition exhibits the spelling which has
succeeded in
fixing itself, as travail (1673, travel) in the sense of labour; and rob'd,
profane, human, flood and bloody, forest, triple, alas, huddling, are
found where the 1673 edition has roab'd, prophane, humane, floud and
bloudy, forrest, tripple, alass and hudling. Indeed the spelling in this
later edition is not untouched by seventeenth century inconsistency. It
retains here and there forms like shameles, cateres, (where 1645 reads

cateress), and occasionally reverts to the older-fashioned
spelling
of monosyllables without the mute e. In the Epitaph on the
Marchioness of Winchester, it reads --' And som flowers and some
bays.' But undoubtedly the impression on the whole is of a much more
modern text.
In the matter of small or capital letters I have followed the old copy,
except in one or two places where a personification
seemed not
plainly enough marked to a modern reader without a capital. Thus in Il

Penseroso, l. 49, I print Leasure, although both editions read leasure;
and in the Vacation Exercise, l. 71, Times for times. Also where the
employment or omission of a capital is plainly due to misprinting, as
too frequently in the 1673 edition, I silently make the correction.
Examples are, notes for Notes in Sonnet xvii. l. 13; Anointed for
anointed in Psalm ii. l.12.
In regard to punctuation I have followed the old printers except