OF

JOHN MILTON:

EDITED,

WITH MEMOIR, INTRODUCTIONS, NOTES, AND

AN ESSAY ON MILTON'S ENGLISH

AND VERSIFICATION,

BY

DAVID MASSON, M.A., LL.D.,

HISTORIOGRAPHER ROYAL, FOR SCOTLAND,

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.

VOL. I.

THE MINOR POEMS.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1910

PR 3550 A2

1910 V.I

First Edition 1874, "Golden Treasury Series," 2 vols. (Pott 8vo)
Second Edition 1882, 3 vols. (Foolscap 8vo)

Reprinted 1893 (Globe 8vo), 1896, 1903, 1910

THE Golden Treasury Edition of Milton's Poetical Works having been for some time out of print, the present edition is substituted, as perhaps more conveniently intermediate in form between the Globe Edition and the large Cambridge Edition. Certain other changes have been permitted by this change of form. The chronological arrangement of the Poems has been adopted, as having some advantages. Volume I. contains all the Minor Poems; Volume II. contains Paradise Lost by itself; and Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes follow in Volume III. The Editorial matter is also considerably more extensive and varied than in the Golden Treasury Edition. The Memoir has been revised, and in part rewritten; the Introductions have received some correction; a substantial addition, likely to be useful to students, is inserted in Volume III., in the shape of an abridgment of an Essay on Milton's English and Versification, hitherto accessible only in the Cambridge Edition; and the Notes are more numerous and minute, and include the Latin Poems as well as the English. It is hoped that the distribution of

the merely editorial matter in such a way as to leave the text itself always full-paged and undisturbed,the bibliographical and historical Introductions preceding the Poems severally, and the philological Essay and explanatory Notes coming together at the end,—will be agreeable to most readers. It is also hoped that the text and the punctuation of the Poems will be found not less accurate than in the former editions; for which they were carefully prepared by study and collation of the originals.

EDINBURGH: September 1882.

PREFACE IN 1893.

THE Edition is now reissued, with no other change than a verbal correction or two and a slight enlargement of the size of the volumes.

EDINBURGH: April 1893.