PREFACE TO THE NOTES

THE chief commentators and annotators on Milton's Poetry have been mentioned in our Introductions to the Poems severally; but it may be well here to present them in conspectus :—

1695. P. H. pλoπoinτηs, i.e. PATRICK HUME: in his folio volume of Annotations on Paradise Lost. See Introd. to P. L. II. pp. 25—26. 1712. ADDISON: in his Criticisms on Paradise Lost in the Spectator. See Introd. to P. L. II. p. 26.

1732. BENTLEY: in his extraordinary edition of Paradise Lost. See Introd. to P. L. II. pp. 29-32.

1733. DR. ZACHARY PEARCE. See Introd. to P. L. II. p. 32

and n.

1734. The two JONATHAN RICHARDSONS (father and son): in their Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Paradise Lost, with a Life of the Author, etc. See Introd. to P. L. II. pp. 74, 75 and n.

1744. JAMES PATERSON, M.A.: in A Complete Commentary, with Etymological, Explanatory, Critical, and Classical Notes on Paradise Lost. London. The commentary, which is largely philological, occupies 512 pages small 8vo, and is not accompanied by the text of the poem.

1749. DR., afterwards BISHOP, NEWTON: in his edition of Paradise Lost in 1749 in two volumes quarto, and his appended edition of Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, and the Minor Poems in 1752, in one volume quarto. See Introd. to P. L. II. pp. 35, 36. Newton's volumes, in these and in subsequent editions of them, contained, in addition to his own notes, and selections from notes previously published, notes furnished to him by DR. GREENWOOD, DR. PEARCE, WARBURTON, JORTIN, DR. Heylin, Mr. CaltoN, MR. THYER of Manchester, and others.

1750. JOHN CALLANDER: in an edition of the First Book of Paradise Lost, published this year by Robert and Andrew Foulis of Glasgow. Callander, who was a Scottish laird, scholar, and antiquary, born about 1721, not only annotated the First Book for that Glasgow edition, but prepared, or compiled, voluminous Notes to the whole Poem. "The labour of many of the best years of my life," he styles them in one of his letters; so that, as he had published a portion of them in 1750, he may have continued the work till 1760 or later. He lived till 1789; but, though he had published several antiquarian books and papers in the interval, he appears to have regarded his Commentary on Paradise Lost with peculiar satisfaction, and to have been anxious for its preservation. Accordingly, in 1781, he had presented it to the Scottish Society of Antiquaries, of which he was a fellow; and it is still in the possession of that Society, in nine thin folio MS. volumes. A report on it, and especially on the amount of Callander's indebtedness to his predecessor and compatriot, Patrick Hume, was drawn up in 1826 by Mr. David Laing, and is printed in the Society's Transactions: vol. iii. part 1. Mr. Laing's conclusion was that Callander had undoubtedly used Hume's Commentary, helping himself to what he liked in it, just as Bishop Newton had done, though not with such direct acknowledgment, and that he had also helped himself in the same way to matter from other commentators, especially Bishop Newton, but that, after all, he could not be called "a servile copier," but on the contrary impressed one with respect for his "erudition and judgment," and his laborious devotedness to his task.

1751. JOHN MARCHANT: in an edition of Paradise Lost, with Notes, chiefly selected from previous commentators. See Introd. to P. L. II. p. 37.

"This

1763. JOHN WESLEY, the famous divine: in an edition of Paradise Lost put forth on a very peculiar principle. inimitable work, amidst all its beauties," Wesley said, "is unintelligible to abundance of readers, the immense learning which he [Milton] has everywhere crowded together making it quite obscure to persons of a common education. This difficulty, almost insuperable as it appears, I have endeavoured to remove in the following Extract: first by omitting those lines which I despaired of explaining to the world without using abundance of words; and, secondly, by adding short and easy notes."

1773. JAMES BUCHANAN: in The First Six Books of Paradise Lost, rendered into Grammatical Construction, etc., with Notes. This publication was posthumous; and I have not seen a copy.

1779. DR. JOHNSON: in the critical portions of his Life of Milton, as included in his Lives of the Poets, written for the collective issue of the works of the English Poets by the London BookTrade.

1785 and 1791. THOMAS WARTON: in his two editions of Milton's Minor Poems.-This well-known scholar, critic, and poet (1728-1790), remembered now chiefly by his "History of English Poetry," made a special study of Milton's Minor Poems, and published an edition of them in 1785, "with Notes Critical and Explanatory, and other Illustrations," which may be said for the first time to have given them their true place among Milton's writings and shown their abundant and minute interest in connexion with his Biography. It is, indeed, with all deduction on account of the want of sympathy with some parts of Milton's mind and life natural in a critic in Warton's circumstances, one of the best books of comment in the English language. Before his death he had prepared a second impression of it, which was posthumously published in 1791. This second edition presents many alterations from the first, and large additions; but there are also omissions in it of matter which had appeared in the first, chiefly of notes referring from the Minor Poems to Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. These omissions,

or abbreviations, were caused, it is believed, by Warton's intention to put forth a separate edition of those two Poems, where the omitted matter would have found a more suitable place. As he did not live to fulfil this intention, his First Edition of the Minor Poems retains much value still, apart from the Second. Warton's Notes to the Minor Poems, in fact, have been the stock from which all subsequent editors, and also all biographers, of Milton, from Todd to the present day, have derived a good deal of their material.

1788. JOHN GILLIES, D.D. of Glasgow: in an edition of Paradise Lost, "illustrated with Texts of Scripture." See Introd. to P. L. II. p. 38.

1792-3. CAPEL LOFFT, Esq. in an Edition of First Two Books of Paradise Lost with the original orthography restored, and with Notes, published at Bury St. Edmund's. See Introd. to P. L. II. p. 38.

1794-7. WILLIAM HAYLEY: in his Life of Milton, prefixed to

Boydell and Nicol's magnificently printed edition of Milton's Poetical Works. See Introd. to P. L. II. p. 38.

1795 and 1800. The REV. CHARLES DUNSTER, M.A. Thinking that Paradise Regained had been unduly neglected in comparison with Paradise Lost, Mr. Dunster issued, in 1795, in a handsome quarto volume, a separate edition of Paradise Regained, with the text in large type, and abundant footnotes in small type, partly a reproduction of those of Newton and his coadjutors, partly contributions by himself. The same scholar published, in 1800, an interesting little volume of Miltonic criticism entitled Considerations on Milton's Early Reading and the Prima Stamina of his Paradise Lost. See Introd. to P. L. II. p. 135.

1798. The REV. HENRY JOHN TODD, M.A. His first appearance among Milton's Commentators was in an edition of Comus, published at Canterbury, with notes and preliminary illustrations, and with the addition of a copy of the Masque from a manuscript belonging to the Duke of Bridgewater. See Introd. to Comus, ante, vol. I. p. 161 et seq. 1801, 1809, 1826, and 1842. The same REV. H. J. TODD, in the four successive editions, published in his lifetime, of all Milton's Poetical Works. See Introd. to P. L. II. p. 39. In these various editions, Todd, besides giving a most copious collection of notes from his predecessors in this list, and adding many of his own, incorporated suggestions received from many different quarters. With reference to Paradise Lost, he mentions particularly his obligations to a stock of MS. notes by the just-mentioned CHARLES DUNSTER, and to similar MS. notes by JOHN BOWLE, the editor of Cervantes (1725-1788), and BENJAMIN STILLINGFLEET, grandson of Bishop Stillingfleet (1702-1771). These last had been prepared with a view to publication about 1745, but the author had been stopped in his intention by Newton's edition of Milton in 1749. Todd also acknowledges some use, in his second and later editions, of "a small interleaved copy of Paradise Lost" that had been lent him, containing memoranda for notes, and some complete notes, by MR. CALLANDER (see previous article in this conspectus). He was not aware till after 1826 of the larger commentary that had been left by Callander; but the occasional specimens he gives from the memoranda in the interleaved copy were found by Mr. David Laing to agree pretty closely with the corresponding notes in the larger Callander commentary.