The first complete edition of The Poetical Works of Mr. John Milton . . . was printed by Jacob Tonson in 1695. In 1732 Richard Bentley put forward a curious edition of Paradise Lost in which long passages were rejected and placed in the margin on the ground that they were interpolations made possible by Milton's blindness. The Latin and Italian poems, with a translation by William Cowper, were printed by W. Hayley in 1808. The most important of the numerous later editions of Milton's poetical works are by H. J. Todd (6 vols., 1801) ; J. Mitford ("Aldine edition," 3 vols., 1832) ; T. Keightley (2 vols., 1859), whose notes are most original and interesting; D. Masson ("Library" or "Cambridge" edition, 3 vols., 1874 ; of which a new edition appeared in 189o, with memoir, introduction, notes and an essay on Milton's English and versification) ; John Bradshaw (new "Aldine edition," 2 vols., 1892) ; also a careful reprint retaining the peculiarities of the earlier printed copies, by H. C. Beeching ("Oxford edition," i9o4) ; and another, with variant readings, by W. Aldis Wright (Cambridge University Press, 1903). The prose works were first partially collected in 1697. They were edited by J. Toland (3 vols., 1698), by C. Sym mons (7 vols., 1806), by Pickering (8 vols., 1851) with the poetical works, and by J. A. St. John for Bohn's "Libraries" (5 vols., 1848-53). There are numerous annotated editions of separate works.
The earliest life of Milton is contained in Wood ms. D. 4 in the Bodleian library, Oxford, and was printed in the Eng. Hist. Review for January 1902, also by E. S. Parsons in Colorado College Studies, No. X. (1903). The author, who sympathized with the poet's political views, is unknown, but the name of Milton's friend, Dr. Nathan Paget, is suggested. His account formed the basis of the life given by Anthony a Wood in Fasti oxonienses (1691). Wood was also indebted to John Aubrey, whose Brief Lives were not printed until later. The life by his nephew Edward Phillips was prefixed to the Letters of State printed in 1694, and reprinted by William Godwin in his Lives of E. and J.
Phillips (1815). Samuel Johnson's famous Life of Milton (1779), which contains some valuable criticism, is written from a somewhat unfriendly standpoint. The records of Milton's official life, available in the State Papers, were first made use of by H. J. Todd in a third edition (1829) of his Milton. All the available information was gath ered in Professor Masson's Life of John Milton; narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical and Literary History of his Time (6 vols., 1859-8o, with index, 1894 ; new ed. of vol. i., 1881) which contains ample reference to original authorities. Shorter works are Milton and seine Zeit (2 pts., 1877, 1879), by Alfred Stern ; Milton (1879), by Mark Pattison in the "English Men of Letters" series, and Life of John Milton (189o) by Dr. Richard Garnett in the "Great Writers" series, with a bibliography by J. P. Anderson. W. H. Hulme, Two early lives of Milton (1924), contains lives by Toland and Fenton. A valuable contribution to Miltonic criticism was made in 1893 by Robert Bridges in an essay on Milton's Prosody. This was reprinted in 1901 (new ed. 1921). Amongst other critical essays should be men tioned essays by Macaulay (Edinburgh Review, 1825) ; Walter Bagehot (Literary Studies, vol. i., 1879) ; S. T. Coleridge (Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, 1856) ; Edward Dowden (Transcripts and Studies, 1888) ; Edmond Scherer (Etudes sur la litterature cantem poraine, vol. vi., 1882) ; Augustine Birrell (Obiter dicta, second series 1887) ; Walter Raleigh (Milton, 1900) ; E. Allodoli, Giovanni Milton e l'Italia (Prato, 1907) ; N. G. Tarrant, John Milton (1908) ; R. 0. Havens, Influence of Milton in English Poetry (1922) ; W. Harris, John Milton (2nd ed. 1923) ; J. Langdon, Milton's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (1924) ; D. Saurat, Milton, Man and Thinker (1925) ; J. H. Hanford, A Milton Handbook (1926) ; M. A. Larson, The Modernity of Milton (1927). (D. MA.; X.)