SOURCE: Geduld, Harry M. “Miscellany Poems,” “Tonson and Paradise Lost,” and “Shakespeare and Tonson.” In Prince of Publishers: A Study of the Work and Career of Jacob Tonson, pp. 87-109; 113-32; 135-48. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969.

[In the following essay, Geduld discusses Tonson's compilations of verse, his publication of Milton's epic poem, and his popular editions of Shakespeare's works.]

MISCELLANY POEMS

A phenomenon such as Tonson's Miscellany is rare in the history of English literature. There are few instances in which a single collection of verse is representative of major developments in non-dramatic poetry over a period of thirty years. And it is doubtful that there exists another collection which reflects as faithfully as Tonson's the changing taste of an entire generation. R. D. Havens has maintained that the study of these Miscellanies is the one practicable way in which the vagaries of eighteenth-century taste may be determined inductively.¹ Tonson's collection provides abundant material for the scholar, sociologist, moralist, and historian, a battleground for the critics, and virgin soil for the bibliographer. In any or all of these fields, Tonson's Miscellany presents a variety of problems that are worthy of general consideration.

In its literary connotation, the miscellany proper differs from the general concept of the anthology in being a more or less heterogeneous collection of writings by three or more contemporary authors. This type of verse collection was extremely popular throughout the Elizabethan period. Such volumes as Tottel's Miscellany, Davidson's Poetical Rhapsody, and England's Helicon were compiled with the simple intention of entertaining readers with pastoral, lyrical, and occasional poetry. From the outset, the editor's choice was dictated by little if any personal, religious, or political bias; but shortly after the accession of James I, collections of elegiac and complimentary verse began to predominate, particularly at Oxford and Cambridge. The poems in these volumes were usually in Greek, Latin, or French, and occasionally in Hebrew, but in most of them a special section was set aside for English verse. Poetry for the sake of poetry remained an exception until 1672, when Hobart Kemp published his Collection of Poems Written Upon Several Occasions By Several Persons.² In a single volume, Kemp revived the generous spirit of the Elizabethan anthology, introducing new elements that were likely to appeal to the Restoration public. Having discovered for himself the popular taste for prologues and epilogues, he included in his collection two epilogues by Buckhurst and a prologue by Sedley. Characteristically, he avoided the coherence and sectional arrangement of mid-century anthologies, and thus every page (despite the unexceptional quality of much of the verse) can still captivate a reader enticed by the lure of the unexpected. The ingenuity of Kemp's collection led to the publication of a second, enlarged edition in the following year, by which time its success had already attracted the favorable attention of Mrs. Aphra Behn. The outcome was Covent Garden Drollery (1672), the earliest substantial collection of Restoration light verse; it was characterized by a generous sprinkling of prologues and epilogues, some by Mrs. Behn herself, others by minor court poets of the day. Apart from the intrinsic interest of the contributors and of particular poems in both volumes, Covent Garden Drollery and Kemp's Collection of Poems must together be considered the matrix from which the form of the Restoration miscellany was shaped. On the one hand, Kemp had revived the notion of collecting poetry for its own sake. On the other, Aphra Behn, stimulated by Kemp's experiment in publishing detached prologues and epilogues, ventured even further afield to gather material from contemporary “drolleries.”

Songs and “drollery” collections had been popular throughout the Civil Wars, but prior to the Restoration the “respectable reader” had considered them beneath his contempt. They were vulgar, witless, and without imagination. Many of the light, usually frivolous pieces in such collections derived ultimately, after many variations, from the songs in Elizabethan plays. Others, according to E. R. Wasserman, were written and “published surreptitiously to permit the Royalists to keep alive the memory of merry England.”³ Towards the end of the Commonwealth period a vast, untapped reservoir of verse was in existence. With the advent of court “drolleries,” the sluice gates were suddenly opened. The impact of rediscovered light verse during the Restoration period is comparable to that of the English folk-song revival at the turn of the twentieth century. Vulgar compositions were suddenly invested with a new mantle of respectability. Doggerel verses were polished into Restoration lyrics; the coarse was transmuted into the suggestive, obscenity into witticism.

It has not been generally recognized to what extent the hybrid quality typical of the Restoration lyric, that unique interfusion of the artless with the sophisticated, must be attributed to the influence of court drolleries. A vigorous circle of minor poets—Sedley, Rochester, Tate, Mrs. Behn, and others—refashioned the old and created the new after its image. Overnight, the new collections of light verse became staple reading among fashionable cliques. Volume followed volume. Following the Merry Drollery (1670), the Westminster Drollery (1671), the Oxford Drollery (1671), and the Windsor Drollery (1672), came The Holborn Drollery (1673), published soon after the Covent Garden Drollery. Thomas Deloney's The Garden of Good-Will (c. 1678; originally published c. 1650) set the fashion for reissuing pre-Restoration collections, and was followed in 1682 by a revival of Wit and Drollery containing “jovial poems” by William Davenant and John Donne. Thus, in less than a decade, the miscellany (after Kemp) and the drollery (after Aphra Behn) usurped the position formerly occupied by anthologies of elegiac and complimentary verse.

Like their Elizabethan counterparts, the new collections had no other object than to entertain. Unfortunately, the decline of the pre-Restoration anthology was not succeeded by the appearance of any serious contemporary verse, and the gap could not be filled by a volume of “jovial poems” or a miscellany of popular lyrics.

In the theatre, “imitation” had become the order of the day—old plays were revived and adapted in accordance with the contemporary social mode. Imitation quickly spread to non-dramatic poetry. Classical learning was in decline, although some familiarity with the classics was still considered to be a desirable social accomplishment. Translations were, accordingly, in general demand, preferably in the palatable form of verse adaptations. Yet here again, the length of many of the classics proved to be a serious obstacle. The public was not yet prepared for an English Virgil. Imitations and perversions of Ovid, Virgil, Homer, and Horace were welcome, but only in small doses; and the translator, if he were a prudent man with an eye for the main chance, would confine his selection to classical excerpts possessing an erotic or episodic appeal. The situation was not pleasant for poets and translators, who were inclined to take their work seriously.

“Divining that the refined literary taste of the Court, combined with the mental awakening produced by political controversy, might prove the herald of better days, Tonson was the first to display a serious though still very cautious publishing initiative.”⁴ His first Miscellany (1684) was an uncertain attempt to gauge the public taste for verse translations and occasional poetry. Since he was familiar with the drollery books and other contemporary miscellanies, he was not quite groping in the dark; but his experience of verse translations was still very limited when, in 1684, Dryden advised him to reprint Roscommon's “Essay on Translated Verse,” in which the rational principles of translation, previously laid down by Cowley and Denham, had been first elaborated:

On sure foundations let your fabric rise,
And with attractive majesty surprise;
Not by affected meretricious arts,
But strict harmonious symmetry of parts.

Roscommon's lines are the key to Tonson's first Miscellany. A fabric of minor verse translations is built about a solid core of familiar poems by Dryden. From the outset, Tonson, in compiling his selection, was torn between the need for quality and a natural desire for popularity. On the one hand, drollery books contained all the ingredients of a popular collection, but at a commonplace level; on the other, a volume of contemporary poetry and verse translations, however desirable from the literary standpoint, would be likely to prove a commercial failure on a grand scale. As a businessman, Tonson naturally understood that a fairly widespread sale was as necessary to his livelihood as was his reputation for selective publishing. He weighed the matter carefully and chose a compromise, balancing his first Miscellany between the new taste for translated verse and the popular appeal of the prologue and epilogue. Individual translations were brief; despite substantial extracts from Ovid, Horace, and Virgil, the separate books of each poem were divided among a group of translators who would, of course, be expected to produce a variety of translations in a variety of styles. The prologues and epilogues are mostly by Dryden—an acknowledged master of those forms, and the “copies” had no doubt been acquired from Herringman, who still, at that time, possessed exclusive rights to Dryden's early plays.

Tonson, however, had not as yet learned the difficult art of arranging his materials. Instead of sprinkling shorter pieces at judicious intervals throughout the volume (as Congreve later advised Lintot), Tonson required his readers to suffer a hundred pages at a stretch, unbroken by a single prologue, epilogue, or song. Tradition, in the form of a sectional arrangement of translated verse, continued to assert itself throughout the first and second parts of the Miscellany, and some attempt was made to group Dryden's original poems in order of popularity. Taken as a whole, the first two parts of the collection resemble a number of separately published poems that have been subsequently gathered into one volume. Indeed, it is quite easy to become absorbed in a single section without realizing that one is reading a miscellany.

Compared with the later volumes, the first Miscellany is narrow in scope, poor in its choice of subjects, and restricted in form. Of course, Dryden's own contributions improve the collection. The Medal, Mac Flecknoe, and Absalom and Achitophel were to be expected, for Tonson held the copyrights and was already assured of their success; but the bulk of the remaining original pieces in the same volume are also by Dryden, and we are thus left to assess the powers of Otway, Tate, Sedley, Creech, and Roscommon solely on the basis of their verse translations. Sedley provides very characteristic versions of three of Ovid's Elegies. In Book I, the eighth Elegy, he “Curses a Bawd for going about to debauch his Mistress.” The fifth Elegy of Book III he addresses “To his false Mistress” and the fourth in Book III, somewhat flippantly, “To a Man that lockt up his Wife.” Creech versifies the rape of Lucretia out of Ovid's Fasti, Book II. Otway, Tate, and Roscommon offer less readable versions of Virgil's Eclogues, Horace's Odes, and other tidbits from Ovid.

Erotic verse is a popular feature throughout the Miscellanies. It passes through every level from sophisticated pornography in the early volumes to the smutty stories in the final ones. Happily, the earliest volumes are often relieved of the tedium of unimaginative pornography and unevenly translated verse by several polished attempts at the pastoral elegy, including one by Tonson himself “On the Death of Mr. Oldham” and another by Richard Duke (1659?-1711) in commemoration of the Duchess of Southampton.⁵ The rhetorical form established in these poems characterizes most of the twenty-five elegies scattered throughout the collection.

It is a vexing problem to determine to what extent Dryden himself ever participated in the selection of poems. Parts V and VI of the Miscellanies, appearing after the poet's death, must be attributed mainly to Tonson, but who is responsible for the earlier volumes is open to question. Hugh Macdonald suggests that Dryden was seldom more than an occasional adviser,⁶ and this suggestion finds support in a letter from the poet to Tonson probably written just before the publication of the first Miscellany:

Your opinion of the Miscellanyes is likewise mine: I will for once lay by the Religio Laici, till another time. But I must also add that since we are to have nothing but new, I am resolved we will have nothing but good, whomever we disoblige.⁷

From this letter we may presume that the project, originally conceived by Tonson, was subsequently discussed with Dryden, whose opinions in such matters as selection and dedication would be invaluable. Moreover, since Dryden's own poetry was to form so considerable a feature of Part I, it is only natural to find Tonson turning to the poet for advice. Sylvae: Or, The Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies (1685) is almost exclusively a volume of verse translations supervised by Dryden, who actually introduces the collection with a lengthy prose essay on the problems of translating from classical writers. Part III, on the other hand, was undertaken by Tonson without assistance from Dryden:

I waited upon several Gentlemen to ask their Opinion of a Third Miscellany, who encourag'd me to endeavour it, and have considerably help'd me in it. Many very Ingenious Copies were sent to me upon my giving publick notice of this Design.⁸

In 1693 Dryden was at work on his play Love Triumphant, but he may have found sufficient time to assist Tonson in compiling the fourth Miscellany. This, however, is only conjecture, for Tonson alone had already envisaged a fourth part to the collection even before he had published the third Miscellany:

Several Reasons encourage me to Proceed upon the endeavouring a Fourth Volume: As that I had assurance of many Copies from Persons now out of England; which, though not yet arriv'd I am confident will be sent in a short time, and they come from such Hands, that I can have no reason to doubt of their being very much esteem'd.

I would likewise willingly try if there could be an Annual Miscellany, which I believe might be an useful diverson to the Ingenious. By this means care would be taken to preserve ev'ry Choice Copy that appears, whereas I have known several Celebrated Pieces so utterly lost in three or four years time after they were written, as not to be recoverable by all the search I cou'd make after 'em.⁹

The surviving evidence indicates that Tonson was editor-in-chief from start to finish. Dryden's hand is discernible only in the two earliest volumes. From Examen Poeticum onwards,¹⁰ into the fifth and last edition (1727), we should henceforth, in fairness to both parties, refer to the collection not as Dryden's but as Tonson's Miscellany.

Sylvae, Or the Second Part of Poetical Miscellanies is the least interesting of the six volumes. The editor (Dryden or Tonson) has assembled nothing more than a collection of verse translations from Ovid, Horace, Lucretius, Virgil, Theocritus, Catullus, and Tibullus with a small group of new original poems thrown in as a kind of makeweight. Even in its own day, the volume must have met with a cool reception, for Tonson waited eight years before embarking upon his third Miscellany. Whoever compiled the second volume had overplayed the vogue for translated verse; but in the meantime Tonson's “happy medium” was reflected in a sudden upsurge of imitations. The “general miscellany” evolved rapidly through Tate's Poems by Several Hands, Mrs. Behn's Miscellany, Stephens's Miscellany Poems and Translations, and the anonymous Collection of Poems by Several Hands. “Thereafter,” as Dr. Wasserman has noticed, “the majority of the collections took a more serious and literary turn.”¹¹

Innovations were essential if Tonson was to compete with his formidable number of rivals. Accordingly, for the third Miscellany, he drastically revised his notions of selection and arrangement. Examen Poeticum became at once the most impressive and satisfying volume in the entire series. Dryden himself, in the prose dedication to Lord Radcliffe, remarks that “This Miscellany, is without dispute one of the best of the kind which had hitherto been extant in our Tongue.”

Though Dryden's contributions continue to be a prominent feature, the range of authors represented is far greater than has hitherto been seen in the two preceding volumes. Variety is achieved by a welcome tendency towards the shorter poem:

Thus smallest things have a peculiar Grace,
The great w' admire, but 'tis the little please,
Then since the least so beautifully show
B' advis'd in time, my Muse, and learn to know
A Poet's Lines shou'd be correct, and few.(12)

The collection is altogether bulkier on account of Tonson's laudable attempt to cram the volume with every original poem that was then at hand. The gem of the collection is Dryden's “A Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687,” but Yalden's now forgotten “A Hymn to Darkness” evokes an almost Miltonic grandeur that makes it worthy of inclusion in the same volume with Dryden's poem:

Darkness, thou first kind Parent of us all,
Thou art our great Original:
Since from thy Universal Womb,
Does all thou shad'st below, thy numerous Offspring come.

In translated verse, Congreve's conversational ease and urbanity actually overshadow the work of Dryden:

Bless me, 'tis cold! how chill the Air
How naked does the World appear!
But see (big with the Off-spring of the North)
The teeming Clouds bring forth.
A Show'r of soft and fleecy Rain,
Falls to new cloath the Earth again.
Behold the Mountain-Tops around,
As if with Fur of Ermins crown'd:
And lo! how by degrees
The universal Mantle hides the Trees,
In hoary Flakes, which downward fly,
As if it were the Autumn of the Sky.(13)

At a single step the Miscellany had become the most representative collection of contemporary non-dramatic poetry. Dryden's translations were for once outnumbered by his songs, prologues, epitaphs, and roundelays. The collection contains dedicatory poems to Dryden, Waller, and Hobbes, devotional verses by Dryden and Prior, and paraphrase-translations of Biblical texts in addition to the customary classics. The new authors make a most distinguished list (Congreve, Addison, Prior, Rochester, and Lee are among them), and several were appearing in print for the first time. As in the earlier Miscellanies, there is an abundance of anonymous verse, though now we also find lines by Mr. S——— and by Lord ——— as well as the less frequent “Person of Quality.” A rough attempt to group together verse on similar themes is still discernible, but this practice is by no means invariable throughout.

After a profusion of verses to Sybil and Phyllis, the most piquant contribution to Tonson's third Miscellany is unquestionably “Syphilis,” an eighty-four page “History of the French Disease” translated by Nahum Tate from the Latin of Fracastorius. The work is prefaced by a verse dedication to Hobbes and a short life of Fracastorius by Tate. The poem as a whole is not of a particularly high quality, and the very nature of its subject is likely to deter the squeamish reader; but in a general survey of the Miscellanies, it is notable as a work of some importance in developing a taste for verse on horrific themes:

The foul Infection o'er his Body spread,
Prophanes his Bosome and deforms his Head;
His wretched Limbs with filth and stench o'er flow
While Flesh divides, and shows the Bones below.
Dire Ulcers (can the Gods permit them) prey
On his fair Eye-balls, and devour their Day,
Whilst the neat Pyramid below, falls Mouldring quite away.

After Examen Poeticum, there is a sudden increase in the number of vicious and sordid poems, though from the fourth miscellany onwards a subtle element of domesticity is occasionally introduced to mitigate the horror. Granville's “Cleora” (Miscellany V), for instance, is a remarkable anticipation of scenes from Hogarth. The heroine sets out to marry a wealthy peer but on achieving her ambition is quickly disillusioned about the joys of married life. Her husband, tiring of her, visits a brothel where in due course he contracts a venereal disease which he transmits to his wife:

Of sharp Nocturnal Anguish she complains
And guiltless of the Cause, relates her Pains.
The conscious Husband, whom like Symptoms seize,
Charges on her, the Guilt of the Disease:
Affecting Fury, acts a Mad-man's Part.
He'll rip the Fatal Secret from her Heart,
Bids her confess, calls her Ten Thousand Whores:
In vain she kneels, she weeps, protests, implores;
Scarce with her Life she 'scapes, expos'd to Shame.
In Body tortur'd, murder'd in her Fame,
Rots with a vile Adulteress's Name.

The Classics are thoroughly ransacked for horrific and erotic episodes. Thus a verse translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book VII (Miscellany IV, pages 163-65) develops into a clinical account of the symptoms of bubonic plague. Rabelaisian songs and thinly veiled imitations of Boccaccio are scattered among formal elegies, and Biblical verses.

Only a reading of the volumes themselves can give an adequate conception of the coarse language and coarser thoughts, the lascivious stories, the leers, innuendoes and frank nastiness of this dignified, admired, and very popular anthology. Love is, in the later volumes at least, the dominant, often the all-absorbing theme; yet of pure, unfeigned affection there is hardly a trace.¹⁴

Tonson's fourth Miscellany (1694) nevertheless maintains the high literary standard of its predecessor; and for the first time a volume of the collection is dignified with a frontispiece engraving by Burghers, showing the Muse of Poetry with a cornucopia, surrounded by angels holding musical instruments. The volume is smaller than Examen Poeticum, but there is no decrease in the number of contributors. By this time however, Dryden had receded into the background. First and foremost this is a collection of contemporary verse by the rising generation of eighteenth-century poets. Only two of the contributions are from Dryden, but Addison and Prior are well represented, and there is a wide variety of poems by John Dennis, Charles Hopkins, Henry Savile, Aurelian Townshend, St. John Harvey, Thomas Yalden, and George Granville.

In the fifth Miscellany (1704), several important changes occurred. Songs, in heroic couplets and rollicking stanzas, began to supplant the prologues and epilogues. About half the poems were anonymous, though following the death of Dryden, in 1700, Tonson had also decided to publish some of the poet's shorter pieces posthumously. The contributions thus fall into four main groups: translations and original pieces by Addison, Rowe, Tate, Roscommon, and others, a number of anonymous poems, and a wide variety of songs. As a selection of poetry, the volume is not intrinsically interesting. Tonson seems to have used it for a kind of publisher's stocktaking. Sweepings of the odd poems that littered his desk, verses tossed off in an idle moment by his Kit-Cat associates, old “copies” excluded from the former Miscellanies were all bundled into Part V. As a result, we have what appears to be mainly a collection of light verse. It is a likely conjecture that the anonymous poems, as a whole, represent the literary activities of the Kit-Cat Club. Tonson was too shrewd a publisher to allow the private poems of his friends to slip through his fingers.¹⁵

For the sixth Miscellany (1709), Tonson again altered the scope of his collection. There are no poems by Dryden and very few songs. Despite the sudden increase in translated verse, most of the extracts are choice erotic episodes adapted from Ovid. The importance of the volume lies chiefly in Tonson's discovery of Pope. The Miscellany begins with Ambrose Philips's “Pastorals” and ends with Pope's. The latter's paraphrase, “January and May; or the Merchant's Tale: From Chaucer,” was also inserted near the translated verse at the beginning of the volume; and included among the dedicatory verses are Wycherley's lines “To my Friend, Mr. Pope, on his Pastorals” and an address, “To Mr. Pope. By another Hand.” It was the first time that Pope had appeared in print, but his contributions were accorded as much space as Tonson had given to Dryden in Examen Poeticum. The remainder of the pieces, already démodé and undistinguished beside the earliest work of Pope, appear even more characterless among the superabundance of anonymous verse.

Having published his sixth Miscellany, Tonson brought the collection temporarily to a close. In the meantime, public interest in the various contributors was already discernible in a new demand for separate volumes of their poetry.¹⁶ Protected by the Copyright Act of 1709, Tonson now became fully preoccupied with many of the publishing ventures he had long withheld; and the Miscellanies as a whole were accordingly set aside for nearly seven years.

Conjecture inevitably surrounds the revised edition of 1716. We do not know why Tonson decided not to add further parts to his collection, or why he was content simply to prune and augment the six original volumes. We are not certain of the extent to which Tonson alone participated in the revision or how far the inclusion of additional pre-Restoration poems can be attributed to him. Nor can we say with certainty why these poems were included, for whom they were intended, or how they were received. Critics have still reached no general agreement on the significance of Tonson's decision to substitute pre-Restoration poetry for the translated verse of his contemporaries; above all, it remains an open question how far the revised Miscellanies were ultimately responsible for the development of serious interest in the eighteenth-century ballad.

Until 1716, the Miscellanies consisted mainly of translations and neo-classic verse. Tonson's collection eclipsed but never superseded the popular drolleries, for it was only the latter which preserved any traces of lighter traditional and pre-Restoration poetry. On the other hand, the later drolleries retained such poems in garbled, inaccurate, and adapted forms. They persisted simply as a lower-class diversion of no great literary importance. Tonson, as we know, was familiar with the early drolleries but made no particular use of them during the Restoration period. What we do not know and cannot satisfactorily explain is the sudden revival of interest he displays more than thirty years later. In preparing the revised Miscellanies, he discarded some of the translated verse (probably because the better-known pieces had by then been incorporated into complete translations)¹⁷ and substituted a selection of poems from the work of several lesser-known pre-Restoration poets, together with a group of ballads and “ancient songs” taken partly from unknown sources and partly from the old drollery books. At least four collections—Wit and Drollery, The Garden of Good Will, Parnassus Biceps, and The Loyal Garland were used extensively.¹⁸ From the fact that Tonson selected more than forty lyrics, ballads, and authentic street-songs from these collections and others, it would seem that he “was obviously not catering to the fashionable neo-classic interest in modernity.”¹⁹ Oddly enough, Dr. Wasserman, whom I have just quoted, remarks somewhat earlier in the same article that “the editor was not dignifying the ballads, he was democratizing a hitherto esoteric anthology by their inclusion.” Dr. Wasserman also talks of “the fashionable neo-classic interest in modernity”—but we are surely not expected to consider the “fashionable” and the “esoteric” as one and the same thing. Tonson's Miscellany, even in its revised form, could never have exercised a widespread, popular appeal. It was, essentially, a selection of literature for people interested in literature. It was not “democratized” by altering a tenth part of the contents. If Tonson wished merely to exclude some of the old verse translations, there was no need for him to replace them by anything whatsoever. As it stands, the 1716 edition contains the bulk of the old collection in a reshuffled form, and Tonson, in setting the press, must have known full well that the addition of a hundred poems could only have raised the cost of printing.

It is hard to believe, as Dr. Wasserman has suggested, that “the compilers and the average reader probably failed to detect any great distinction between the earlier and the current poems.”²⁰ “Chevy Chase” could scarcely have been confused with the poetry of Dryden, and such a remark imputes to Tonson's readers a standard of intelligence far lower than the collection implies. Among the novelties of the 1716 revision are the text and anonymous verse translation of the Norse poem “The Waking of Angantyr” (Miscellany Poems, 1716, part IV, pp. 387-91), which, according to Professor Havens, “is prophetic of Gray and the Scandinavian revival.”²¹ Selections from Cowley and Waller were only to be expected in the light of their continued popularity throughout the early years of the eighteenth century, but an interest in Ben Jonson, Drayton, Donne, Marvell, Carew, Suckling, Wither, and Heywood is not generally associated with the Augustans. It is clear that some original thought was given to the compilation of the 1716 Miscellany. According to Wharton, the selections from Milton's minor poems were added at the suggestion of Elijah Fenton.²² This is likely enough, although as Tonson himself was already quite familiar with the works of Milton, there seems to be no reason why he should have required Fenton's advice. Tonson called the whole collection Dryden's Miscellany, but this is best regarded as a publisher's flourish. Dryden could have had no hand in the 1716 edition, and his name was obviously retained to attract the would-be purchaser.

Apart from the question of how much responsibility Tonson had for the content of the revised Miscellanies, there has been a great controversy over the effect on the reading public of including the additional poems. Professor Havens thinks that they were added as a new attraction likely to increase the sales of the work, but that they made little or no impression on the contemporary reading public. Dr. Wasserman believes that they represent an ingenious bid for exclusiveness which encountered a surprisingly popular reception. There is no satisfactory evidence to support either viewpoint. R. C. Boys, however, has significantly observed that Tonson “should be remembered more as the man who sowed than as the reaper.”²³ What matters is not the immediate reaction; it was enough at the time that a group of long-forgotten poems had been placed within the notice of a highly critical reading public. Milton's minor poems and an edition of Donne were soon in demand. In the meantime, interest in the ballads simmered slowly.²⁴ The first wave of ballad anthologies arrived in 1723. A Collection of Old Ballads (1723, 1726, 1738) was quickly followed by The Hive (1724) and the Tea-table Miscellany (1724), and the revised Tonson collection reappeared in 1727. It was not until forty years later that Bishop Percy published his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). Since then, J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall, in their edition of Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript,²⁵ have justifiably acclaimed the editor of the 1716 Miscellanies as “the first collector of poems who conceded to popular ballads their due place—who admitted them into the society of other poems—poems by the most Eminent Hands.” This is the extent of Tonson's advance on the old drolleries that had been his earliest inspiration.

Few references have so far been made to the verse forms to be found throughout the collection. In general, the translations, the satires (little more than twenty in all), and most of the other original poems that appear in the early volumes are in heroic couplets. Blank verse and octosyllabic lines are extremely rare; there is only one sonnet in the entire collection,²⁶ and no Spenserian stanzas. Surprisingly enough, even Pindaric Odes of the Cowleyan variety are few and far between. The heroic couplet predominates from first to last.

A final word must be said about the various imitators of Tonson's miscellanies. Nahum Tate, Wycherley, Steele, Swift, and Pope all produced their own collections, but the most formidable rival was Bernard Lintot, the publisher, who established a miscellany founded upon the work of Pope as Tonson's had originally been on the poems of Dryden. Lintot's first imitation was his Examen Miscellaneum (1702)—a volume reminiscent of the old Caroline anthologies. He issued two other unexceptional collections²⁷ and then, in 1712, published Miscellaneous Poems and Translations, a collection of contemporary verse lavishly praised by Gay in a preliminary dedication:

Would'st thou for miscellanies raise thy fame
And bravely rival Jacob's mighty name.

There can be little doubt that Tonson resented the sudden rise of a new miscellany as distinguished as his own; but enterprising as ever, he quickly marshalled his forces and prepared to do battle for pre-eminence. He attacked somewhat feebly at first, with an issue of Steele's Poetical Miscellanies (1714). Lintot countered in a second edition of Miscellaneous Poems and Translations, which may well have provoked Tonson's revised Miscellanies of 1716. After this, Lintot had no adequate reply. His Poems on Several Occasions (1717) was merely an anthology of contemporary verse with no pretensions to rivalling “the biggest miscellany yet seen in England.”²⁸ For the next three years silence prevailed in both camps. Then, in 1720, the year of Tonson's retirement, Lintot ventured a third edition of Miscellaneous Poems and Translations.

Tonson's nephew, who had by now taken over the Shakespeare's Head, was not disposed to continue the fight. During the next seven years the field was free for Lintot to exploit at his leisure; but with the departure of the elder Tonson, Lintot lacked the stimulus of effective competition. Following a fourth edition of Miscellaneous Poems and Translations (1722) and a fourth edition of Miscellaneous Poems, Translations and Imitations (1722), he shifted his attention elsewhere and did not return to the collections until another five years had elapsed. In 1727, Jacob Tonson II published another collected edition of the revised Miscellanies. Lintot at once entered into the spirit of the revival by producing the fifth edition of his own collection.

In retrospect, we must concede the victory to Jacob Tonson. He created the form of the miscellany and sustained it. His collection was the oldest, and it endured the longest. The idea had begun as a risky venture, and even when it became a successful actuality, Tonson (fortunately for posterity) was compelled to recast his original plan again and again in order to outstrip his business competitors. Thus he presented two generations of poets to a new reading public, and this is as much as we could expect of any miscellany.

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TONSON AND PARADISE LOST

According to evidence provided by Thomas Ellwood, Milton completed Paradise Lost before the autumn of 1665.²⁹ On April 27, 1667, the poet entered into articles of agreement with Samuel Simmons,³⁰ printer, for the publication and sale of the poem. Simmons agreed to print a maximum of 4,500 copies in three “Impressions”³¹ of no more than 1,500 copies each. By law, a maximum of 1,500 copies of any book could be printed without resetting the type. Thus the term “Impression” in the contract for Paradise Lost is synonymous with the modern “Edition.” On signing the contract, Simmons paid Milton the sum of £5 down and had to pay a second £5 “at the end of the first Impression,” a third £5 “at the end of the second Impression,” and a fourth £5 “at the end of the third Impression.”

The work was entered thus in The Stationers' Registers:

AUGUST 20 1667

Master Sam. Symons. Entered for
his copie under the hands of Master
Thomas Tomkyns and Master Warden
Royston a booke or copie
intituled Paradise lost. A Poem in
Tenne bookes by J. M.

The first edition of Paradise Lost is a small quarto that sold originally at three shillings per copy. Great care seems to have been devoted to the preparation of the printed text,³² the proofs evidently having been revised by Milton himself or by a reliable associate working closely with him.

There were, apparently, six separate issues of the first edition: two issues in each of the years 1667, 1668, and 1669. Of these, the first three issues are distinguished by minor variants, and the last three by the addition of material which is described below.

Paradise Lost was a difficult poem and there were, originally, no annotations and textual apparatus. It soon became clear to Simmons and his business associate, Peter Parker, that certain preliminaries would have to be added to improve sales. Accordingly, a note by the Printer to the Reader, an “Argument,” and a Preface were prefixed to the poem, beginning with the fourth issue of the first edition. As Simmons explained in his foreword:

Courteous Reader,

There was no Argument at first intended to the Book, but for the Satisfaction of Many that have desired it, I have procur'd it, and withall a reason of that which stumbled many others, why the Poem rimes not.

The second edition of Paradise Lost (1674), a small octavo, is already an indication of increasing interest in the poem. This is a commendable, though scarcely attractive volume. Its 333 pages are numbered, but as yet there is no line numeration. An important concession to the reader is the redistribution of books: the original ten sections have been increased to twelve by dividing Parts VII and X into two books each,³³ and a note by Milton on the verse is added. The preliminary “Argument” to the first edition is also divided in the second edition, and relevant passages are apportioned as individual “arguments” to the separate books. Edward Phillips in his memoir of Milton (1694) says that the poet himself “amended, enlarg'd and differently dispos'd as to the number of books by his own hand, that is by his own appointment.” Later editors, such as Capel Lofft and David Masson, noticed minor textual variations between the first two editions, which they ascribed variously to Milton himself or to the errors of his printers. An interesting addition, however, is the group of commendatory verses prefixed to the poem—one in Latin signed “S[amuel] B[arrow] M.D.” and another in English signed “A[ndrew] M[arvell].”

At first Paradise Lost could have met with little commercial success. Masson comments: “As Milton's death occurred in the year in which the second edition was published, he cannot himself have witnessed any greater ‘success’ for his poem than might be measured by the circulation of some 1,500, or at the most some 1,800 copies.”³⁴

Simmons published the third edition of Paradise Lost, in small octavo, in 1678. Apart from a few minor textual variations—probably the work of the printer—the third edition is substantially the same as the second. Four years had passed since Milton's death, and his rights in Paradise Lost had been inherited by Elizabeth, his third wife.

In 1680 Simmons came to a final agreement with Elizabeth Milton. He paid her ten pounds for two editions of the poem and a further eight pounds for her entire interest in the work. In the meantime, Simmons had already agreed to assign his rights in Paradise Lost to another bookseller, Brabazon Aylmer,³⁵ for the sum of twenty-five pounds.

Even as an apprentice, Jacob Tonson cherished a great admiration for Milton's work. He had never met the poet, but during the earliest years at the Judge's Head it probably came to his knowledge that Aylmer, who had been acquainted with Milton and published several of his works, now held the copyright of Paradise Lost. The publication of a third edition indicates that no more than 3,000 copies of the poem were in circulation between 1667 and 1678. Masson was unable to explain why Tonson, an enterprising young publisher, should have considered Paradise Lost a “book worth looking after.”³⁶ The publication of three editions in eleven years does not imply that the poem was phenomenally successful.³⁷ It seems likely, therefore, that Tonson had some personal interest in Paradise Lost, since he was prepared to pay more for a part share in the “copy” than Aylmer had given Simmons for the entire rights. In support of this, we know too that Tonson insisted on receiving certain of Milton's written effects (including the proof-corrected manuscript for the first edition) as an item in the transfer. On August 17, 1683, the two booksellers met and signed an agreement whereby Tonson acquired half the copyright of Paradise Lost. The capital for this transaction was probably advanced by Richard “Novel” Bentley, who was a business associate of Tonson and who had had a part interest in the publication of the fourth edition of Milton's epic. On a small and precarious income Tonson was still groping his way among the contemporary poets. If the agreement with Aylmer gave him personal satisfaction, it could have brought nothing more in the course of the next five years.

By 1688, however, his position had substantially improved. He was a leading London publisher with two popular miscellanies to his credit. He was publishing for Dryden and most of the other fashionable playwrights of the period. He had become friendly with a group of influential Whig aristocrats, including Charles Sackville, the Earl of Dorset, and John Somers, later Lord Chancellor of England. Jonathan Oldmixon has described how Tonson, Somers, and several other Whigs would meet privately before the Revolution of 1688 “for a little free and chearful Conversation.”³⁸ At times, however, their discussions were, no doubt, more serious than Oldmixon would have us imagine. It must have been at this period that Tonson first referred Somers to Paradise Lost. In some subtle way, as J. W. Good has suggested, a new edition of the poem may have been envisaged as a potential piece of Whig propaganda.³⁹ Someone—either Tonson or one of his associates—could have had in mind an ingenious comparison between Milton's reputation as a political martyr and the theme of Paradise Lost or even the state of England under James II; and this association of ideas would have been—from a publisher's point of view—thoroughly in keeping with the continuing taste of the reading public for political allegory.

Tonson had never issued a book as sumptuous as Milton's epic: Paradise Lost. A POEM. In Twelve Books. The AUTHOR John Milton. The Fourth Edition, Adorn'd with Sculptures. London. (Printed by Miles Flesher for Richard Bentley, at the Post Office in Russell Street, and Jacob Tonson at the Judge's Head in Chancery Lane near Fleet Street.) This volume was published by subscription in 1688. It was a luxurious folio whose typographical design and general format anticipated the subscription Virgil (1697). In preparing Milton's poem for the press, Tonson worked from the proof-corrected manuscript he had obtained from Brabazon Aylmer and was further “advised and encouraged” by Somers, “who not only subscribed himself, but was zealous in promoting the subscription.”⁴⁰ Masson thought it likely that Dryden also assisted Tonson—a plausible suggestion in view of the poet's former acquaintance with Milton and the deep respect with which he regarded his work.

The volume opens with a frontispiece portrait of Milton adapted by R. White from William Faithorne's engraving.⁴¹ At the foot of the same page is Dryden's celebrated “Epigram” inset in a cartouche.

Three Poets, in three distant Ages born,
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn.
The First in loftiness of thought Surpass'd;
The Next in Majesty; in both the Last.
The force of nature could no further goe:
To make a Third she joynd the former two.

Additional “sculptures” are to be found before each section of the poem,⁴² and the volume is concluded with a list of the five hundred members of “The Nobility and Gentry that encourag'd, by subscription, the printing this Edition.” The percentage of Whigs, headed by Dorset and Somers, is naturally quite considerable; but there are many other memorable names, including Dryden, Hobbes, Atterbury, Sir Robert Howard, and even Sir Roger L'Estrange, Milton's former political adversary.

Nevertheless, despite its elegance, the 1688 folio was a strictly limited edition of little scholarly interest. Using the copies of Paradise Lost that remained unsold, Tonson leased Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes from their proprietor, Randal Taylor,⁴³ and having printed these last in folio, he bound the three works and published them in composite volumes.

On March 24, 1690, he bought the remainder of the rights in Paradise Lost from Brabazon Aylmer, and henceforward “we find him having almost a monopoly of the publication not only of that, but also of the other poems.”⁴⁴ As complete proprietor, Tonson was now in a position to devote more attention to the popularization of Milton's works. The magnitude of his task is best appreciated by a cursory glance at the nature and growth of Milton's reputation during the seventeenth century.

In his old age, Milton, although no longer important as a political figure, appears to have been renowned as much for his past associations with the Commonwealth government as for his achievements as a scholar and poet. Dryden, who had adapted the epic for dramatic presentation, was Milton's most loyal admirer. He visited the poet to obtain his permission to dramatize Paradise Lost, and after receiving Milton's answer (“Yes, Mr. Dryden, you may tag my verses”) attempted to “regularize” the poem by turning it into heroic couplets. It was Dryden the critic who first equated Milton with Virgil and Homer,⁴⁵ who “unfolded first the beauties and power”⁴⁶ of Paradise Lost; but his opinions, significant as they may seem today, were so scattered and discontinuous as to be virtually ineffective. It is not to be supposed that he helped to create any greater demand than is evidenced by 4,000 or so copies of Paradise Lost that were in circulation by 1680.

The great number of allusions and poetical tributes to Milton published between 1660 and 1700 indicate the existence of a small but enthusiastic group of admirers. These include Andrew Marvell, Edmund Waller, Samuel Butler, St. Evremond, John Oldham, Sir John Denham,⁴⁷ Nahum Tate, and, during the 1690's, Prior, Lee, and Addison. At least seven biographical accounts of Milton⁴⁸ are known to have been written or published before the end of the seventeenth century. Within a decade after Milton's death Paradise Lost was being read and admired in Latin and German as well as in English.

All this certainly suggests the nucleus of a developing interest in Milton as a man and a poet, although even the most reputable histories of literature tend to perpetuate a belief (originating with John Dennis and Sir Richard Blackmore) that the Restoration reader was incapable of appreciating Paradise Lost. Beljame assumed that it was Addison who finally taught the public the error of their ways. Patrick Hume's edition (1695) and the 1688 folio suggest quite a different story; and the fact that Tonson had published six editions of Paradise Lost before The Tatler criticisms appeared is in itself sufficient evidence to the contrary.

During his lifetime, Milton was already ranked with Waller, and with Cowley before the decline in the latter's reputation. Shortly after Milton's death, Dryden ventured to place him beside Virgil and Homer—a position that Hume and Tonson seem to have taken for granted by 1695; but even then the publisher's problem had only begun. Milton's reputation, having emerged triumphantly from the last phases of an anti-Puritan reaction, was at once assailed by a barrage of hostile literary criticism. Paradise Lost did not conform to the fashionable tenets of French Classicism, which evaluated literature in accordance with the standards of formality, rationalism, and regularity characteristic of the work of Horace and other ancient writers. Thus Rymer, in 1678, wrote of “that Paradise Lost of Milton's which some are pleased to call a poem,”⁴⁹ and Sir William Temple, only two years later, observed that after Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser he was aware of “none of the moderns that have made any atchievement in Heroick Poetry worth recording.”⁵⁰ Even Dryden was disturbed that Paradise Lost had not been written according to the “rules.”

On the other hand, an experiment in publishing was not simply a question of fashionable taste. Tonson was a cautious man. He required a sympathetic atmosphere before issuing an elaborate commentary on the work of a modern poet. The appropriate reaction, heralded in Sir T. Pope Blount's Remarks upon Poetry (1694), was provided by the critic John Dennis (to whom Tonson appealed in 1715, when Dryden's reputation was being jeopardized by Pope and Addison). First Dennis, and later his disciple, Charles Gildon, proceeded to attack the moral and literary standards of the Restoration.⁵¹ In their place, they sought to elevate a theory of “the natural union of poetry and religion.” The ancients were to be exalted over the moderns, for in general it was only the ancients who had derived literary inspiration from religion; but the ancient writers had, unfortunately, been pagans. Christianity had the advantage of being true. Therefore, Dennis concluded, Paradise Lost must be eminently praiseworthy as a true and divinely inspired poem. Elsewhere, Dennis was prepared to concede that Milton's verse was, at times, stylistically irregular, but as a Whig and an Englishman he would not budge an inch from the firm conviction (shared by many of the Miscellany poets) that Milton, with few reservations, was undoubtedly a genius, a great Englishman, and (by implication) a literary figure for whose discovery the Whigs had every reason to be proud.

Following the stabilization of Milton's literary reputation, Tonson decided to place chief emphasis on the text of Paradise Lost—on its exposition and interpretation. He began by commissioning an elaborate commentary on the poem from the schoolmaster Patrick Hume, “a very learned and judicious gentleman of North Britain.” Tonson “had found him out, and either set him on the work, or accepted the work from him, already done privately as a labour of love.”⁵²

Milton's first editor scarcely survives as a distinct personality beyond the pages of his commentary: “ANNOTATIONS ON MILTON'S Paradise Lost WHEREIN the Texts of Sacred Writ relating to the POEM are Quoted; The Parallel Places and Imitations of the most Excellent Homer and Virgil Cited and Compared; All the Obscure Parts render'd in Phrases more Familiar; The Old and Obsolete Words, with their Originals, Explain'd and made Easie to the English reader. by P.H. φιλοποιητης Uno cedit MILTONUS, Homero Propter Mille annos. JUV., viii. 38” [1695]. This is one of the first scholarly editions of any English poet, and as such deserves worthier notices than the disparaging remarks of critics such as Callandar and Newman, who condemned Hume's commentary but plagiarized his notes.

Patrick Hume is said to have been descended from the Humes of Polwarth in Berwickshire. Paterson, in 1744, referred to him as “Peter Home,” but his name was given correctly by Dr. Newman, who observed that “Patrick Hume, as he was the first, so is the most copious annotator,” and added without justification, “He laid the foundation, but he laid it among infinite heaps of rubbish.”⁵³ Warton, on the other hand, described the work as “a large and very learned commentary.”⁵⁴

In fairness to Hume, one must estimate the success of his work in relation to his own intentions, and not in accordance with any subsequent critical tradition. He was not interested in Milton the man, nor in Paradise Lost as poetry. His commentary has four aims: to indicate Biblical and classical parallels, to paraphrase difficult passages in simpler language, to examine archaic expressions, and to define, with etymological notes, the meanings of difficult words. Within these limitations his commentary is in no respect inferior to the work of Milton's eighteenth-century critics. The classical parallels display wide reading and a prodigious memory. “Hume seems to be pouring out the superabundance of his knowledge on the reader, and to be giving him a course in general education.”⁵⁵ Quotations are drawn not only from Virgil and Homer, but also from Seneca, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle, Lucian, Cicero, and Josephus; references are even made to Tasso, Spenser, and Ralegh (The History of the World). Hume apparently worked on the principle (later followed in the critical writings of Addison and Gray) that anything in Milton could be justified by finding an authoritative parallel.

The paraphrase seems to have been designed for a fairly educated section of the reading public. It follows most of the poem at an elementary level, occasionally simplifying to excess, but for the most part accomplishing its object in an authoritative manner.

As a lexicographer and etymologist, Hume specialized in elaborate verbal annotations—many irrelevant, some absurdly long. His best work as an annotator was to explain Milton's Latinisms, Grecisms, and occasional Hebraisms.

Hume's erudition, industry, and impersonality fitted him admirably for the task of commentator within the limits circumscribed by his own interests. In addition to the Commentary, Hume, probably acting on a suggestion by Tonson, compiled a “table of the most remarkable parts of the poem under the heads of Descriptions, Similes and Speeches”—an editorial feature that distinctly prefigures the kind of literary popularization usually associated with an enterprise such as Dodd's Beauties of Shakespeare (1753). The 321 pages supplied by Hume could thus appeal, intentionally or otherwise, to readers at every intellectual level.

Tonson, moving decisively, issued Hume's edition on a wave of reactionary neo-classicism that had swept his latest Miscellanies into prominence. The 1688 folio identified Milton with the Whig interests of the day. Dennis had sanctioned Paradise Lost in accordance with the principles of the rising literary school, and now, in Hume's edition, scholarship had arrived to admit Milton to the rank of “Classic.” Despite all this, Tonson was not entirely satisfied. Public taste is often unpredictable. Hume's success might have owed something to the transitory appeal of an innovation. To reassure himself, Tonson published Paradise Lost in quarto (1695), and then, after the poem had been lavishly praised by Charles Leslie,⁵⁶ issued it again in 1698 together with Gildon's Poetical Remains. The lapse of the Licensing Act and the accompanying fear of piracy⁵⁷ probably discouraged Tonson from proceeding immediately with the extensive popularizing campaign that he was to launch after 1709. A new issue of Paradise Lost (1705) retained the public interest that had been aroused in the 1690's. In the meantime, the six editions Tonson had published since 1688 encouraged that interest to develop into well-defined attitudes. By 1709 the comparison of Milton with Virgil and Homer was a widely accepted practice in literary criticism. Hume had established Milton's reputation as a “disciple of the ancients” at a period when classical scholarship was in the ascendant. Even the reservations of neo-classicism did not prevent the eighteenth-century reader from discussing enthusiastically the “irregular” style and versification of Paradise Lost or from contrasting the “Puritanism,” “sublimity,” and “didacticism” of its author with the “decadence” of the Restoration.⁵⁸ The early movement towards popularization culminated in a long series of critiques, beginning with Steele's papers in The Tatler (1709-10) and continuing through Addison's essays in The Tatler, The Spectator (1711-1712), The Guardian (1713), and The Freeholder (1716).⁵⁹ Steele (like Addison after him) saw in Milton the man the embodiment of national pride. In discussing Paradise Lost he drew the attention of his readers to “passages of uncommon beauty” or examined in formal terms Milton's style and versification.

As Masson asserted, the papers on Paradise Lost make it clear that Addison did not need to “sell” Milton to the eighteenth-century reading public. His essays “were only a contribution to a reputation already become traditional.”⁶⁰ Examining Paradise Lost in accordance with the standards of Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus, Addison was the first to offer a purely aesthetic appreciation of the poem. If he did not “discover” Milton, “he did definitely set forth the nature of Milton's literary rank in terms of the dominant thought of the times. … The immense circulation of The Spectator in England literally flooded the Nation with the choicest passages of Milton, stamped with just valuation by the best classical authority of the times. For this sanction the public mind was fully ready, and the reaction was undoubtedly greater than is usually estimated.”⁶¹

After the great copyright act of 1709 Tonson was assured of exclusive rights in Paradise Lost for a further twenty-one years. Within the trade itself it was still widely believed that perpetual rights in a number of books, including Paradise Lost, had been upheld by Parliament, and Tonson, who was quite familiar with the clauses contained in the act of 1709, did not care to dispel the fallacy. Thus, it was not for many years after the “copy” had elapsed that a new publisher ventured to issue an edition of Milton's poems.⁶² Meanwhile, Tonson and his nephew “made good use of the time allowed them.” After 1719, Addison's “Critique of Paradise Lost” was regularly added as a preface to their long series of quarto, octavo, and duodecimo editions.⁶³ “When the nation had caught up with this review of the poem, editions poured from the press in multiplied abundance.”⁶⁴ Tonson's work now consisted mainly in satisfying the public demand for Paradise Lost in every shape and size, with or without engravings, prefaces, annotations, and critiques. Hume's commentary was also revived, and together with The Spectator essays seems for many years to have provided all the apparatus that the eighteenth century required for a critical or scholastic appreciation of Milton.

The elder Tonson disclaimed all responsibility for the editorial battles that followed his retirement in 1720. The real culprit was Jacob Tonson II, who, as the new proprietor of the poem, virtually destroyed his uncle's policy of textual fidelity by permitting Elijah Fenton and Dr. Richard Bentley, in turn, to produce their own “amended” or “regularized” editions of Milton.⁶⁵ Fenton's authoritative biography of the poet is a valuable compensation for the comparatively negligible perversions of the text perpetrated in his name. Bentley's edition, on the other hand, is a more serious matter.⁶⁶ He probably turned his attention to Paradise Lost after reading Fenton's amendments, “in which for the first time the suggestion was made that a certain number of mistakes had crept into the original text either through the blunders of Milton's amanuenses, or through his inability from blindness to ensure correction of the proof-sheets.”⁶⁷ Bentley preceded his edition of Milton with an “Essay to Defend a Critical Emendation of Paradise Lost,” published by the Tonsons in 1731. Having proclaimed his intentions, and with the encouragement of his publisher (Jacob Tonson II) and his patron, Queen Caroline, he set to work in ungovernable haste. Within a year the edition had been prepared, published, and widely attacked. In his preface Bentley says, “I made the Notes extempore, and put them to Press as soon as made.” He had used a copy of the large quarto text that Tickell had supervised for Tonson in 1720, and this particular volume, now preserved at Brockhampton Park, completely verifies his statement. Bentley performed his task at top speed, without revision, and left the younger Tonson to hustle the uncorrected proof through the press.

On whatever grounds Bentley has been attacked, there can be no doubt of the sincerity of his intentions. He truly believed that Paradise Lost, in the form customarily published by the Tonsons, contained a certain amount of irregularity and “romantic rubbish” that could not possibly have been written by Milton. Accordingly, he evolved the theory that some unidentifiable interpolating editor had been at work on the manuscript before its publication. If the poem was to be accepted as a “classic,” it would have to be expurgated of everything that seemed un-Miltonic (from the neo-classical standpoint).

This critical myopia is best attributed to Bentley's neglect of any preliminary background study. He was attracted by the classicism and technical power of Milton's work, but regarded Paradise Lost as “an isolated phenomenon and took no pains to master its antecedents and its surroundings or to examine the soil out of which it grew.”⁶⁸ With the exception of Chaucer and Spenser he ignored pre-Miltonic poetry altogether. He noticed parallels in Sidney's Arcadia and was aware of the influence of Fairfax's Tasso; but his notes reveal an acquaintance with Italian poetry that was probably even slighter than his scanty knowledge of the Italian language.⁶⁹ In consequence, “where Bentley finds fault with Milton he almost invariably does so on a point where eighteenth-century demands for logic, explicitness, singleness of meaning are violated in the interest of poetic overtones and suggestions characteristic both of Elizabethan and of modern verse. Bentley is wrong in his criticisms, certainly, but he writes honestly from the point of view of his age; and such defenders of Milton as Pearce are really no nearer to catching the poet's intention than the heavy-handed classicist whom they ridicule.”⁷⁰

The elder Tonson was not slow to express disapproval of “this vultures falling uppon a Poet y^t is y^e admiration of England & its greatest credit abroad.” It was probably due to his protestations that Milton “improved” never reached a second edition. He considered that Bentley's notes, “if allowed to be right,” were “enough to ruin the esteem for y^e Author”—a matter in which he had displayed a practical concern for nearly half a century. Bentley had committed the unpardonable sin of forgetting the proof-corrected manuscript that gave authority to every edition Tonson had issued. With incontrovertible proof, the latter denounced Bentley's notes for their inaccurate facts and unreliable sources. He denied the existence of a “phantom interpolator” and summarily took “y^e D^r to task, for medling with Subjects nature has not [intended?] him for.”⁷¹ In Tonson's eyes, Bentley's edition amounted to sacrilege and was an object lesson that would not be repeated.

Aside from the copyright infringements frequently practised in Dublin, the Tonsons managed to uphold their exclusive claims to Paradise Lost until the appearance of Newton's subscription Milton in 1749. In this edition, Newton provided variorum notes and a well-documented life of Milton that represents a synthesis of critical and biographical studies from Addison and Fenton to the Richardsons and Peck. Newton's work was eventually to form the basis of John Henry Todd's complete variorum edition (1801). In the years that followed its first appearance, the Newton edition was also popular enough to serve the needs of interested publishers in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, and Paris.

Uncertain as he was about questions of copyright infringement, Jacob Tonson III decided that in the future he would take such matters to law. He had not long to wait. In 1752, Lord Hardwicke granted an injunction against a proposed and advertised edition of Paradise Lost by Richard Walker (an old business rival of the Tonsons who was a printer of London and Cambridge and the proprietor of another Shakespeare's Head in Turnagain Lane, Snow Hill), on condition that the case be brought to trial at Common Law; but Tonson III was not of his great-uncle's mettle. In 1738, the latter, also before Lord Hardwicke, had managed to vindicate his “copy” in Paradise Lost by producing in court his own contract with Aylmer and the original assignment from Milton. As Masson suggests, however, Jacob Tonson III may have decided not to take further action (in 1752) for fear of the effect it would have on the London publishing trade if he were to lose the case. Perhaps feeling that an unfavorable decision would establish a precedent in Walker's favor, Tonson may have concluded that his best course of action would be to drop the case and content himself with the long monopoly—extending twenty years beyond the provision of the statute—that his firm had already enjoyed. In any event, the tradition of perpetual copyright (in books) was declining in Britain and had disappeared by the mid-eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the Shakespeare's Head had not seen the last of Milton. Jacob Tonson I and his nephew published seventeen editions of Paradise Lost; and their heirs, continuing the tradition, issued another twenty editions before 1760.

Dr. Johnson in his life of Milton notices how in his own day “the means of proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced by that general literature which now pervades the nations through all its ranks.” Tonson's use of The Spectator criticisms was a decisive step in this direction. And J. W. Good has emphasized that Tonson “by constantly encouraging critical activities upon the poem, did much to prepare the way for the first variorum edition of Paradise Lost. …” “Tonson,” he explains, “made the poem attractive in form and appearance. He produced it in all sizes, from the handy pocket edition quarto, to the large ornamental edition folio. He used the best materials available, and probably engaged the best talent for the work of engraving and binding that the times could afford. He was constantly on the alert for new and helpful additions to the work in the way of notes and illustrations.”⁷² It is not inappropriate therefore that Kneller's Kit-Cat portrait depicts Jacob Tonson holding a copy of Paradise Lost.

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SHAKESPEARE AND TONSON

The beginnings of Shakespeare scholarship date from the early years of the eighteenth century. On May 22, 1707, Jacob Tonson II, acting under his uncle's instructions, purchased the rights to over a hundred works that had formerly been the property of Herringman and Byne,⁷³ together with a “moiety of Mr. Shakespeare's plays bought of Mr. Andrew Clarke.”⁷⁴ It was Tonson's intention to republish the plays of Shakespeare—not as a “Fifth Folio” but in an illustrated edition with a “revis'd and corrected” text, a “Life” of Shakespeare, and an account of his writings. It was to this end that he commissioned the services of Nicholas Rowe—the poet, translator, and dramatist—and secured the services of John Hughes as his assistant.⁷⁵ Advertisements were inserted in The London Gazette (March 14-17, 1709) and The Daily Courant (March 15, 1709), as follows:

Whereas a very neat and correct edition of Mr. William Shakespeare's works in six volumes in octavo, adorned with cuts, is now so far finished as to be published in a month, to which is designed to be prefixed an account of the life and writings of the said author as far as can be collected. If therefore, any gentleman who may have any materials by them that may be serviceable to this design will be pleased to transmit them to Jacob Tonson at Gray's Inn Gate, it will be a particular advantage to the work, and acknowledged as a favour by the gentleman who hath care of this edition.⁷⁶

Under his publisher's authorization, Rowe became the first editor of Shakespeare and the first writer to collect biographical facts about him. His editorial labors were greatly alleviated by the industry of Hughes, who revised the text and compiled the index. The Works of Mr. William Shakespeare: in Six Volumes … Adorn'd with Cuts⁷⁷Revis'd and Corrected, with an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author. By N. Rowe, Esq., were printed and published before midsummer 1709. This, the first octavo edition, was published by Tonson in six volumes. Before 1709 the collected plays of Shakespeare had been available only in the “unrevised” Folios of 1623, 1632, 1663-64 and 1685.

Rowe had no editorial precedent to follow. Patrick Hume in his edition of Paradise Lost had mainly directed his commentary to the scholar and the classicist, but Rowe, like Heminge and Condell before him, cast his nets “To the Great Variety of Readers.” Annotations were avoided. Basing his text chiefly upon the Fourth Folio (1685),⁷⁸ Rowe intended his additions, corrections, and revisions simply to make Shakespeare intelligible to the eighteenth-century reading public. “No one,” writes Ernest Walder, “will dispute Rowe's modest claim that he has ‘rendered many places intelligible that were not so before.’ It is his unique distinction that he did not stir up any controversy. His emendations were silently introduced into his text, and as silently appropriated by his successors.”⁷⁹

Much of the textual apparatus that is taken for granted by the modern reader was originally supplied by Rowe. Drawing upon his knowledge of the theatre, he provided the plays with stage directions and lists of dramatis personae. He introduced what with few exceptions have become the customary scene divisions. He restored proper names (such as “Plutus” for “Platus”) and corrected many ludicrous errors that had passed for French and Italian in the Folios. As a proof-corrector Rowe displayed moments of undoubted genius, as for instance in his emendation of “become” to “born” in the Folio reading: “Some are become great.”

Tonson issued a second impression of Rowe's Shakespeare in the same year. This was followed, in 1710, by a supplementary seventh volume containing Shakespeare's poems.⁸⁰

In the five years that elapsed before the issue of the second edition of Rowe's Shakespeare, Tonson published separate texts of The Tempest (1709), Antony and Cleopatra (1709), Macbeth (1710), and Hamlet (1712).⁸¹ During 1714, he issued twenty-five of the plays in separate octavo volumes⁸² in addition to publishing three new impressions⁸³ of Rowe's Shakespeare, now dedicated to the Duke of Somerset.⁸⁴ It was the first “stage edition,”—produced especially for sale at the theatres and for disposal by running booksellers, who retailed the plays in rural districts. By this time Tonson had reached an understanding with Curll and “the proprietors” over the issue of Shakespeare's poems.⁸⁵ The ninth volume of Rowe's edition (1714) was published jointly by Tonson, Curll, and Sanger in association with the proprietors of Shakespeare's poems. This ninth, supplementary volume is in itself a compilation of much critical and scholarly interest. Apart from the poems, it contains observations on Shakespeare's plays, “A glossary explaining the antiquated words made use of throughout his works,” an “Essay on the Art, Rise and Progress of the Stage in Greece, Rome and England” (by Charles Gildon), and “A Table of the most Sublime Passages in this Author.”

With Rowe's Shakespeare, Tonson began a popularizing movement that was continued by his nephew and maintained throughout most of the century by his nephew's heirs. The comparative scarcity of Rowe's 1714 edition has obscured the fact that it was with this issue that Tonson first discovered a widespread reading public for Shakespeare. H. L. Ford has explained how “in the large mansions in town and country the 1709 edition reposed in state in the library, but often the owners of these were again customers for the smaller and cheaper edition [i.e., of 1714] either for their own use or for the amusement of the large household staff attached to their residences: some copies do turn up marked specifically for ‘The Housekeeper's Room.’”⁸⁶ Many copies of the 1714 edition were literally read to pieces. Tonson had shrewdly estimated an “outlet for the sale of the works in a more convenient and less expensive form to a play going and reading clientele.”⁸⁷

In the six years that preceded his retirement, Tonson was able to satisfy the demand for Shakespeare with two editions by Rowe and numerous impressions of the separate plays. Pope's Shakespeare (1723-1725), nominally a publication of Tonson's nephew, was actually promoted by Tonson himself. Pope directed his instructions to Ledbury and received copious advice in return.⁸⁸ Tonson seems to have been as active as Fenton, Gay, and Whalley, who were paid to correct the proofs and prepare the index.⁸⁹ About this time, Pope wrote to the elder Tonson:

You are so perfectly in y^e right in Your Correction … that I think When I print any thing of my own I must get you to do for me, what you make me do for Shakespear, and correct in my behalf.⁹⁰

Pope was never on intimate terms with the younger Tonson and preferred to entrust his publishing arrangements to the older man. As we shall see, however, the nephew did at one stage play a significant, if rather devious, role in the firm's negotiations with Pope and Theobald in connection with the latter's subsequent edition of Shakespeare.⁹¹

At the outset the elder Tonson acted in an advisory capacity, supervising the subordinate editors and providing quarto texts for collation. As with Rowe's edition, advertisements for additional material were inserted in the London papers:

The New edition of Shakespear being now in the Press, this is to give notice that if any person has any editions of the Tempest, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Timon of Athens, King John and Henry the Eighth, printed before the year 1620, and will communicate the same to J. Tonson in the Strand, he shall receive any satisfaction required.⁹²

It was probably at this time that the elder Tonson acquired the celebrated copy of the First Folio (1623)⁹³ which his grandnephew Jacob Tonson III presented to George Steevens in 1765. This copy had also passed, on some occasions, into the hands of Lewis Theobald and Samuel Johnson. It was finally purchased at Steeven's sale by Dr. Charles Burney, and in 1817 became incorporated into the British Museum collection together with the Burney library.

With the materials and assistance provided by the Tonsons, Pope was in a position to provide the public with a fairly reliable text enriched by the variant Quarto and Folio readings with which he was acquainted. Unfortunately, he was not entirely suited to “the dull duty of an editor.” Like his enemy, Theobald, Pope was often tempted to sacrifice accuracy upon the altar of emendation. The plays were so admirable that he felt genuinely sorry that Shakespeare had never mastered the art of writing “regular metrical verse.” Shakespeare would have to be drastically pruned and a lot of “trash” removed. Pope decided that one of the essential faults was the archaic vocabulary. In the course of his dissection he dropped the Porter's soliloquy from Macbeth and expurgated the jests of Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare's metre was “amended” by verbal or syllabic alterations (e.g. “brest” for “bosom”; “foes” for “enemies”; “seal'd” for “sealed”). The plays finally emerged as Pope thought the eighteenth century would best appreciate them, not as Shakespeare edited by Pope, but as Pope's adaptation of the text of Shakespeare. Whatever Pope rejected was shifted into the margins. Sometimes he rejected a passage because it was not to be found in an early quarto; elsewhere he expurgated lines that appear in late quartos. His only ruling principle was to retain whatever attracted him—everything else was “ridiculous,” “trash,” or “nonsense.”

On the credit side, Pope's Preface must be commended for its literary interest and perception. If he does not make appropriate use of the variant quarto readings, he must at least be acknowledged as the first editor to include them in a text of Shakespeare. Later editors have also adopted several of his original emendations (e.g. “Tarquin's ravishing strides,” where the First Folio has “sides”), including the rearrangement of some of the verse passages which Rowe had published as prose.

The Works of Shakespeare in Six Volumes. Collated and Corrected by the former Editions, By Mr. Pope … London: Printed for Jacob Tonson in the Strand. were published in two parts, the first five volumes in 1723 and the sixth in 1725. A seventh volume, added in 1725, included the contents of the ninth volume of Rowe's edition (1714) with a preface by Dr. Sewell. The plays were divided into four groups; Volumes One and Two, “Comedies”; Volumes Three and Four, “Historical Plays” (the third volume included King Lear); Volume Five, “Tragedies from History” (Timon of Athens, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus, Macbeth); and Volume Six, “Tragedies from Fable” (Troilus and Cressida, Cymbeline, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello). A pirated issue appeared in Dublin in 1726, two years before the Tonsons issued the authorized second edition.

The influence of Lewis Theobald is accountable for the textual difference between the first and second authorized editions of Pope's Shakespeare. After the first edition in 1726, Theobald had published his “Shakespeare Restored: or, a Specimen of the many Errors, as well committed, as unamended by Mr. Pope, in his late edition of this Poet; designed, not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the true Reading of Shakespear in all the Editions ever published.”⁹⁴ As a poet and dramatist, Theobald left much to be desired, but as an editor of Shakespeare he was more than a match for Pope. For the time being, all that the latter could do was silently to appropriate some of Theobald's corrections into his second edition of Shakespeare; but Theobald's triumph was cut short by the appearance of The Dunciad (1728).⁹⁵ In his own element Pope was unanswerable. Theobald, seeing that the tables had been turned, thereupon issued his Proposals for publishing his further Emendations and Remarks on Shakespeare (1728). There is no evidence that at this time he intended to edit Shakespeare's works for a new edition. This was a project which had to mature as The Dunciad grew in popularity. Theobald's adaptation of The Double Falsehood (1728-29) contains the preface in which the critic first intimated his desire to prepare an edition of Shakespeare's plays. “Earnest solicitations were made to me,” writes Theobald, “that I would think of such an Edition which I had as strong desires to listen to: and some Noble persons⁹⁶ then, whom I have no privilege to name, were pleased to interest themselves as far in the affair, as to propose to Mr. Tonson his undertaking an impression of Shakespeare with my corrections.”⁹⁷

Theobald's Shakespeare was a matter of great concern to the Tonsons. By the Copyright Act of 1709 their rights in Shakespeare were due to terminate in 1731. In March 1730, Theobald was considering the propositions of a group of interested publishers, and it was an ominous sign that Tonson had been excluded.⁹⁸ Theobald had no intention of fraternizing with the publisher of Pope's Shakespeare, whilst the Tonsons on the other hand had every reason to be disturbed at the likelihood of losing one of their most lucrative “copies.” The Shakespeare's Head had earned its name and now, at a blow, Theobald's reply to Pope threatened the whole enterprise.

Through Lady De La Warr, Jacob Tonson II was able to communicate his interest to Theobald. The matter was so vital that the publisher had no hesitation in offering to double any previous offer that Theobald had received. “He says,” wrote Theobald, “a brace of hundreds shan't break Agreements. …”⁹⁹ In a letter of October, 1731, the critic described the circumstances involved in his acceptance of Tonson's proposals:

As to the Booksellers. … who once made some Overtures to me, you hinted that they complain'd I had not dealt so honourably w^th them: I fancy you will be satisfied I can turn the Tables upon them, when I tell you, Tonson has acceded to double the Terms they offer'd me: I was by their Contract to have had the labouring Oar upon Me, to have been entitled only to a first Payment, & they to have reced [sic] the Second: I have now closed my Agreement to have the Work publish'd in 6 Vols in 8vo., to have 400 Copies, compleat in Sheets, deliver'd me on a Fine Genoa paper, free from all Expence whatever; and 100 Copies more on Fine Royal Paper, I only paying for the paper: so that if I can have my Compliment of Subscriptions, the small paper will bring me in 800 guineas; & the Books in Royal 300 more. …¹⁰⁰

Unwittingly, Theobald had played into the hands of the younger Tonson. When news of the agreement reached Pope, a series of letters began to pass between “Twitnam” and the Tonsons. “All I shou'd be sorry for,” warned Pope, “would be, if you were made the publisher of any falsity relating to my personal character.”¹⁰¹ The poet made it clear that he would consider an edition of Shakespeare by “Tibbald” a personal insult; but the nephew, having now secured his position by signing contracts with both parties, was equal to the situation. A scrutiny of his letters illustrates the cunning with which he played off his authors. Pope was tearfully, if untruthfully, informed that “other persons being concerned in the Text of Shakespear with myself, Mr. Theobald treated with them to print it, and as I found the work wou'd go on by the parties concern'd (tho I had not come into the agreement), so I could not avoid being concern'd in the edition.”¹⁰² Theobald, on the other hand, was regretfully notified that his Shakespeare would be delayed for “having just then glutted the Trade with a large edition by Mr. Pope … he could not with any Face or Conscience pretend to throw out another Impression, before those Books were a little dispers'd & vended.”¹⁰³ Such prevarication would have aroused Pope's suspicions at once. Consequently, at Tonson's request, Theobald later issued a false account of the delay in publishing the new edition: “The throwing my whole Work into a different Form to comply with this Proposal [the agreement with Tonson], was not the slightest Labour: and so no little Time was unavoidably lost.”¹⁰⁴ The truth which the younger Tonson had not cared to admit, was that he had temporarily leased his rights in Shakespeare to J. and P. Knapton. The Knaptons issued their edition of Pope's Shakespeare in 1731—after Theobald had signed his agreement with Tonson.

The nephew's “deceptions” mostly were successful. The Works of Shakespeare: in Seven Volumes Collated with the Oldest Copies, and Corrected; with Notes, Explanatory, and Critical: by Mr. Theobald was issued as a subscription work in January, 1733, more than two years after the agreement. Apart from the frontispiece portrait of Shakespeare,¹⁰⁵ the edition has no engravings. The first volume contains a dedication to the Earl of Orrery,¹⁰⁶ a life of Shakespeare, adapted from Rowe's edition (1714), criticisms of Pope's edition, and acknowledgements of assistance received from Dr. Thirlby, Rev. W. Warburton, Martin Folkes, Dr. Mead, Dr. Freind, F. Plumptree, and Thomas Coxeter.¹⁰⁷ Following five pages of dedicatory poems by Milton, Davenant, and others, the prolegomenon ends with thirteen pages of subscribers' names.

The most striking feature of Theobald's text is not his interest in Shakespeare, but his hatred of Pope. This is carried to the extreme of basing the entire edition upon the text of Pope's Shakespeare, with the intention of exposing Pope's shortcomings as an editor. The plays are used as a vehicle for Theobald's taunts. At every turn Pope's annotations are resurrected and condemned. The corrections Pope had silently plagiarized from Shakespeare Restored are faithfully recorded. Abuse and error are repaid with sarcasm and a mocking air of superiority.

Despite these limitations, Theobald is still memorable as the first Shakespeare scholar of unquestionable genius. There is no need to elaborate upon his skill in textual emendation, but it is sometimes forgotten that he prepared himself for the task of editing Shakespeare by an intensive study of Elizabethan drama. He claims to have consulted more than eight hundred plays. He certainly paid close attention to all the available Shakespeare Quartos, and showed himself more industrious than Pope in restoring early readings that had been corrupted in the Folios. If on occasion his enviable ingenuity led him to make unnecessary textual alterations, he was at least aware of the literary context of Shakespeare's plays.

Thus through the Tonsons, Shakespeare was introduced to the eighteenth century by a dramatist, a poet, and a scholar, respectively. The overwhelming success of the last of these now encouraged the Tonsons to proceed with the issue of duodecimo editions of the separate plays under their own supervision. It was at this time (1734) that the “copy” in Shakespeare was challenged by Robert Walker,¹⁰⁸ the same man whom Jacob Tonson III was later obliged to deal with in connection with the Tonson edition of Paradise Lost. Walker, who seems to have been motivated by a good deal of personal animosity, for a number of years (1734-52) made a specialty of poaching upon the Tonson preserves. The facts of the earlier case are obscure, but it seems likely that the Tonsons reached a private agreement with Walker in 1736, for after this date he turned his attention from Shakespeare and proceeded to challenge the “copy” in Paradise Lost.

Fortunately, the elder Tonson could never have known that Walker's work had borne fruit. Although the house of Tonson continued to issue Shakespeare for the next thirty years, after 1736 publishers in England and Scotland took advantage of the public knowledge that the long monopoly was at an end.

In retrospect, it can be seen that Tonson accomplished for Shakespeare what he had achieved for Milton. He published the first edited texts and introduced the work of both writers to a wide eighteenth-century reading public. In addition to this, he issued the first separate texts of The Comedy of Errors (1734), King Henry VIII (1714, 1732, 1734), King John (1714, 1734), Two Gentlemen of Verona (1734,) and The Winter's Tale (1714, 1735). Eleven of the plays that he published separately were the first untampered texts to appear in place of the more familiar adaptations. Four others,¹⁰⁹ were the first to be issued separately after the early Quartos.¹¹⁰ Certainly we may concur with H. L. Ford that “Jacob Tonson, the doyen publisher of the Augustan Age, merits some fitting recognition as the undoubted arouser of the public to an interest in these long-lying neglected but peerless dramas—an interest, as a ripple at first, that now washes the shores of the whole literary world.”¹¹¹

Notes

1. R. D. Havens, “Changing Taste in the Eighteenth Century: A Study of Dryden's and Dodsley's Miscellanies,” PMLA, XLIV (1929), 501.

2. Only about four copies of this book are extant. A second edition was published in 1673 by Thomas Collins, John Ford, and William Coleman, who added thirty-one new poems, including several prologues and epilogues, to Kemp's collection. The majority of the poems are by Sedley.

3. E. R. Wasserman, “Pre-Restoration Poetry in Dryden's Miscellany,” MLN, LII (1937), 546-47.

4. Beljame, Men of Letters and the English Public in the 18^th Century (London, 1948). p. 356.

5. “Floriana,” in Part I.

6. Macdonald, p. 67.

7. Dryden, The Works …, ed. W. Scott, revised and corrected by G. Saintsbury (Edinburgh, 1882-93), XXVII, 106.

8. See Tonson's note “The Bookseller to the Reader,” in Examen Poeticum (1693).

9. Ibid.

10. In an undated letter from Tonson to Dryden, the publisher writes: “You may please, Sr., to remember that upon my first proposal about ye 3d Miscellany I offered fifty pounds and talked of several Authors …,” Letters of Dryden, letter 23.

11. MLN, LII, 548.

12. Yalden, “The Insect. Against Bulk,” in Examen Poeticum, p. 372.

13. “An Ode in Imitation of Horace's Ode IX,” pp. 234-35.

14. R. D. Havens, PMLA, XLIV, 512.

15. Part V of Tonson's Miscellanies contains fifty-two of the toasts of the Kit-Cat Club. See Miscellany Poems, V (London, 1716), pp. 60-70 and Chapter VII of the present study, pp. 151-71.

16. The works of Sir George Etherege (1704), Abraham Cowley (1707), and poems by Sir John Denham (1709-10) and Edmund Waller (1711). This is only a brief, random selection. At the same time, Tonson was also publishing for Addison, Steele, Prior, Rowe, Wycherley, and many others.

17. Thus Dryden's Virgil supplanted his earlier translations from Virgil, and Rowe's Pharsalia (1718), replaced his two translations from Lucan which had appeared in the Miscellany of 1709.

18. Wit and Drollery, 1656; poems by Sir John Mennes (1599-1671), and others.

    The Garland of Good Will, c. 1685, by T[homas] D[eloney].

    Parnassus Biceps, 1656; ed. G. Thorn-Drury, 1927.

    The Loyal Garland, fourth ed. [167?]: Copies of the first three editions are no longer extant.

19. E. R. Wasserman, MLN, LII, 552.

20. Ibid.

21. R. D. Havens, PMLA, XLIV, 511.

22. Milton's Poems upon Several Occasions, ed. Thomas Warton (London, 1791), p. xn.

23. R. C. Boys, “Some Problems of Dryden's Miscellany,” ELH, VII (1940), 136.

24. Several ballad or pseudo-ballad collections had appeared in the eighteenth century before Tonson decided to include ballads in his literary Miscellany. Thus, A Pill to Purge State-Melancholy was issued in 1715 and 1716 and was followed in 1718 by a second part. Collections of state songs and Marshalsea ballads were fairly popular from 1716 to 1720. Mention should also be made here of the long tradition of song-books which continued on into the eighteenth century. See further: C. L. Day and E. B. Murrie, English Song-Books, 1651-1702 (London, 1940).

25. Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript, ed. J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall (London, 1868), I, vii-ix.

26. Walsh's sonnet on death, added to Vol. IV, 1708.

27. Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany Poems, 1708, and Callipaedia: Or, The Art of Getting Pretty Children, 1710.

28. R. C. Boys, ELH, VII, 143.

29. Thomas Ellwood (1639-1713), a Quaker divine, author of The Davideis (1712), a sacred poem. Ellwood became a friend of Milton in 1662. See Ellwood's The History of the Life of Thomas Ellwood (London, 1714) and J. H. Hanford, A Milton Handbook (New York, 1946), p. 56.

30. Samuel Simmons, printer in London, had his business next door to the Golden Lion in Aldersgate, 1666-76. Tonson said of him, “… he was look^t upon an able & substantial printer & I think his father a printer before him.” See further William Riley Parker, Milton's Contemporary Reputation (Columbus, Ohio, 1940), p. 49n. Milton's document of agreement with Simmons is preserved as British Museum Add. 18861. The agreement is signed in Milton's name by an amanuensis (Milton himself was blind by this date), and the poet's seal of arms is affixed. Jacob Tonson I came into possession of the document through the bookseller Brabazon Aylmer, and in due course it was inherited by Jacob Tonson III. After the latter's death in 1767, the Shakespeare's Head was closed down, and the document disappeared during the disposal of the firm's property. It reappeared in 1824 in the hands of a London bookseller named Septimus Prowett. Prowett auctioned the contract, together with a number of Tonson's papers, on February 28, 1826. A certain Mr. Pickering acquired the contract for £45.3.0 and later sold it for £60 to Sir Thomas Lawrence. On the latter's death it passed again into Pickering's hand, and he sold it to the poet Samuel Rogers. In 1852 Rogers presented the contract to the British Museum.

31. By the terms of the contract an impression was said to be completed in 1,300 copies. The remaining 200 volumes were probably regarded by Simmons as additional profit. It is notable, however, that the contract makes no provision for further impressions or editions.

32. See Helen Darbishire, The Manuscript of Paradise Lost. Book I (Oxford, 1931).

33. Milton smoothed the break in his new division of the text by adding three new lines to the beginning of Book VIII and five new lines to the beginning of Book X.

34. Milton, Poetical Works …, ed. David Masson (London, 1874), I, 14.

35. Brabazon Aylmer, senior and junior, were booksellers in London, The Three Pigeons over against (or near) the Royal Exchange, 1670-1709. The Aylmers were dealers mainly in theological works and published the poet's Epistolae Familiares and the Prolusiones Oratoriae. John Dunton spoke of Aylmer as “a very just and religious man. … He is nicely exact in all his accompts, and is well acquainted with the mysteries of his Trade. … [He is] as often engaged in very honest and useful designs as any other that can be named through the whole Trade. …” John Dunton, Life and Errors (London, 1818), I, 206.

36. Poetical Works of Milton, ed. Masson, I, 18.

37. By comparison, Nathaniel Ponder issued the first twelve editions of The Pilgrim's Progress within ten years.

38. John Oldmixon, The History of England (London, 1735), III, 479.

39. John Walter Good, Studies in the Milton Tradition, University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, I (Urbana, 1915), 28.

40. Paradise Lost, ed. Thomas Newton, to which is prefixed Newton's life of Milton (London, 1749), p. xl.

41. Robert White (1645-1703), draughtsman and engraver. William Faithorne the elder (1616-91), eminent English engraver. Most of Faithorne's work consisted in portraits. His engraving of Milton was drawn and engraved from life in 1670 and prefixed to Milton's The History of Britain (London, 1670). See Louis Alexander Fagan's A Descriptive Catalogue of the Engraved Works of William Faithorne (London, 1888).

42. After 1670, Faithorne's engraving of Milton frequently appeared in editions of Paradise Lost, and the attractive possibilities of illustrating the poem were quickly realized. After the 1688 folio, Tonson's editions of Milton were usually “ornamented with Sculptures.” Steele draws attention to the artistic possibilities of the poem in several of The Tatler poems. On paintings of scenes from Paradise Lost see The World, no. 121, April 24, 1755, and J. W. Good, p. 28.

43. Randal Taylor, bookseller in London; St. Martin's le Grand near St. Leonard's Church-yard, 1664-67.

44. Poetical Works of Milton, ed. Masson, I, 20.

45. Dryden's main discussions of Milton appear in the following works, all published by Tonson: The State of Innocence and the Fall of Man, 1677; Apology for Heroick Poetry, 1677; Preface to Sylvae (Part II of Miscellany Poems), 1685; The Original and Progress of Satire, 1693; “Dedication of The Æneis,” 1697; and Preface to The Fables, 1700.

46. E. Watkinson, “Nature and Tendency of Criticism,” Critical Review, XVI (1863), 1-5.

47. According to an anecdote related by Jonathan Richardson, father and son—in their Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton's Paradise Lost (London, 1734)—Sir John Denham introduced the poem to Dryden. T. H. Banks, Jr., offers a defense of the anecdote in his article, “Sir John Denham and Paradise Lost,” MLN, XLI (Jan. 1926), 51-54.

48. (a) A manuscript account in the Bodleian Library: Wood D.4. This anonymous biographical account was discovered in 1889 among the papers of Anthony à Wood. It was first edited and published by E. S. Parsons: see his “The Earliest Life of Milton,” English Historical Review, XVII (Jan. 1902), 95-110. There has been no general agreement among scholars as to the authorship of this biography. Parsons attributed it to Milton's physician, Dr. Paget. John Smart assigned it to Milton's friend, Cyriack Skinner; while Helen Darbishire, in The Early Lives of Milton (London, 1932), argued that it was written by John Philips (1631-1706), one of Milton's nephews.

    (b) A politically-prejudiced and antagonistic account of Milton in The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (London, 1687), a biographical dictionary by William Winstanley (1628-98).

    (c) John Aubrey's notes entitled “Minutes for the Life of Mr. John Milton.” These are preserved in the Bodleian Library as MS. Aubrey 8, foll. 63-68, in Part III of the Collection of John Aubrey (1626-97), author of the celebrated Brief Lives.

    (d) An account of Milton in Fasti Oxonienses (Oxford, 1691), pp. 880-84. This was the work of Oxford antiquarian, Anthony à Wood. It is based in part on Aubrey's “Minutes.” Wood never met Milton.

    (e) Biographical material on Milton in An Account of the English Dramatick Poets (Oxford, 1961), by Gerard Langbaine (1656-92).

    (f) An account by Milton's nephew, Edward Philips (1630-96?), called “The Life of Mr. John Milton,” and published anonymously as a preface to Milton's Letters of State (1694).

    (g) “The Life of John Milton,” by John Toland (1679-1722). This was a preface to A Complete Collection of the Historical, Poetical, and Miscellaneous Works of John Milton, both English and Latin. … (Amsterdam, 1698). Toland, like Anthony à Wood, did not know Milton personally.

    See further: Helen Darbishire, The Early Lives of Milton (London, 1932), for the texts of the aforementioned biographical accounts of Milton.

49. Thomas Rymer, The Tragedies of the Last Age Consider'd (London, 1678).

50. Sir William Temple, Works, ed. Jonathan Swift (London, 1720), I, 245.

51. See particularly: John Dennis, “The Passion of Byblis” (1692), “The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry” (1704), and “Letters on Milton & Wycherley” (1721-22), reprinted in James Thorpe, Milton Criticism: Selections from Four Centuries (London, 1951), pp. 344-48. For Charles Gildon's work, see The Laws of Poetry, as laid down by the Duke of Buckinghamshire … explain'd and illustrated [By C. G.] (London, 1721). On early eighteenth-century criticism of Milton, see further James Thorpe, pp. 23-64. Thorpe's book includes a selection of Spectator papers on Paradise Lost.

52. The Poetical Works of John Milton, ed. Masson, I, 21.

53. Newman's Preface to his edition of Paradise Lost, published by subscription for Tonson and Draper, 1749-51.

54. Warton's Preface to his edition of Poems upon Several Occasions, by John Milton (London, 1785).

55. A. Oras, Milton's Editors and Commentators from Patrick Hume to Henry John Todd—1695-1801 (Tartu, Estonia, 1931), p. 23.

56. Charles Leslie (1650-1722). See the Preface to Leslie's The History of Sin and Heresie (London, 1698).

57. E.g., a pirated edition of Paradise Lost was published by Henry Hills, Jr., in 1709.

58. J. W. Good, Studies in the Milton Tradition, pp. 140-42.

59. The Tatler, no. 6, April 23, 1709; no. 32, June 23, 1709; no. 40, July 12, 1709; no. 50, Aug. 4, 1709; no. 79, Oct. 11, 1709; no. 98, Nov. 24, 1709; no. 102, Dec. 3, 1709; no. 114, Dec. 31, 1709; no. 132, Feb. 11, 1710; no. 149, Mar. 23, 1710; no. 217, Aug. 29, 1710; no. 218, Aug. 30, 1710; no. 222, Sept. 9, 1710; no. 237, Oct. 14, 1710; no. 263, Dec. 14, 1710; The Spectator, no. 12, Mar. 14, 1711; no. 237, Dec. 1, 1711; no. 249, Dec. 16, 1711; no. 262, Dec. 31, 1711; no. 393, May 31, 1712; no. 425, July 8, 1712; no. 463, Aug. 21, 1712; The Guardian, no. 103, July 9, 1713; no. 138, Aug. 19, 1713; The Freeholder, no. 32, April 9, 1716.

60. Works of Milton, ed. Masson, I, 21

61. J. W. Good, Studies in the Milton Tradition, p. 155. Good estimates that the critiques in The Spectator passed through at least thirty-two English editions separately or in reprints of The Spectator before 1801.

62. The Tonsons seem to have leased their rights to colleagues in the Stationers' Company in 1730 and 1739. The first editions to challenge those issued by the Tonsons appeared in Scotland: edition published by T. Osborne (1746-47) and by R. and A. Foulis (1750).

63. Addison's “Remarks on Paradise Lost” were collected into a separate volume in 1719, translated into French, 1729, into German, 1740, and into Italian, 1742. Voltaire's essay, “Upon the Epick Poetry of the European Nations,” in An Essay upon the Civil Wars of France (London, 1727), contained important commendations of Milton and gave considerable impetus to the growth of the poet's reputation.

64. J. W. Good, p. 155. The house of Tonson published at least twenty-seven editions of Paradise Lost between 1719 and 1760.

65. Elijah Fenton (1683-1730), poet, translator, editor, and assistant of Pope. Fenton edited Waller's Works (The Works of Edmund Waller, Esq. in verse and prose. Published by Mr. Fenton. [London, 1729]).

    Richard Bentley (1662-1742), scholar, theologian, and critic, a major participant in the famous controversy over the Epistles of Phalaris which Swift satirized in The Battle of the Books.

    Fenton and Tonson were both attacked in The Traveller, no. 22, Feb. 6, 1731; replies appeared in The Grub Street Journal, no. 99, Nov. 25, 1731 and no. 100, Dec. 2, 1731.

66. Published in Jan. 1731, in quarto. Bentley used the 1720 edition of Paradise Lost, published by Tonson.

67. J. W. Mackail, Bentley's Milton, Warton Lecture on English Poetry, no. XV (1924), p. 4. See also “Milton and Bentley,” in William Empson's Some Versions of Pastoral (London, 1935).

68. Mackail, p. 11.

69. Ibid.

70. J. H. Hanford, A Milton Handbook (1946), p. 308.

71. Quotation from Tonson's “Milton Letter” of 1731. See, pp. 184-88.

72. Studies in the Milton Tradition, pp. 29-30.

73. The document is now in the possession of Messrs. Rivington & Co., publishers, of 34 King Street, London, W. C. 2.

    Herringman received £123.17.6 and Byne £16.2.6.

74. Of the Shakespeare “copies” owned by Herringman, only Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Timon of Athens are mentioned in the 1707 assignment. The “moiety of Mr. Shakespeare's plays bought of Mr. Andrew Clarke” probably refers to the seven apocryphal plays published in the Chetwynde Folio, 1664. Julius Caesar was perhaps acquired by Herringman from Bentley.

75. Nicholas Rowe (1673-1718), Poet Laureate, author of the play Jane Shore, translator of Lucan's Pharsalia for an edition published by Tonson in 1718. Rowe was a friend of Swift, Pope, and Addison.

    John Hughes (1677-1720), poet and essayist; author of The Siege of Damascus, 1720.

76. Quoted by Alfred Jackson, “Rowe's Edition of Shakespeare,” The Library, 4th ser., X (Mar. 1930), 455.

77. Engravings to the plays depicted scenes with the characters in early eighteenth-century theatrical costume. Tonson's artists included M. Van der Gucht, E. Kirkall, L. Du Guernier, and P. Fourdriner.

78. F. E. Halliday, Shakespeare and his Critics (London, 1949), pp. 199-207, provides a brief account of the pre-Rowe editions.

79. See E. Walder, “The Text of Shakespeare,” Cambridge History of English Literature, ed. Ward and Waller, V (Cambridge, Eng., 1929), p. 268.

80. “Queries with Answers,” Notes and Queries, 2nd ser., XII (1861), 349.

81. All octavo. The Tempest, 1709, was the first separate “untampered” issue of the play. Antony and Cleopatra was still “eclipsed” by Dryden's All for Love. Tonson's Macbeth, 1714, varies considerably from Rowe's text of the play and was the first “untampered” issue of the play. Tonson's Hamlet, 1712, was, however, the sixteenth separate edition.

82. The plays issued were: All's Well that Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, 1 Henry IV, Henry VIII, King John, King Lear, Richard II, Richard III, Love's Labour's Lost, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Timon of Athens, Titus Andronicus, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale.

83. Two impressions were in eight volumes duodecimo, and one was in nine volumes duodecimo.

84. Charles Seymour, Sixth Duke of Somerset, K. G. (1662-1748), a member of the Kit-Cat Club.

85. A. Bettsworth, J. Brown, N. Cliff, J. Darby, D. Jackson, J. Kimpton, J. Osborn, J. Pemberton, W. Taylor, and T. Varnam.

86. H. L. Ford, Shakespeare 1700-1740 New York, 1935), pp. 3-4.

87. Ibid., p. 3.

88. MSS. 28275, foll. 230-37.

89. Fenton received £30.14.0, Gay £35.17.6, and Whalley £12.0.0. Pope himself was paid £217.12.0. Most of the money was collected through pre-publication subscriptions. These sums should be compared with those for the 1709 edition, for which Rowe received £36.0.0, and his assistant, Hughes, £28.7.0.

90. MSS. 28275, fol. 239. Undated letter from Pope to Jacob Tonson I.

91. See Richard F. Jones, Lewis Theobald (New York, 1919), Appendix C.

92. Evening Post, May 5, 1722.

93. British Museum C.38.1.12.

94. The work was dedicated to John Rich (1682?-1761), manager of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, where he presented Gay's The Beggar's Opera, 1728. On the dedication see further John Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1817; 1858), II, 712.

95. Theobald was the first hero of the poem, but in the edition of 1743 his place was given to Colley Cibber.

96. The most influential of these was Lady De La Warr who negotiated with the Tonsons on Theobald's behalf and even managed to collect subscriptions from some of Pope's friends.

97. See Preface to Theobald's Shakespeare, 1733, pp. lxiii-lxviii.

98. Nichols, Illustrations …, II, 551.

99. Theobald to Warburton, 25 April 1730. Quoted in R. F. Jones, Lewis Theobald, p. 157.

100. Theobald to Warburton, 30 October 1731. R. F. Jones, p. 277. The agreement arranged for the edition to appear in March, 1732, but publication was delayed until January, 1734. Theobald received £652.10.0 for his work on the edition. Lord Orrery, to whom he dedicated the Shakespeare, contributed £100, and the Prince of Wales added a further £20 for his copy. This means that Theobald's remuneration exceeded even Johnson's and Warburton's, whose editions brought them £475.0.0 and £500.0.0 respectively. See Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, XIV (1919), 540.

101. Pope to Jacob Tonson II, 14 November 1731. See entire letter in The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn (Oxford, 1956), III, 242-43.

102. Jacob Tonson II to Pope, 13 November 1731. Ibid.

103. Theobald to Warburton, 4 December 1731. Jones, pp. 284-85.

104. Preface to Theobald's Shakespeare, 1733, p. lxiii.

105. By G. Duchange (1662-1757), a French engraver, well-known for his plates after Correggio.

106. Charles Boyle, Fourth Earl of Orrery and First Baron Marston (1676-1731), a literary opponent of Dr. Bentley.

107. Styan Thirlby (1686?-1753), critic and theologian, a literary opponent of Dr. Bentley.

     William Warburton (1698-1799), Bishop of Gloucester. The Tonsons published his Shakespeare in 1747.

     Martin Folkes (1690-1754), antiquary, President of the Society of Antiquaries.

     Richard Mead (1693-1754), physician; the literary patron and friend of Dr. Bentley.

     John Freind (1675-1728), physician to Queen Caroline; a friend of Richard Mead.

     F. Plumptree was probably a relative of Henry Plumptre (d. 1746), President of the Royal College of Physicians.

     Thomas Coxeter (1689-1747), literary antiquary; specialized in collecting early English plays and literary forgeries.

108. Robert Walker, printer in London and Cambridge. See pp. 189-95.

109. Love's Labour's Lost, 1714 and 1735, A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1692, 1693, 1714, 1734, Much Ado About Nothing, 1734, Pericles, 1734.

110. Seven of the apocryphal plays taken over from the Chetwynde Folio, 1664, were published separately in 1709 and 1734, and in collected form, one volume duodecimo, in 1728.

111. Ford, Shakespeare 1700-1740, pp. 1-2.