[In the following essay, Bennett considers the textual evidence for the case that Tonson was involved in the publication of the 1688 folio edition of Paradise Lost.]

Most of the evidence for Jacob Tonson's editorial involvement with the publication of the 1688 folio edition of Paradise Lost can be derived from two sources: variations, not previously remarked, between the text of the 1688 folio and the previous three editions of Paradise Lost, and the controversy some forty years later over Richard Bentley's 1732 version of the same poem. Bentley's edition claimed ‘to be the Truest and Correctest that has yet appear'd’,¹ and since both Jacob Tonson the elder and his nephew of the same name claimed perpetual copyright in Milton's texts, it was inevitable that Jacob Tonson, Junior should have had a major share in the publication of this new edition. This edition, however, so provoked the elder Tonson's wrath that he wrote a long letter from his retirement in Herefordshire, voicing his concern to his nephew ‘in this vultures falling uppon a Poet y^t is y^e admiration of England’,² and during the course of 1732 he published two further letters on the subject in the Grub-Street Journal.³

Jacob Tonson's first publication of Paradise Lost was (in Jonathan Richardson's phrase) the ‘pompous Folio Edition of it with Cuts by Subscription in the Revolution Year’.⁴ Tonson had purchased half the copyright of the poem, together with the manuscript fair copy of Book I, five years earlier in 1683. The delay between Tonson's purchase of the copyright and publication was presumably due as much to political concerns as to what Kathleen Lynch has described (somewhat extravagantly, and without elaboration) as Tonson's devotion ‘as was his custom in the case of expensive editions … [of] some years to the careful preparation of Milton's text’.⁵

It would be rash to claim a high degree of sophistication for the editorial efforts on the 1688 folio, but there is evidence that some work on the text was undertaken. The editorial expertise displayed in Tonson's 1732 correspondence with his nephew and the Grub-Street Journal suggests that the hand was Tonson's own, and that he retained an interest in editorial matters for the remainder of his long publishing career. Tonson did not employ the first edition of Paradise Lost as a basis for his text. He was doubtless influenced by the fact that the 1674 second edition of the poem incorporated, as its title-page declared, the author's final revisions and so, following the usual practice of his day, Tonson employed the most recently-published edition as his copy-text, in this case the third edition of 1678.⁶ Although Tonson's compositor occasionally made a mistake, or displayed his own spelling idiosyncrasies, it requires only a few citations to show that Tonson's fourth edition was indeed set up from the third edition. All of the following are taken from Book I:

Line 92: fallen … prov'd, ed. 3 and 4; fall'n … prov'd, ed. 2; fal'n … provd, ed. 1.

Line 384: God's, ed. 3 and 4; Gods, ed. 1 and 2.

Line 530: fainting, ed. 3 and 4; fanting, ed. 2; fainted, ed. 1.

Line 722: luxury, ed. 3 and 4; luxurie, ed. 1 and 2.

Line 727: subtle, ed. 3 and 4; suttle, ed. 1 and 2.

The textual differences between the manuscript fair copy of Book I, acquired by Tonson with his share of the copyright, and the printed versions of the first three editions are documented by Helen Darbishire, and the variations are sufficiently great that the possibility that Tonson's edition of Book I was actually set up from his manuscript can be safely dismissed. The fair copy of Book I was, however, used to alter the text in some places. These alterations in some cases represent little more than intelligent tinkering, and may at first have been prompted by Tonson's pride in ownership of the manuscript. It seems unlikely, considering Tonson's well-known jealousy in guarding the manuscript, that he would have allowed anyone but himself to collate the manuscript with the printed text and make editorial changes.⁷ The case for Tonson's own editorship is further strengthened by the fact that, as will be seen, he could offer astute comment on the relative significance of early editions as evidence of authorial intentions, and on the use of manuscripts as tools for comparing the authenticity of various editions of printed texts.

Helen Darbishire has pinpointed (although without noting its significance in connection with Tonson) the most important textually of Tonson's emendations based on the manuscript fair copy of Book I It appears at line 756: ‘At Pandæmonium, the high Capitol / Of Satan and his Peers:’. Initially ‘the scribe wrote Capitoll: the o has been converted to a by a thick pen-stroke in ink distinctly redder-brown than the scribe's. The right reading must be Capitol. We owe the blunder to an officious corrector either in Milton's house or at the printers’.⁸ ‘Capital’ is the reading of editions one, two, and three, and is corrected only in Tonson's fourth. If this were the only alteration in accordance with the manuscript one might attribute it to an intelligent compositor who need not necessarily have referred to the manuscript. In this edition, however, Tonson has restored manuscript readings into two other sections, viz.:

Lines 56-58: balefull … Mix'd (ed. 1, 2 and 3 baleful … Mixt)

Lines 428-29: chuse … condens'd (ed. 1, 2 and 3 choose … condens't)

and possibly restored manuscript readings (although compositor's idiosyncrasies might account for some or all of these) at:

Line 65: dolefull (ed. 1, 2 and 3 doleful)

Line 124: Heaven (ed. 1, 2 and 3 Heav'n)

Line 191: despair (ed. 1, 2 and 3 despare)

Line 288: Optick (ed. 1, 2 and 3 Optic)

Line 335: perceive (ed. 1, 2 and 3 perceave)

There are other, straightforward, corrections and emendations given without the authority of previous editions or the manuscript which display some careful thought on Tonson's or his compositor's part, such as ‘than whom’ for ‘then whom’ at line 490, ‘God?’ for ‘God’ at line 496, and ‘carriere’ for ‘carreer’ at line 766. It may be significant that most of the small restorations given as possibilities above are from the first half of the book; although Tonson could have restored other manuscript readings in his edition he probably felt, as indeed must any modern editor, that the standard of printing of the first three editions of Paradise Lost was exceptionally high judged by comparison with the manuscript. Thus the restoration of minute spelling variations, a time-consuming labour, probably came to seem to Tonson unworthy of further attention.⁹

Were it not for the evidence of Tonson's ownership of the manuscript fair copy and his later correspondence it might be arguable that these corrections were simply vagaries in the work of a compositor or other employee, but in the course of his three letters of 1732 Tonson shows how intimate his involvement was in this and, doubtless, many of his other important publishing projects. In the first of his two letters to the Grub-Street Journal, dated 21 January 1731 (i.e. 1732) and published in the issue of 27 January, Tonson states that from Milton's manner of writing his verses

from his mouth, it is certain, that many errors in spelling, and pointing, must needs have creeped into the first copy. … These errors, being followed and augmented by those of the Printer in the first impression, received still an additional increase in the succeeding editions.¹⁰

In Tonson's letter to his nephew mentioned above, undated but of the same period, he notes the antidote to these errors, and indeed to the errors of Dr Bentley: ‘look in y^e manuscript.’¹¹ As far as Bentley's claims that ‘several places … were altered by y^e printer’, Tonson retorts that these ‘are exactly true to the coppy & I think it is plain that y^e 1st edition was printed by this very coppy’, i.e. Tonson's manuscript.¹² No doubt looking back over his own long experience as a publisher, Tonson suggests to his nephew that Milton's employing Simmons, the printer of the first edition who ‘lived near Aldersgate & Milton in Jewin Street pretty near him … is to me an argument that [Milton] did not trust wholy to the printer’.¹³ Bentley also stated that Milton must have employed an editor to see the poem through the press, and that this editor was responsible for the poem's blemishes. Tonson politely notes in his letter to the Grub-Street Journal that from this argument it would seem that eyesight ‘is as necessary to draw the plan of an Epic Poem, as of a magnificent Palace’.¹⁴ In his letter to his nephew Tonson makes the same point more bluntly: ‘As to y^e Editor, I think y^t is a meer fantome of y^e D^rs creation & raised on purpose to Sesoon in Appearance his scurrilous invectives against Milton’.¹⁵

Tonson's specific criticisms of Bentley's edition, although they have little, if any, retrospective significance as far as Tonson's own 1688 Paradise Lost is concerned, nevertheless demonstrate how incisive his insights into the problems of editorship were. Samuel Croxall described Tonson in retirement at about this time, surrounded by books and manuscripts in the room Croxall called a ‘Museum’, ‘making improvements and alterations in Pope's Imitation of Horace’,¹⁶ and it is clear Tonson read Bentley's Paradise Lost with similar care. In a second letter to the Grub-Street Journal published 2 March 1731 (i.e. 1732) Tonson remarks that one of Bentley's central assertions, that ‘the proof sheets of the first Edition were never read to Milton’ is

contradicted by a person of as great authority, the Doctor himself; who in his note upon B.xi.485 has these words MILTON made but two additions [in the second edition] both proper and genuine; [certainly genuine if made by him] three verses in the beginning of the viii Book, when he divided one Book into two; and five in the beginning of the xii, when he divided another Book into two. The first edition comprised all in ten Books. Let any one judge, whether MILTON could make these alterations and additions, without having the Poem read to him; and whether [it] is more probable, that it was read in the manuscript copy, or in the printed edition.¹⁷

Bentley on another argumentative tack asserted that Milton's reputation had so increased by the time he published Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes that these two poems were printed without fault, and Tonson replies:

According to this account, the first edition of Paradise Regain'd must come out some time in 1674, the year in which, as the doctor tells us … the second edition of Paradise Lost was published: for the Author died in that very year. Now supposing this account to be true (which it is not) the distance of time between the publications of the second edition of one, and the first of the other Poem, a distance of perhaps a few months, is too inconsiderable, for any great advancement of the Author's credit and reputation, and the change, supposed consequent thereupon, of his old Printer and Supervisor. ——— Nor will it be of any advantage to the Doctor's argument, to give this sentence a forced construction, by supposing he knew that the first edition of Paradise Regain'd was published in 1671. … For if MILTON was in high credit, and had changed his old Printer and Supervisor in 1671; would he not three years afterwards, in 1674, when his credit must needs have risen still higher, have employed his new Printer, or at least his new Supervisor, in publishing the second edition of Paradise Lost? … this [argument of Bentley's] is so far from proving the insertion of forgeries by the Editor in this second edition, that it makes such an insertion still much more improbable, and almost impossible.¹⁸

Tonson's first letter, published on 27 January, initiated a long correspondence on the subject of Bentley's Paradise Lost in the Grub-Street Journal. Although Tonson in his first letter offered to send examples of Bentley's errors in Book I of the poem (doubtless because this was the book he had worked on, and for which he held the manuscript), it seems likely that the deluge of letters received, particularly those by one ‘A. Z.’, largely preempted the subject matter of a further Tonson letter. He may have contributed to the ‘Bavius’ account of Bentley's errors in Book I as set out in the Grub-Street Journal of 17 August 1732, and there can be no doubt that Tonson's criticisms encouraged both Zachary Pearce, whose Review of the 12 Books of Milton's ‘Paradise Lost’ was published the following year as a point-by-point reply to Bentley, and the ‘Bavius’ leading article in the Grub-Street Journal of 6 April 1732 which concluded that for Bentley

to pour out in extemporary effusions, crude and indigested criticisms, upon the compleatest Poem in the English language … justly raises the wonder, scorn, and indignation of all that hear it. This is to act more like a Pedagogue than a Critic; and to treat the Heroic Poem of the Great Milton, like the exercise of a School-boy.

Thomas Newton in 1749 credited Tonson's 1688 Paradise Lost with bringing the poem its ‘deserved applause’,¹⁹ but even had Tonson not been the chief instrument by which Milton's poem earned its fame, in hastening the departure of Bentley's Paradise Lost from the literary stage he would still deserve a respectable, albeit more modest, place in Milton studies. Moreover Tonson's strictures on the necessity of editors' observing the integrity of texts clearly anticipate modern textual principles, principles towards which he can be seen to be working in his textual work on the 1688 Paradise Lost. Although these editorial principles were not much followed in the two centuries after Tonson's death, his identifying and elaborating their significance is an appropriate footnote to his career as the greatest of Augustan publishers, and a significant forerunner of modern textual criticism.

Notes

1. Milton's Paradise Lost. A New Edition, by Richard Bentley, D.D. (London, 1732), p. [ii].

2. Helen Darbishire, ed., The Manuscript of Milton's Paradise Lost Book I (Oxford, 1931), p. xiv. Darbishire publishes the full text of Tonson's letter to his nephew, which together with the Milton manuscript is now in the Pierpont Morgan Library.

3. These letters are signed only ‘J. T.’, but there can be no doubt of the author. Jacob Tonson the Elder had kept very tight control over the publication of Milton's works, and clearly prided himself on his fidelity to Milton's texts. His nephew seems to have taken a more mercantile approach to publishing, as can be seen from his 1725 Shakespeare edited by Pope, about which Maynard Mack says ‘the motive on Tonson's part was quite simply to exploit Pope's reputation as a critic and a man of taste, and to do so with a sumptuous edition … offered at a profitable five guineas the set. He hoped further … to have it appear that the subscription was really for Pope, thinking in that way to enlarge it. But this Pope refused.’ (Alexander Pope: A Life, New Haven & London, 1985, p. 418). Doubtless the younger Tonson saw the publication of Bentley's Milton as a similarly profitable venture, and the resulting controversy as good for business. The younger Tonson does not seem to have been well-loved by his writers, and the rise to prominence and acquisition of authors like Pope by publishers such as Bernard Lintot corresponds to the time when the younger man took control of the Tonson publishing empire. During the period of this control the Tonson output of major new literary work declined substantially.

4. Explanatory Notes … on Paradise Lost (London, 1734), quoted in Helen Darbishire, The Early Lives of Milton (London, 1932), p. 294.

5. Kathleen Lynch, Jacob Tonson Kit-Cat Publisher (Knoxville, 1971), p. 104.

6. W. W. Greg confirms this practice, nothing that ‘printed editions usually form an ancestral series, in which each is derived from its immediate predecessor’ (‘The Rationale of Copy-Text’ in Collected Papers, edited by J. C. Maxwell (Oxford, 1966), p. 377).

7. One anecdote concerning Tonson's pride in the manuscript dates from 1722, when Francis Atterbury wrote to Pope ‘I long to see the Original M.S. of Milton; but don't know how to come at it, without your repeated assistance’ (The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn, 5 vols (Oxford, 1956), II, 124, n. 2).

8. Darbishire, The Manuscript of Milton's Paradise Lost Book I, p. 68. Miltonic spellings, including double-ell endings were restored elsewhere in Book I (see below), but if this seems here inconsistent it may simply be a case of understandable oversight after the substantive alteration had been effected. It is matter for more regret that the corrected reading did not survive into later Tonson editions: by the time of his famous ‘correct’ edition of 1711 the spelling had reverted to ‘Capital’.

9. Such minutiae did receive further attention from Capel Lofft, in his Paradise Lost … Printed from the First and Second Editions collated. The Original System of Orthography Restored; the Punctuation Corrected and Extended (London, 1792). Lofft managed to produce his revisions only for Books I (in 1792) and II (in 1793) before abandoning the project, and his efforts have been largely ignored by subsequent editors. One wonders whether Longman's 1795 edition of Paradise Lost, whose title boldly proclaimed it as ‘Printed from the Text of Tonson's Correct Edition of M.DCC.XI’, might have been in response to Lofft's near-Bentleyan pretensions.

10. This and all references to the Grub-Street Journal are from the microfilm in the Huntington Library.

11. Darbishire, The Manuscript of Milton's Paradise Lost Book I, p. xiii.

12. Darbishire, The Manuscript of Milton's Paradise Lost Book I, p. xii.

13. Ibid.

14. Grub-Street Journal, 27 January 1731 [i.e. 1732].

15. Darbishire, The Manuscript of Milton's Paradise Lost Book I, p. xii.

16. Jacob Tonson in Ten Letters by and about Him, ed. Sarah L. C. Clapp (Austin, 1948), p. 20. Croxall was writing from Hereford to Jacob Tonson, Junior on 10 March 1732/3. Further evidence of Tonson's literary activity at this time may be seen in Pope's Of the Use of Riches for which, as Miss Clapp notes, the poet ‘made use of materials concerning John Kyrle, the so-called Man of Ross, gathered for him by Tonson’ (ibid., n. 30).

17. The Grub-Street Journal prints the quotations from Bentley in italics, followed here; the square bracketed interpolations are Tonson's (with the exception of ‘[it]’, which is mine).

18. Grub-Street Journal, 2 March 1731 [i.e. 1732].

19. Paradise Lost. A New Edition … by Thomas Newton, D.D., 2 vols (London, 1749), I, 40.