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PREFACE by the Rev. H. C. Beeching, M. A.
This edition of Milton's Poetry is a reprint, as careful as Editor and
Printers have been able to make it, from the earliest printed copies of
the several poems. First the 1645 volume of the Minor Poems has been
printed entire; then follow in order the poems added in the reissue of
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673; the Paradise Lost, from the edition of 1667; and the Paradise
Regain'd and Samson Agonistes from the edition of 1671.
The most interesting portion of the book must be reckoned the first
section of it, which reproduces for the first time the scarce small
octavo of 1645. The only reprint of the Minor Poems in the old
spelling, so far as I know, is the one edited by Mitford, but that
followed the edition of 1673, which is comparatively uninteresting since
it could not have had Milton's oversight as it passed through the press.
We know that it was set up from a copy of the 1645 edition, because it
reproduces some pointless eccentricities such as the varying form of the
chorus to Psalm cxxxvi; but while it corrects the errata tabulated in
that edition it commits many more blunders of its own. It is valuable,
however, as the editio princeps of ten of the sonnets and it contains
one important alteration in the Ode on the Nativity. This and all other
alterations will be found noted where they occur. I have not thought it
necessary to note mere differences of spelling between the two editions
but a word may find place here upon their general character. Generally
it may be said that, where the two editions differ, the later spelling
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