peculiarities of the book are now worth noting:—(1) The name of the real publisher and printer, Simmons, does not appear on the title-page, but only the names of three booksellers to whom he had first consigned copies. (2) There was no numerical paging, but only a head-line to each page noting the number of the current "Book" of the poem, with a marginal numbering of the lines in tens. (3) There was no prefatory prose matter whatever, but one passed at once from the title-page to the text of the poem.
But the history of the first edition of Paradise Lost does not end here. The title-page, as just given, and as reproduced more exactly for the eye in the facsimile, is the title-page as it appeared in the copies that were first bound and issued for sale; and for the next eighteen months or more, as fresh sets of the sheets were bound and sent out from time to time, there was a succession of new title-pages, either in mere whim or to suit the circumstances. Thus, hardly had the first set of copies gone out with the title-page as given, when, in the same year, 1667, there followed another set, bound up with a title-page identical with the former in the wording, but with the author's name, "John Milton," printed in type of a different size. This may be called the second title-page. Then in the year 1668 the title-page was again varied at least four times. Early in that year copies were issued with the first words of the title varied thus: "Paradise lost. A Poem in Ten Books.The Author J. M.,"—the rest of the wording running as before, or nearly so. This may be called the third title-page. Other copies followed, exhibiting a fourth, identical with the last in the wording, and also giving only the author's initials, but differing somewhat in the size of the type. But, later in the year, there came copies with this fifth form of title-page, in which, it will be observed, Simmons inserts his own name for the first time, strikes out one of the booksellers named in all the copies hitherto, and substitute stwo others: "Paradise lost.A Poem in Ten Books.The Author John Milton.London, printed by S. Simmons, and to be sold by S. Thomson at the Bishops-Head in Duck Lane, H. Mortlock at the White Hart in Westminster Hall,
