London: Printed by S. Simons, and to be sold by S. Thomson, 1668. First edition. First edition, fourth title page (Amory 2, with Milton's name spelled out and the correct imprint). The first printing of Milton's Argument & his explanation of English heroic verse. Quarto (175 x 125 mm.). Unpaginated. *A4, a4, A-Vv2. "A reissue of sheets with *A4, a4 added, containing 'The argument' of books i-x, a defense of 'The verse', 'Errata' (13 items), and the t-p" (Amory).

Bound by Riviere to style in 19th century speckled, paneled calf. Rebacked with the spine laid down. Boards ruled in gilt, red morocco spine labels, marbled end papers, all edges gilt. Foredge margins repaired on first two preliminary leaves, title page with a repaired tear, no loss. Leaves occassionally trimmed close, mainly in books 9 and 10, but with no loss. Bookplates of Kenneth Rapoport, Gordon Abbott and Joseph Turner on front end papers. Generally a clean, fresh copy internally.

Milton’s magisterial epic, considered one of the finest works in the English language. According to Samuel Johnson Paradise Lost was "…a poem which...with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind.” Milton was in his late fifties – and blind – when the book was composed and so wrote the work almost entirely through dictation. He worked through incredible hardship, coping with the physical illness, gout, as well as the death of his young daughter and wife. Interestingly enough, Milton did not intend at first to write a poem about Satan and the creation of man but rather about King Arthur.

"Paradise Lost is the single greatest poetic achievement of the Seventeenth Century, as indeed Milton is its greatest writer, whether as a poet or polemicist. Milton's earlier, shorter poems, especially On the morning of Christ's Nativity, L'Allegro & Il Penseroso, On His Blindness, Comus & Lycidas, revealed his musical genius; Paradise Lost revealed the worrisome grandeur of his intellect. It is no doubt a measure of the breadth & depth & bent of his mind, as well as of the stresses of the England in which he lived - with its Civil War, Regicide & Restoration - that Milton would have attempted to justify the ways of God to men. And it is no doubt the implausibility - or impossibility - of his argument, of which his younger contemporary Pascal might have warned him, that undermined his ambition, causing Blake to call Milton a true Poet, but of the Devil's party without knowing it. However problematic, Paradise Lost still stands as one of the greatest, most noble and sublime poems in any language" (Dryden).

Amory 2. Grolier, 100 English, 33. Grolier, Wither to Prior, II, 187. Hayward 72. Pforzheimer 716. Wing M2139. (Item #5392)