"Standing on earth, not rapt above the pole,
More safe I sing with mortal voice, unchanged
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days,
On evil days though fallen and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou
Visitest my slumbers nightly, or when morn
Purples the east. Still govern thou my song,
Urania, and fit audience find, though few.
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard."
This allusion to the licentiousness of the Restoration literature could hardly have been made until its tendencies had been plainly developed. At this time "Paradise Lost" was half finished. ("Half yet remains unsung.") The remark permits us to conclude that Milton conceived and executed his poem as a whole, going steadily through it, and not leaving gaps to be supplied at higher or lower levels of inspiration. There is no evidence of any resort to older material, except in the case of Satan's address to the Sun.
The publication of "Paradise Lost" was impeded like the birth of Hercules. In 1665 London was a city of the dying and the dead; in 1666 the better part of it was laid in ashes. One remarkable incident of the calamity was the destruction of the stocks of the booksellers, which had been brought into the vaults of St. Paul's for safety, and perished with the cathedral. "Paradise Lost" might have easily, like its hero—
"In the singing smoke
Uplifted spurned the ground."
but the negotiations for its publication were not complete until April 27, 1667, on which day John Milton, "in consideration of five pounds to him now paid by Samuel Symmons, and other the considerations herein mentioned," assigned to the said Symmons, "all that book, copy, or manuscript of a poem intituled 'Paradise Lost,' or by whatsoever ether title or name the same is or shall be called or distinguished, now lately licensed to be printed." The other considerations were the payment of the like sum of five pounds upon the entire sale of each of the first three impressions, each impression to consist of thirteen hundred copies. "According to the present value of money," says Professor Masson, "it was as if Milton had received £17 10s. down, and was to expect £70 in all. That was on the supposition of a sale of 3,900 copies." He lived to receive ten pounds altogether; and his widow in 1680 parted with all her interest in the copyright for eight pounds, Symmons shortly afterwards reselling it for twenty-five. He is not, therefore, to be enumerated among those publishers who have fattened upon their authors, and when the size of the book and the unfashionableness of the writer are considered, his enterprise may perhaps appear the most remarkable feature of the transaction. As for Milton, we may almost rejoice that he should have reaped no meaner reward than immortality.
It will have been observed that in the contract with Symmons "Paradise Lost" is said to have been "lately licensed to be printed." The censorship named in "Areopagitica" still prevailed, with the difference that prelates now sat in judgment upon Puritans. The Archbishop gave or refused license through his chaplains, and could not be ignored as Milton had ignored the little Presbyterian Popes; Geneva in his person must repair to Lambeth. Chaplain Tomkyns, who took cognisance of "Paradise Lost," was fortunately a broad-minded man, disposed to live and let live, though scrupling somewhat when he found "perplexity" and "fear of change" imputed to "monarchs." His objections were overcome, and on August 20, 1667—three weeks after the death of Cowley, and eight days after Pepys had heard the deceased extolled as the greatest of English poets—John Milton came forth clad as with adamantine mail in the approbation of Thomas Tomkyns. The moment beseemed the event, it was a crisis in English history, when heaven's "golden scales" for weighing evil against good were hung—
"Betwixt Astrea and the Scorpion sign,"
one weighted with a consuming fleet, the other with a falling minister. The Dutch had just burned the English navy at Chatham; on the other hand, the reign of respectable bigotry was about to pass away with Clarendon. Far less reputable men were to succeed, but men whose laxity of principle at least excluded intolerance. The people were on the move, if not, as Milton would have wished, "a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep," at least a faint and weary nation creeping slowly—Tomkyns and all—towards an era of liberty and reason when Tomkyns's imprimatur would be accounted Tomkyns's impertinence.