The “Argument,” which Milton omitted in subsequent editions, is very curious throughout; and the reason which the author gives, at the request of Mr. Publisher Simmons, why the poem “Rimes not,” is quaint and well worth transcribing an extract here, as it does not always appear in more modern editions.  Mr. Simmons’s Poet is made to say,—­

“The Measure is English Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of Homers in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac’t indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest them.”

We give the orthography precisely as Milton gave it in this his first edition.

There is a Table of Errata prefixed to this old copy, in which the reader is told,

  “for hun_dreds_ read hun_derds_.
  for we read wee.”

Master Simmons’s proof-reader was no adept in his art, if one may judge from the countless errors which he allowed to creep into this immortal poem when it first appeared in print.  One can imagine the identical copy now before us being handed over the counter in Duck Lane to some eager scholar on the look-out for something new, and handed back again to Mr. Thomson as too dull a looking poem for his perusal.  Mr. Edmund Waller entertained that idea of it, at any rate.

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One of the sturdiest little books in my friend’s library is a thick-set, stumpy old copy of Richard Baxter’s “Holy Commonwealth,” written in 1659, and, as the title-page informs us, “at the invitation of James Harrington Esquire,”—­as one would take a glass of Canary,—­by invitation! There is a preface addressed “To all those in the Army or elsewhere, that have caused our many and great Eclipses since 1646.”  The worms have made dagger-holes through and through the “inspired leaves” of this fat little volume, till much strong thinking is now very perforated printing.  On the flyleaf is written, in a rough, straggling hand,

  “WILLIAM WORDSWORTH,

  “Rydal Mount.”

The poet seems to have read the old book pretty closely, for there are evident marks of his liking throughout its pages.

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Connected with the Bard of the Lakes is another work in my friend’s library, which I always handle with a tender interest.  It is a copy of Wordsworth’s Poetical Works, printed in 1815, with all the alterations afterwards made in the pieces copied in by the poet from the edition published in 1827.  Some of the changes are marked improvements, and nearly all make the meaning clearer.  Now and then a prosaic phrase gives place to a more poetical expression.  The well-known lines,