Thus with the Year
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here, if anywhere, we should expect mee, we do not find it, though itoccurs in the speech eight lines below. It should be added that thisdifferentiation of the pronouns is not found in any printed poem ofMilton's before Paradise Lost, nor is it found in the Cambridgeautograph. In that manuscript the constant forms are me, wee, yee.There is one place where there is a difference in the spelling of she,and it is just possible that this may not be due to accident. In thefirst verse of the song in Arcades, the MS. reads: This, this is shee; and in the third verse: This, this is she alone. This use of the double vowel is found a few times in Paradise Regain'd:in ii. 259 and iv. 486, 497 where mee begins a line, and in iv. 638where hee is specially emphatic in the concluding lines of the poem. InSamson Agonistes it is more frequent (e.g. lines 124, 178, 193, 220,252, 290, 1125). Another word the spelling of which in Paradise Lostwill be observed to vary is the pronoun their, which is spelt sometimesthir. The spelling in the Cambridge manuscript is uniformly thire,except once when it is thir; and where their once occurs in the writingof an amanuensis the e is struck through. That the difference is notmerely a printer's device to accommodate his line may be seen by acomparison of lines 358 and 363 in the First Book, where the shorterword comes in the shorter line. It is probable that the lighter formof the word was intended to be used when it was quite unemphatic.Contrast, for example, in Book iii. l.59: His own works and their worksat once to view with line 113: Thir maker and thir making and thir Fate.But the use is not consistent, and the form thir is not found at alltill the 349th line of the First Book. The distinction is kept up inthe Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes, but, if possible, with evenless consistency. Such passages, however, as Paradise Regain'd, iii.414-440; Samson Agonistes, 880-890, are certainly spelt upon a method,and it is noticeable that in the choruses the lighter form is universal. Paradise Regain'd and Samson Agonistes were published in 1671, and nofurther edition was called for in the remaining three years of thepoet's lifetime, so that in the case of these poems there are no newreadings to record; and the texts were so carefully revised, that onlyone fault (Paradise Regain'd, ii. 309) was left for correction later.In these and the other poems I have corrected the misprints cataloguedin the tables of Errata, and I have silently corrected any other unlessit might be mistaken for a various reading, when I have called attentionto it in a note. Thus I have not recorded such blunders as Lethian forLesbian in the 1645 text of Lycidas, line 63; or hallow for hollow inParadise Lost, vi. 484; but I have noted content for concent, in At aSolemn Musick, line 6. In conclusion I have to offer my sincere thanks to all who havecollaborated with me in preparing this Edition; to the Delegates of theOxford Press for allowing me to undertake it and decorate it with somany facsimiles; to the Controller of the Press for his unfailingcourtesy; to the printers and printer's reader for their care and pains.Coming nearer home I cannot but acknowledge the help I have received inlooking over proof-sheets from my sister, Mrs. P. A. Barnett, who hasungrudgingly put at the service of this book both time and eyesight. Intaking leave of it, I may be permitted to say that it has cost more ofboth these inestimable treasures than I had anticipated. The last proofreaches me just a year after the first, and the progress of the work hasnot in the interval been interrupted. In tenui labor et tenuis gloria.Nevertheless I cannot be sorry it was undertaken.
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