A publisher was found, notwithstanding that Paul's, or as it now was again, St, Paul's-Churchyard had ceased to exist, in Aldersgate, which lay outside the circuit of the conflagration. The agreement, still preserved in the national museum, between the author, "John Milton, gent, of the one parte, and Samuel Symons, printer, of the other parte," is among the curiosities of our literary history. The curiosity consists not so much in the illustrious name appended (not in autograph) to the deed, as in the contrast between the present fame of the book, and the waste-paper price at which the copyright is being valued. The author received 5 l. down, was to receive a second 5 l. when the first edition should be sold, a third 5 l. when the second, and a fourth 5 l., when the third edition should be gone. Milton lived to receive the second 5 l., and no more, 10 l. in all, for _Paradise Lost_. I cannot bring myself to join in the lamentations of the biographers over this bargain. Surely it is better so; better to know that the noblest monument of English letters had no money value, than to think of it as having been paid for at a pound the line. The agreement with Symons is dated 27 April, 1667, the entry in the register of Stationers' Hall is 20th August. It was therefore in the autumn of 1667 that _Paradise Lost_ was in the hands of the public. We have no data for the time occupied in the composition of _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson Agonistes_. We have seen that the former poem was begun at Chalfont in 1665, and it may be conjecturally stated that _Samson_ was finished before September, 1667. At any rate, both the poems were published together in the autumn of 1670. Milton had four years more of life granted him after this publication. But he wrote no more poetry. It was as if he had exhausted his strength in a last effort, in the Promethean agony of Samson, and knew that his hour of inspiration was passed away. But, like all men who have once tasted the joys and pangs of composition, he could not now do without its excitement. The occupation, and the indispensable solace of the last ten sad years, had been his poems. He would not write more verse, when the oestrus was not on him, but he must write. He took up all the dropped threads of past years, ambitious plans formed in the fulness of vigour, and laid aside, but not abandoned. He was the very opposite of Shelley, who could never look at a piece of his own composition a second time, but when he had thrown it off at a heat, rushed into something else. Milton's adhesiveness was such that he could never give up a design once entered upon. In these four years, as if conscious that his time was now nearly out, he laboured to complete five such early undertakings. (1.) Of his _Compendium of Theology_ I have already spoken. He was overtaken by death while preparing this for the press.