stand still, which is no small damage, or the author lose his accuratest thoughts, and send forth the book worse than he made it, which to a diligent writer is the greatest melancholy and vexation that can befall.' Milton would have had no licensers. Every book should bear the printer's name, and 'mischievous and libellous books' were to be burnt by the common hangman, not as an effectual remedy, but as the 'most effectual remedy man's prevention can use.' The noblest pamphlet in 'our English, the language of men ever famous and foremost in the achievements of liberty,' accomplished nothing, and its author must already have thought himself fallen on evil days. In the year 1645, the year of Naseby, as Mr. Pattison reminds us, appeared the first edition of Milton's Poems. Then, for the first time, were printed _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, the _Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity_, and various of the sonnets. The little volume also contained _Comus_ and _Lycidas_, which had been previously printed. With the exception of three sonnets and a few scraps of translation, Milton had written nothing but pamphlets since his return from Italy. At the beginning of the volume, which is a small octavo, was a portrait of the poet, most villainously executed. He was really thirty-seven, but flattered himself, as men of that age will, that he looked ten years younger; he was therefore much chagrined to find himself represented as a grim-looking gentleman of at least fifty. The way he revenged himself upon the hapless artist is well known. The volume, with the portrait, is now very scarce, almost rare. In 1647 Milton removed from the Barbican, both his father and his father- in-law being dead, to a smaller house in Holborn, backing upon Lincoln's Inn Fields, close to where the Inns of Court Hotel now stands, and not far from the spot which was destined to witness the terrible tragedy which was at once to darken and glorify the life of one of Milton's most fervent lovers, Charles Lamb. About this time he is supposed to have abandoned pedagogy. The habit of pamphleteering stuck to him; indeed, it is one seldom thrown off. It is much easier to throw off the pamphlets.