Milton, who had evidently performed very punctually Bigot's immediate commission,[1] did, it will be observed, send him a commission in return. It deserves a little explanation:--There was then in course of publication at Paris, under the auspices and at the expense of Louis XIV., the first splendid collective edition of the Byzantine Historians, i.e. of that series of Historians, Chroniclers, Antiquarians, and Memoir-writers of the Eastern or Greek Empire from the 6th century to the 15th in whose works lies imbedded all our information as to the History of the East through the Middle Ages. The publication, which was to attain to the vast size of thirty-six volumes folio, containing the Greek Texts with Latin Translations and Notes, was not to be completed till 1711; but it had been begun in 1645. Now, in Milton's library, it appears, the Byzantine Historians were already pretty well represented, either in the shape of the earlier volumes of this Parisian collection, or in that of separate prior editions of particular writers. There were some gaps, however, which he wanted to fill up. He wanted the _Chronographia_ of Theophanes Isaacius, a chronicle of events from A.D. 277 to A.D. 811; also the _Brevarium Historicum_ of Constantine Manasses, a metrical chronicle of the world from the Creation to A.D. 1081; also the book of Georgius Codinus, the compiler of the fifteenth century, entitled _Excerpta de Originibus Constantinopolitanis_; also that of Anastasius Bibliothecarius on the _Lives of the Popes_. The Parisian editions of these, or of the first three, were now out (all in 1655). At the same time there might be sent him the Parisian editions, if they had appeared, of the Annals of _Michael Glycas_, bringing the History of the World from the Creation to A.D. 1118, and the valuable Lives of John and Manuel Comnenus by _Joannes Cinnamus_, the imperial notary of the 12th century.--As the Parisian edition of Michael Glycas (by Labbe) did not appear till 1660, and that of Joannes Cinnamus (by Du Cange) not till 1670, Bigot can have forwarded to Milton only the first-mentioned Byzantine books. One may imagine the arrival of the parcel of learned folios in the neat new tenement which Milton inhabited in Petty France; and it gives one a stronger idea than we have yet had of Milton's passion for books, and of his indomitable perseverance and ingenuity in the use of them in his blind state, that he should have taken such pains, at our present date, to supply himself with copies of some of the rare Byzantine Historians. Connecting this purchase, through Bigot, with the recent inquiry, through Heimbach, about the price of Blaeu's great Atlas, may we not also discern some increased attention to the furnishing of the house occasioned by the second marriage?