The most important of all these alterations is one in which the author must have actively participated--the introduction of the Argument which, a hundred and forty years afterwards, was to cause Harriet Martineau to take up "Paradise Lost" at the age of seven, and of the Note on the metre conveying "a reason of that which stumbled many, why this poem rimes not." Partly, perhaps, by help of these devices, certainly without any aid from advertising or reviewing, the impression of thirteen hundred copies was disposed of within twenty months, as attested by Milton's receipt for his second five pounds, April 26, 1669--two years, less one day, since the signature of the original contract.

The first printed notice appeared after the edition had been entirely sold.

It was by Milton's nephew, Edward Phillips, and was contained in a little Latin essay appended to Buchlerus's "Treasury of Poetical Phrases." "John Milton, in addition to other most elegant writings of his, both in English and Latin, has recently published 'Paradise Lost,' a poem which, whether we regard the sublimity of the subject, or the combined pleasantness and majesty of the style, or the sublimity of the invention, or the beauty of its images and descriptions of nature, will, if I mistake not, receive the name of truly heroic, inasmuch as by the suffrages of many not unqualified to judge, it is reputed to have reached the perfection of this kind of poetry." The "many not unqualified" undoubtedly included the first critic of the age, Dryden.

Lord Buckhurst is also named as an admirer--pleasing anecdotes respecting the practical expression of his admiration, and of Sir John Denham's, seem apocryphal.
While "Paradise Lost" was thus slowly upbearing its author to the highest heaven of fame, Milton was achieving other titles to renown, one of which he deemed nothing inferior.

We shall remember Ellwood's hint that he might find something to say about Paradise Found, and the "muse" into which it cast him.