Milton was a survival, felt himself such, and resented it.
Unchang'd,
....Though Fall'n on evil days,
On evil days though fall'n, and evil tongues;
In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round,
And solitude.
_Paradise Lost_, vii. 24.
Poetry thus generated we should naturally expect to meet with more
admiration than sympathy. And such, on the whole, has been Milton's
reception. In 1678, twenty years after the publication of _Paradise
Lost_, Prior spoke of him (_Hind transversed_) as "a rough, unhewn
fellow, that a man must sweat to read him," And in 1842, Hallam had
doubts "if _Paradise Lost_, published eleven years since, would have
met with a greater demand" than it did at first. It has been much
disputed by historians of our literature what inference is to be drawn
from the numbers sold of _Paradise Lost_ at its first publication.
Between 1667 and 1678, a space of twenty years, three editions had
been printed, making together some 4500 copies. Was this a large or a
small circulation? Opinions are at variance on the point. Johnson and
Hallam thought it a large sale, as books went at that time.
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