Campbell,
and the majority of our annalists of books, have considered it as
evidence of neglect. Comparison with what is known of other cases of
circulation leads to no more certain conclusion. On the one hand, the
public could not take more than three editions--say 3000 copies--of
the plays of Shakespeare in sixty years, from 1623 to 1684. If this
were a fair measure of possible circulation at the time, we should
have to pronounce Milton's sale a great success. On the other hand,
Cleveland's poems ran through sixteen or seventeen editions in about
thirty years. If this were the average output of a popular book, the
inference would be that _Paradise Lost_ was not such a book.
Whatever conclusion may be the true one from the amount of the public
demand, we cannot be wrong in asserting that from the first, and now
as then, _Paradise Lost_ has been more admired than read. The poet's
wish and expectation that he should find "fit audience, though few,"
has been fulfilled. Partly this has been due to his limitation, his
unsympathetic disposition, the deficiency of the human element in his
imagination, and his presentation of mythical instead of real beings.
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