It shall be in eternal restless change
Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail,
The pillared firmament is rottenness, &c.

But the 1645 text and Milton's manuscript read self-consum'd;
after which word there is to be understood a metrical pause to
mark the violent transition of the thought.

Again in the second line of the Sonnet to a Nightingale Prof.
Masson has:

Warblest at eve when all the woods are still

but the early edition, which probably follows Milton's spelling
though in this case we have no manuscript to compare, reads
'Warbl'st.' So the original text of Samson, l. 670, has 'temper'st.'

The retention of the old system of punctuation may be less
defensible, but I have retained it because it may now and then
be of use in determining a point of syntax. The absence of a
comma, for example, after the word hearse in the 58th line of
the Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, printed by Prof.
Masson thus:--

And some flowers, and some bays
For thy hearse to strew thy ways,

but in the 1645 edition:--

And som Flowers, and som Bays,