strike, though it cannot please.

On this history the licenser again fixed his claws, and before he
could transmit it to the press tore out several parts. Some
censures of the Saxon monks were taken away, lest they should be
applied to the modern clergy; and a character of the Long
Parliament, and Assembly of Divines, was excluded; of which the
author gave a copy to the Earl of Anglesea, and which, being
afterwards published, has been since inserted in its proper place.

The same year were printed "Paradise Regained;" and "Samson
Agonistes," a tragedy written in imitation of the ancients, and
never designed by the author for the stage. As these poems were
published by another bookseller, it has been asked whether Simmons
was discouraged from receiving them by the slow sale of the former.
Why a writer changed his bookseller a hundred years ago, I am far
from hoping to discover. Certainly, he who in two years sells
thirteen hundred copies of a volume in quarto, bought for two
payments of five pounds each, has no reason to repent his purchase.

When Milton showed "Paradise Regained" to Elwood, "This," said he,
"is owing to you; for you put it in my head by the question you put
to me at Chalfont, which otherwise I had not thought of."

His last poetical offspring was his favourite. He could not, as
Elwood relates, endure to hear "Paradise Lost" preferred to
"Paradise Regained." Many causes may vitiate a writer's judgment of
his own works. On that which has cost him much labour he sets a
high value, because he is unwilling to think that he has been
diligent in vain; what has been produced without toilsome efforts is