Note 1 — Chapter II
Reading edition
: In Wood's Fasti (I. 485) the pamphlet is mentioned as "published in Feb." The publication, we learn from subsequent words of Milton himself, was very hurried, and copies got about without his press-corrections. I find no entry of the pamphlet in the Stationers' Registers.—It is particularly necessary to remember that this was but the first edition of the pamphlet. Another was to follow. In all the editions of Milton's collected works, from that of 1698 onwards, the reprint is from the later edition, without notice of the first; but I hardly know a case in which the distinction between two editions is more important.