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Richard Bentley's infamous edition of Paradise Lost, roundly denounced by contemporary scholars, not to mention luminaries such as Swift and Pope; Bentley was a classicist of the highest reputation ('The greatest scholar that England ever bred' - AE Housman), producing numerous important academic works and editions of the classics, but by general consensus his Milton was regrettable; the preface outlines the shortcomings of earlier editions ('faults.in orthography, distinction by points, and capital letters) arguing they came about in part due to the failures of Milton's amenuensis (to whom the poet, being blind, dictated the work); a history of the manuscript follows, which Bentley describes as being 'polluted with such monstrous faults, as are beyond example in any other printed book', and a series of ill-defined personages are mentioned as having handled and published the poem 'the friend or aquaintance, whoever he was, to whom Milton committed his copy'; Bentley thus sets about ('by sagacity and happy conjecture') producing the 'truest and correctest that has yet appeared' - few agreed; the original 1732 edition, and with both portrait plates (many copies only having one), one frontispiece, the second facing the beginning of the poem - both plates engraved by G. Vertue, frontispiece dated 1731; 22 pages precede text of poem, with 16 page index following; newly bound in three-quarter calf with marbled boards, raised bands to spine with 6 compartments, maroon leather title label with gilt titling, and gilt devices; name-plate to front pastedown, heavy foxing/tanning to prelims, and with prominent dampstains, former owner's inscriptions and incidental writing to half-title and prelims (stating 'Daniel Courtney of Tralee.a bad pen I have'), same to last page of index, heavy staining to text block; text generally good throughout, with dampstain persisting to edges of some pages. no dustwrapper. 399pp (xxxviii). 4to. Good.

Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. The first version, published in 1667, consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse.