Literary Notes from All Over

This date in 1667, John Milton sells the rights to "Paradise Lost" for ten pounds.  This leads to his great sequel, "Royalties Lost."

This date in 1737, Edward Gibbon ("The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire") is born in Putney, Surrey.  The Duke of Gloucester, to the historian:  "Always scribble scribble scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbon?" Later in life, the historian falls to his knees to propose marriage to Lady Elizabeth Foster.  She bids him rise, and, after some struggling, Gibbon, who has added a few pounds of the fleshly kind, finds he cannot.

And one day back, in 1731, Daniel Defoe ("Robinson Crusoe," "Moll Flanders." "Journal of the Plague Year") shuffles off this mortal coil in London's Ropemaker Street, hiding from creditors. Many of us know how he felt.