1719 178pp Manuscript of Joseph Addison on Paradise Lost + MSs of Shakespeare, etc.

A really wonderful late 17th or early 18th century full calf notebook including a complete 161pp non-authorial manuscript of Joseph Addison's critical notes on John Milton's Paradise Lost. Initially published in the pages of The Spectator, they were met with great success and were thus gathered and published separately in 1719 by James Tonson of London. By the early 1720's, the Tonson publication of the volume had already exhausted at least 10 editions. It was immensely popular and widely distributed. This makes it likely that our non-authorial holograph was composed prior to the 1719 date, copied directly from The Spector, and thus predating the first edition of the complete work.  In addition to the 161 pages of Milton, in a lovely, legible hand, there are an additional 17 pages of manuscript, in the same hand, recording poems by William Shakespeare [On Tears Shed by a Lady], by Abraham Crowley, recorded from The British Apollo, and then an extended excerpt from John Locke's Concerni