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would probably have been soon and affluently supplied. For the purpose of being near to his new friend, Ellwood settled himself in a lodging in the vicinity of Jewen street; and attended, on every afternoon, that of sunday excepted, to read such Roman authors as his patron was desirous of hearing.

In the commencement of this intercourse, Milton was studious to form his reader's tongue to the foreign pronunciation of the latin, assigning, as a reason for his conduct, the impossibility of conversing with foreigners without this condescension to the habit of their ears. Whether the object were really of the magnitude, attributed to it by Milton, I should be much inclined to question: but it was not, of course, disputed by Ellwood; whose perseverance, though with considerable difficulty, finally achieved it, and succeeded in accommodating his accents to his master's taste. As he proceeded in reading the classics his tones would frequently betray his ignorance of what he read, and Milton would then stop him to explain the passage which seemed not to be understood. reciprocation of service and reward was soon, however, suspended by a severe fit of illness which obliged Ellwood to retire to

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the house of a friend in the country. On his recovery he returned to town, and resumed his situation, as reader, in our author's study, where he uniformly experienced the kindness of a friend and the instructions of a master. After a short interval, he was again separated from this beneficial connexion by the circumstance of his being seized, in a quaker meeting, by a party of soldiers, and detained for a considerable time, with his associates, in a succession of prisons. When he was liberated from these most iniquitous inflictions, he obtained admission into the family of an opulent quaker, at Chalfont in Buckinghamshire, in the quality of instructor to his son: and in this situation, when the plague was ravaging the metropolis, Ellwood was enabled to show his regard for Milton by hiring a small house for him at Chalfont St. Giles.

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Here, after another period of absence, occasioned by a second imprisonment, the young quaker called upon his friend, and received from him, at their first interview, a manuscript, which the author desired him to carry home and to read at his leisure. This manuscript was that of Paradise Lost. “After I had with the best attention read it through," says the respectable Ellwood, "I made him

another visit, and returned him his book, with due acknowledgment of the favour he had done me in communicating it to me.. He asked me how I liked it; and what I thought of it: which I modestly and freely told him; and, after some further discourse, I pleasantly said to him, Thou hast said much here of Paradise lost; but what hast thou to say of Paradise found? He made me no answer, but sat some time in a muse: then broke off that discourse, and fell upon another subject. After the sickness was over, and the city well cleansed and become safely habitable again, he returned thither; and when afterwards I went to wait upon him, (which I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions led me to London,) he showed me his second poem, called Paradise Regained, and, in a pleasant tone, said to me, this is owing to you, for you put it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which before I had not thought of."

The term of Milton's residence at Chalfont has not been precisely specified; but from the circumstances to which it was accommodated, the prevalence and the extirpation of the plague in the capital, we may infer that it extended from the june or the july of 1665 to the march or the april of the follow

ing year. In this period, as I fully concur in opinion with its editor, Mr. Dunster, was the poem of Paradise Regained not only begun, but brought to its conclusion. It was shown, as we have just been informed, to Ellwood on his first visit to London after the author's return from Chalfont; and there is nothing in the poem, whether we respect its length or the style of its composition, evidently marked with the characters of haste, which can induce us to reject, as improbable, the fact of its production, by a mind like Milton's, in the space of ten months.

Though he was destined, at this juncture of his party's disgrace, to experience the neglect, if not the enmity of his ungrateful countrymen, Milton still lived in the estimation of the learned and the illustrious of other nations; by whom his safety, in this fatal season, was acknowledged to be an object of solicitous interest. A rumour had been circulated of his having fallen under the desolating disease; and his foreign friends were anxious to have their apprehensions relieved, and to express their gratification on the event of his escape. Of this we possess authentic evidence in the last of his familiar epistles, written in answer, at this time, to Peter Heimbach; a learned German,

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who had formerly, as it would appear, been assisted by our author's instructions, and who was now advanced to a station of dignity and trust in the Electoral government of Brandenburgh. The letter, in question, is of a nature to merit insertion, and fully to compensate the reader for its short interruption of the narrative.

Ornatissimo Viro Petro Heimbachio, Electoris
Brandenburgici Consiliario.

Si inter tot funera popularium meorum, anno tam gravi ac pestilenti, abreptum me quoque, ut scribis, ex rumore præsertim aliquo credidisti, mirum non est; atque ille rumor apud vestros, ut videtur, homines, si ex eo quod de salute meâ soliciti essent increbuit, non displicet; indicium enim suæ erga me benevolentiæ fuisse existimo. Sed Dei benignitate, qui tutum mihi receptum in agris paraverat, et vivo adhuc et valeo; utinam ne inutilis, quicquid muneris in hâc vitâ restat mihi peragendum. Tibi vero tam longo intervallo venisse in mentem mei, pergratum est: quanquam, prout rem verbis exornas, præbere aliquem suspicionem videris, oblitum mei te potius esse, qui tot virtutum diversarum conjugium in me, ut scribis, admirere. Ego certe ex tot conjugiis numero

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